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Research Article

The Use of Theatre to Develop Social and Communication Behaviors for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Preliminary Investigation

¹Butler University, 4600 Sunset Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46208

²People’s Light and Theatre Company, Malvern, PA 19355

³Communication and Reading Excellence, Indianapolis, IN 46280

^*Corresponding Author:

Suzanne Reading
Butler University, 4600 Sunset Ave
Indianapolis, IN 46208
Tel: +1 317-940-8000
E-mail: reading@butler.edu

Received date: September 18, 2015; Accepted date: November 04, 2015; Published date: November 05, 2015

Citation: Reading S, Reading J, Padgett RJ, Reading S, Pryor P (2016) The Use of Theatre to Develop Social and Communication Behaviors for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Preliminary Investigation. J Speech Pathol Ther 1:102. doi: 10.4172/2472-5005.1000102

Copyright: © 2015 Reading S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Social and communication behaviors are often a focus of instruction for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). A theatre rehearsal and production process is challenging and joyful work that nurtures the development of social and language skills. This study evaluated and described social and language behaviors for students with ASD both before and after a 10-week theatre experience. The results indicated that, when compared with a control group, the students with theatre experiences had significant and positive changes in the development of social and language skills. Most particularly, these students had significant improvement in Social Responsiveness, acknowledgement of the Perspective of Others, and Participation and Cooperation. The theatre experiences led to positive changes in social and communication behaviors for students with ASD.

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