Research

Project: Building essential life skills through play

The Villa is committed to being a critical lifeline for families touched by an autism diagnosis, while providing every student with the best quality education. At our Sarah Dooley Center for Autism (SDCA), our dedicated faculty and staff use best-practice, autism-specific techniques to help students engage their communities and build life skills to maximize their independence. We’re excited to share SDCA’s latest research project aimed at making key advancements in autism education!

Led by Brittany Leggett, one of the Villa’s Board Certified Behavior Analysts, we’re studying the correlation between digital play on a touch-screen tablet and creative toy play with the Sago Mini World application and toy line. Knowing that many of our students and individuals with autism enjoy entertainment activities through digital technology, we’re investigating whether specific play behavior taught digitally will translate into real-world play with toys.

If students are able to

Replicate Play

behavior that they learned on a touch screen with toys, imagine how many other skills we could teach through similar methods! It would be another tool in our toolbox to expand our students’ worlds and help them discover and master new life skills.

Twelve SDCA students are currently participating in the study, which will be completed by the end of the 2022-23 school year. We look forward to publishing our findings, and contributing new literature on our understanding of individuals with autism and effective teaching practices!

The Diner set is one of the toys we use in the study. We combine this learning with community-based instruction by taking our students to restaurants, stores, parks, and other public places. Students interact with people in a variety of settings, increasing their probability for meaningful community engagement as adults.

Our Center for Autism students have learned over 12,000 new words this year!

John RichardsonLauve , LCSW Senior Director of Community Outreach and Trauma-Informed Care Specialist

The Villa family is pleased to welcome John Richardson-Lauve! John is a licensed clinical social worker with over 30 years of experience in the field of community mental health. He has worked with individuals struggling with chronic mental illness and substance use disorder, as well as youth in residential care, foster care, and outpatient mental health. He is an accomplished speaker and facilitator, having led numerous organizational trainings for audiences that include state departments of education, the National Resilience Institute, Marine Base Quantico, Cornell University, and the FBI. John and his wife have fostered over 50 children in their home.