1994 Volume 35 Issue 1 Pages 19-28
Several recent research studies in developmental psychology suggest a correspondence between symbolic play and language development. Symbolic play is said to be a useful vehicle for enhancing the capacity of early symbolization and language development. But it is only recently that symbolic play has started to be used as a stimulus for language development for early intervention with mentally retarded infants. In this paper we discussed the possibilities that child centered and voluntary symbolic play could develop symbolic functions and language acquisition in children.
Our subjects were 11 mentally retarded infants who belonged to a child welfare center or our university. They did not engage in any symbolic play and had no meaningful words at the beginning of our intervention. We prepared a situation which would elicit their symbolic play: we presented various materials by which the child could extend his symbolic play through our individualized intervention program. A therapist tried to facilitate the child's intentions to play and to be a support partner, but without instructing symbolic play. At the end of our intervention programs for each child (mean length of intervention period: 8.5 months), all the children developed communicative behavior (vocalizations, requests to therapist) and joint attention. Nine cases reached the one-word utterance level and five cases of them increased their vocabularies in the one-word utterance level. Results showing that the situations or opportunities for voluntary play are fundamental for development of symbolization and production of single words in mentally retarded infants.
We confirmed the significance of symbolic play as a context to encourage voluntary play in an early language intervention program for mentally retarded infants.
