Abstract
Although peer play behaviors in naturalistic settings provide important insights into young children’s development, few studies have examined their utility for identifying early autism spectrum disorder risk. We investigated peer play profiles among a normative sample of Korean preschoolers and their associations with autism spectrum disorder likelihood. We included 1,018 children from the Panel Study on Korean Children, whose preschool teachers rated classroom play behaviors. Latent profile analysis revealed three profiles: sociable (n = 640), rough-and-tumble (n = 325), and isolated (n = 53). Children in the isolated group—marked by high disconnection, low interaction, and elevated disruption—showed greater likelihood of autism spectrum disorder than peers in other groups. Our findings suggest that teacher-reported peer play profiles represent practical, developmentally appropriate indicators of neurodevelopmental risk. Peer play profiling may serve as a scalable, low-cost tool in preschool settings to support early identification and referral before formal diagnostic assessment.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
