Siblings of children who have been diagnosed with autism can play important roles in the lives of their brothers or sisters. Previous literature shows that siblings can effectively change behavior and can increase play interactions. Furthermore, the use of preferred materials may enhance social interactions between the siblings. The purpose of this study was to determine, the effects that material preferences and choices have on sibling social bids and cooperative play during a sibling training program. There were two main objectives. The first objective was to evaluate the effects of teaching with the high preference toy of the neuro-typical sibling during sibling training. The second objective was to determine if the training would produce different effects across four different toy conditions. Measures included social bids made by each of the siblings and cooperative play. Results indicate that teaching with the neuro-typical siblings' high preference toy during sibling training can be an effective method to increase social bids and cooperative play. The results of this study are discussed in the contexts of preference and choice selections, physical environments, motor skills, carry over effects, and participations based on gender.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of learning gender and age labels on toddlers' toy preferences. Many researchers (e.g., Arthur, Bigler, Liben, Ruble, & Gelman, 2008; Martin & Halverson, 1981) have suggested that the acquisition of such labels should cause increased in-group preferences, and thus, increased interest in same-category toy preferences. In this study, we used feminine and masculine toys (e.g., a purse, a hammer) to test gender typed preferences and adult and child objects (e.g., toy keys, real keys) to test age typed preferences. Forty 18-20 month old children (M = 19.1 months) from primarily upper-middle class families participated in the study. After taking pre-test measures of their children's social label understanding and toy preferences, parents were randomly assigned with their children, to one of two conditions: the age condition (in which they were asked to practice "grown-up" and "kid") and the gender condition (in which they were asked to practice "boy" and "girl"). Parents practiced the labels with their children for approximately two weeks and returned to the lab. In the post-test session, children's social label understanding and toy preferences were again assessed. Additionally, parents were asked about their attitudes about other-gender toys and behaviors and about the toys their children had at home. The results indicated an interaction between test time and comprehension of the gender and age labels. Children in the age condition's performance on the age labels in the target word comprehension task improved from pre- to post-test. Children in the gender condition's performance on the gender labels also improved from pre- to post-test. However, there were no main effects of condition at post-test. As predicted, comprehension of labels was related to toy play in the age condition. Children who were more successful on the age labels on the word comprehension task also played more with toy items than real items at post-test. Comprehension of labels was not related to toy play in the gender condition. However, at pre-test, girls in the gender condition already exhibited strong sex typed behavior, so it is possible that the manipulation was not enough to change these extant preferences. These data partially support Bigler and Liben's (2006) Developmental Intergroup Theory and work by Martin and Halverson (1981) on role of cognitive processes in the formation of social stereotypes, preferences, and prejudice. / text