2001 Volume 42 Issue 2 Pages 129-136
There have been many studies on symbolic play in developmentally language-impaired children that have verified their representational disabilities, but results have been varied and not unified. Such studies have compared symbolic play in language-impaired and normal children matched by chronological age or expressive language. Such matching procedure may be a problem. If symbolic play relates to receptive language rather than expressive language, subjects should be matched by receptive language level. Accordingly, this study compared the symbolic play of language-impaired and normal children matched by receptive language level. The Symbolic Play Test (SPT) was used to measure symbolic play performance. The results were as follows. There was no significant difference in SPT scores between the two groups. The mean developmental age of symbolic play in language-impaired children as converted from raw scores using Lowe's chart was significantly higher than the developmental age of receptive language. Also, there was a significant positive correlation between developmental age of symbolic play and receptive language. These results suggest that receptive language delay in language impaired children relates to representional ability in forming symbolic play.
