Play with objects in young males with fragile X syndrome: A preliminary study

• This preliminary study described the object play skills of 10 male toddlers with fragile X syndrome, the leading inherited cause of intellectual disability.
• Relative to other play categories included in a modified version of the Developmental Play Assessment, play actions representing Presentation Combinations were the most frequently produced by these participants.
• Object interest, the number of different toys touched during a play sample, was concurrently and positively related to standardized measures of receptive and expressive language while play diversity, the number of different action types produced, was concurrently and negatively related to severity of autism symptoms.
• Both object interest and play diversity were significantly related to the number of nonverbal communication acts participants produced during a naturalistic play sample with their mothers.

Using the Developmental Play Assessment, this preliminary study described the categories and levels of play with objects produced by 10 young boys with diagnoses of full mutation fragile X syndrome, the leading inherited cause of intellectual disability. Additionally, the study examined concurrent associations between child characteristics and three different summary level variables representing object play skills. Presentation Combinations (i.e., recreating structured configurations of objects) was the highest play level emerging or mastered for all participants. The number of toys touched during the play sample, an index of object interest, was positively related to standardized measures of receptive and expressive language while the number of different actions produced, an index of play diversity, was negatively related to autism symptom severity. Both variables were significantly related to the number of nonverbal communication acts children produced while interacting with their mothers in play. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.Learning outcomes: Readers will be able to: (1) define a framework for categorizing developmental levels of play; (2) discuss the constructs represented by three different summary level metrics of play with objects; (3) describe the relationship between object-play skills and child characteristics for young males with FXS.