Structured play, modified play: A board game experience with children and adolescents with autism
Gabriele Mari
The purpose of this article is to present recreational-educational activity through the use of board games conducted in two centres of «La Pieve» Social Cooperative, specialised in juvenile autism. The basic hypothesis that guides these experimental activities is that they can be set, as far as principles and methodologies are concerned, in a behavioural educational context based on the ABA and TEACCH models. The high level of structure needed for board games has convinced the Cooperative educators and the game designers of Sir Chester Cobblepot to work in synergy, analysing and testing the analogies between the classic settings of Independent Work Tasks and the use of board games with children and teenagers with medium and low functioning autism. After explaining the strategies that allow the games to be adapted to the skills of these users, we will examine in detail how development proceeds: from the difficulties encountered during play testing to the repeated adjustments and finally to the creation of a structured and functioning prototype like the Domino game presented here for instance.
Keywords
Autism, board games, TEACCH, structuring, facilitation
