by Pamela Wolfberg

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The growing numbers of children diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorders are drawing significant attention to identifying effective education and therapeutic interventions. Autism refers here to a broad definition that ranges from severe to mild forms of classic autism and Asperger syndrome, all of which share common features. Lorna Wing and Judith Gould identified these features (what they called a "triad of impairments" in reciprocal social interaction, communication, and imagination) that characterized autism in their 1979 article for the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. As I noted in Play and Imagination in Children with Autism (1999), these core challenges are inextricably linked to a child's capacity to develop spontaneous play across social and symbolic dimensions.