Conquer the NBCOT 2025 Exam – Unleash Your Occupational Therapy Superpowers!

The key intervention strategy for improving social interaction in children with autism is peer group engagement in guided play. Engaging children in play activities with their peers promotes social skills development in a naturalistic setting, allowing them to practice and enhance communication, cooperation, and turn-taking in a supportive environment.

Guided play provides a structured setting where an adult or therapist can facilitate interactions, model appropriate social behaviors, and provide immediate feedback. This social context not only helps children with autism learn to interpret social cues but also fosters emotional connections and friendships, which are crucial for their social development.

While structured, one-on-one therapy sessions can be beneficial for individual skill-building, they may lack the dynamic interactions that occur in peer settings. Situational role-playing can be useful for teaching specific skills, but it does not necessarily create the spontaneous social interactions that occur during play. Limiting interaction to family settings can restrict opportunities for children to generalize their skills and may hinder social development outside of familiar environments. Hence, peer group engagement in guided play stands out as the most effective approach for enhancing social interactions in children with autism.