Can autistic people still have imaginative play?

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In recent doctor visits I've been asked about creative play. I played pretend as a kid, and I think that's one of the reasons why I'm being told that I have symptoms of autism without autism. So, have any of you been diagnosed with ASD without creative play? What does creative play even mean? Could I still have ASD even if I did play pretend?

I see questions like this a lot, it's like saying "I'm missing an ear, am I still human?"

There are some things that vary in the disability and there are other things that are more concrete.

Most psychologists agree that Social and Communication difficulties, Sensory processing disorder, Obsesive and repetitive behaviour and executive function disorder are quite concrete and are usually required for a diagnoses ( and I know people are going to argue and say "I don't have sensory problems and I'm autistic!" I'm just going by what my psychologist told me, I'm not disproving or invalidating anyone's diagnoses)

Things that vary are the ability to speak, liking and disliking other people, IQ levels, balance and coordination skills, and other things. Pretend play definitely varies.

It"s something that needs deeper evaluation such as what kind of pretend play.

Usually autistic people have difficulty or just do not play roles such as playing house, school or other things, basically re-enacting adults. This type of play requires the ability to think on the spot and work off peers in a social environment.

One thing autistic children do play is re-enacting television, movies, comics and video games. This form of play has scripts and a specific way of playing that is predictable and always the same.

Playing with toys, making them talk and doing things I'm actually not sure of, never asked or looked into it.

Most autistic children actually have a imaginary friend believe it or not, this is a form of pretend play.

So the short answer is yes; autistic people CAN and DO pretend play and it varies a lot.

pretend play was all i ever did as a child, and nobody thought it made me "less autistic".

i had little trouble coming up with original content, but yes, i often did reenact video game scenes and movies or shows, predictable and able to be "traced".

whether or not you pretend play may be a very flimsy thing to base a diagnosis upon.

Me and most of my autistic classmates engage in creative play all the time.

Whoever is evaluating you, needs to toss out their 1950's source material.

I was very much into pretend play as a child, and I still got the diagnosis.

Lack of pretend play is a supporting criteria, not a necessary one.

I did a lot of pretend play as a kid.

I'm not diagnosed. I believe I'm autistic and all of my research, including tests (which I know aren't totally reliable on their own), say that I am.

Pretend play was definitely a big part of my childhood. Not with other people, but on my own. I used to pretend I was a dinosaur and create a cave under my duvet, and live as the dinosaur quite frequently. I had imaginary friends as a child. I strongly recall being roughly 9 or 10 years old and being at a school with a high wall, and I played the Lion King re-enacting Mufasa's death by holding onto the wall, feet dangling, pretending I was about to be pushed. That was a frequent thing - I remember trying to get some other children involved, but they refused to play and went off to talk about pop stars (and, when I asked again, one of them pulled me feet-first off the wall and caused me to land head first on the floor after quite a distance falling).

Fake tea parties etc., I don't think I did. But I definitely took on roles as characters (from the media or made up) and convinced myself that I was them for a short while.

My make believe friends were parakeets.

I'm autistic and I currently have a Skype window open on which I am doing a roll playing game with my friend. We are both being ourselves from our imaginary worlds (him being a time traveler because his world is further in the future then mine) and we are in my imaginary world crash landed on Mars.

Whoever said that autistic people can't do imaginative play didn't know what they were talking about.

I frequently did imaginative play. A friend and I would pretend to be characters from books or video games we liked and we would have those universes cross over in our games. I suspect my friend may be on the spectrum as well.

We did get into a lot of fights in our earlier years though, about the rules of each universe and what our characters could and couldn't do, as well as various story decisions we disagreed on. We were pretty rigid about such things. We'd often end each recess claiming we weren't friends anymore due to these silly disputes, only to do it all again the next day. This went on for quite a while. We're still good friends today though.

I also often used to pretend I was a dinosaur or a character from Animorphs in class or when I was by myself at home. I didn't really act it out, but in my head, I was that character.

I engaged in a lot of imaginative play as a child.

Certainly! I actually had an active imagination when I was younger, though it's not as strong as it used to be.

Certainly! I was imaginative too.
Claiming, that autistics can´t be imaginative is BS - like the psych, who told me - within the first 15 minutes: "You can´t be an aspie. Aspies are NOT interested in psychology. They can´t grasp it".
Guess how many times I saw that one.

Most studies about pretend play suggest that it is reduced in autism.
I didn't pretend play as a child.
I am not sure what to think about pretend play.
It seems strange to me for an autistic child to do pretend play.
I can't imagine myself doing it as a child.
But many autistic people say they had pretend play.
Perhaps it is possible to have pretend play and display social cognition in pretend play, but not be able to do so in interactions with real people.