Examination of the change in social skills and language development of the game session applied to children with autism spectrum disorder between 2-6 years of age

The purpose of this study is to examine the changes in social skills and lan-guage development of the game session applied to children with autism spectrum disorder betweeen the ages of 2 and 6 years. In the direction of this research, chang-es in social skills and language development will be investigated in children with au-tism spectrum disorder between the ages of 2 and 6 years after the game session is implemented. A private development centre with 116 children in Atasehir/Istanbul is determined as sampling area. 35 children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the age range of 2 to 6 from the development centre were chosen as sampling for this study. 20 children among the samples were getting the game therapy sessions, rest of the group were not getting the game therapy sessions and they were in sessions of senso-ry integration therapy. 20 children had participated in 1 hour-long game therapy ses-sions 2 days in a week for 6 months. Children participated in one private sessions with a therapist in a week and participated in one common session with a group of two children and two therapists. Symbolic games such as imitating sounds of animals, cars, plains, buses, trains; cleaning, feeding, dressing a baby doll as daily activities; using dough and paint activities were used during the private sessions in order to uncover reflection and creativity of children's dreams. Games with rules were used during the common sessions with a group of two children and two therapists in order to support commu-nication between peers and teach following the sequence. Some of games with rules are waiting for the sequence during the games that support shape-ground relationship, following the rules and acting accordingly, communicating to each other while ex-changing the items. First of all, the level of social ability and language development of 35 children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the age of 2 to 6 was measured with AGTE developed by Işık Savaşır, Neşe Erol and Nilhan Sezgin in 1990. In ad-dition, socio demographic information of 35 children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the age range of 2 to 6 were collected by the researcher from their mothers. Sec-ond, after 6 months AGTE implemented to 20 children who got the game therapy sessions and 15 children who did not get the game therapy sessions. The results of the study shows that there is a significant relationship between social ability and language development of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the age range of 2 to 6, and one of the sub scales; however, there is no relationship with the other sub scale. The statistical analyzes show that there is an improvement on social ability and language development of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the age range of 2 to 6 when they participated in game therapy sessions.The accuracy of study results and literature findings were discussed and some suggestions were pre-sented for future studies.