The Effectiveness of Symbolic Play Training on the Improvement of Communication Skills in Children With High Performance Autism Disorder: Single-Subject Study

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of symbolic play on the social interaction of children aged 46 years with highperformance autism disorders. this research has been carried out within the framework of a singlesubject experimental design. three children with high performance autism were selected through targeted sampling. training sessions were arranged in 36 one and a half hours' sessions, for 4 days per week. to measure the dependent variable, the autism treatment evaluation checklist (atec) was completed by instructors. in order to analyze the data, baseline, intervention, and followup positions of each subject was plotted on the graph. the visual analysis, change reliability index, and recovery percentage index, percentage of nonoverlapping data, and percentage of overlapping data were used to interpret these graphs. based on the results of the visual analysis of the data, the intervention has been effective in improving the communication skills of all three participants. reliability index change in the intervention phase was 3.74, 7.1 and 6.4, all of which are significant (p < 0.05). based on the findings of this study, early intervention in the teaching of symbolic play skills can be used as an effective interventional method for improving social skills in preschool children with autism spectrum disorder.