Assessment of the Symbolic Play of Hearing-Impaired Preschoolers

This study was a descriptive evaluation of the Nicolich Symbolic Play Coding System and its validity when used to assess the play of hearing-impaired children. Results from this investigation implied that overall, this system was able to be used with hearing-impaired children. Reported findings indicated that following modeled sessions of symbolic play behaviors, each child\u27s individual symbolic play average increased. Additional outcomes revealed that although the children may have actually engaged in less episodes during the modeled sessions than in the unstructured sessions, the complexity of the schemes involved in various play episodes was observed to be much higher during the modeled sessions. Modeling symbolic play for hearing-impaired children may be necessary due to their limited language abilities. The ability to assess symbolic play may yield valuable information on the status and developmental level of children\u27s language