Creating LARP Program for Autism Spectrum Toddlers

by Hawke Robinson — published Jun 20, 2015 05:05 PM, last modified Feb 07, 2023 08:46 AM

Due to excessively strict NDA of the organization, I am very limited in what I can post, but letting those following the RPG Research, beginning working with autism-spectrum toddlers today from a recreation therapy approach, and developing an activity program that is LARP (Live-Action Role-Playing) quest-style for this population group, that we will actually implement in the next few weeks.

Creating LARP Program for Autism Spectrum Toddlers

UPDATE: This program is based on work at Eastern Washington University with oversight by Professor Emily Messina and others. It has been repeated with similar success when used other groups in private practice through non-profit RPG Research and the for-profit RPG Therapeutics LLC since. If you implement this, or similar programs, please comment and/or add your posts to the website, so that everyone can benefit from the centralized information pool.

Creating a TON of documentation for this process. Hopefully I can get permission down the road to discuss in much more detail.

After it is over, hopefully I can release a "sanitized" version of the LARP portion of the detailed documentation of the program to the public (not the organization's program, but the program that I, and 2 others collaborated to create as part of our class project in Recreation Therapy Program Planning).

I am really excited to finally be testing application of some of the hypotheses I've been talking about for years to a real-life group. :-)

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Hawke Robinson says:

Mar 06, 2016 03:54 AM

Hawke Robinson says:
Mar 19, 2014 10:48 AM
Successful adaptive LARP (Live-action Role-playing) cooperative quests for Autism spectrum toddlers from a recreation therapy program plan perspective. Due to overly restrictive NDA, I can't provide much detail, but just wanted to share that the implementation went very well. Hopefully over time, while protecting the privacy of the participants, I can provide more details. The first step of many in goals for developing specific therapeutic interventions using role-playing gaming in various forms (live-action, tabletop, and computer-based) for different population needs.

Hawke Robinson says:

Mar 06, 2016 03:55 AM

Hawke Robinson says:
Mar 19, 2014 10:50 AM
To specify, this was only one session that actually used the cooperative quest we developed, but it was very useful to see what worked and what needs modification.

Hawke Robinson says:

Mar 06, 2016 03:55 AM

Hawke Robinson says:
Jun 15, 2015 12:21 PM
Since the NDA is so strict, it is very difficult to provide specifics, so this unfortunately has to be from a very high-level overview of observed results from a single trial session (monitored by program members, volunteers, and Professor/Director of Therapeutic Recreation Department for Eastern Washington University): Immediately noticed significant reduction of "stereotypical" behaviours (hand-flapping, fixation, distraction, lack of response/interaction to/with others, etc.) during the activities using RPG-based activities compared to those activities without, better positive experiences with cooperative engagement using RPG-based activities than those without, better success rates at completing all tasks cooperatively with RPG approach compared to non-RPG activities (all but one participant completed all tasks successfully, and all maintained attention and focus for full duration of session (15+ minutes rotation) compared to average of only 5 minutes for all the other groups running non-RPG-related activities. Improved efforts at interaction and communication with other participants when using the RPG-related adapted activities than those without.

Mark says:

Jun 15, 2020 01:44 PM

Moved to w3 by Mark P. on 20200615