Toni Randall and her five-year-old son, Jonah, play like this every day.

He is a very energetic little boy," Randall says. "He's very affectionate. Just a special, sweet little boy."

Jonah is autistic. He is on the more severe end of the spectrum, his mother says. He doesn't speak, but he sure does smile.

They're not having fun at home today, they're at the Michigan State University Autism Lab doing a training exercise in imitation.

It's one of several studies Assistant Professor Brooke Ingersoll is conducting.

This one in particular was recently published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Ingersoll's findings suggest young children with autism who learn to imitate show improvements in a range of social skills.

"I think these are really promising results," Ingersoll says. "By increasing imitation we can improve that social interaction and hopefully we can also improve their ability to learn from their environment."

Not only that, the children in the study also improved in joint attention, which is the ability to share attention between a person and an object.

"This is a particular behavior that we know is one of the earliest markers of ASD in young children and is one of the more autism-specific deficits that we see," Ingersoll says. "And it's one of the skills that is particularly resistant to treatment."

So how did they do it? Simple exercises that Ingersoll says parents can do with their children at home.

"Teaching parents to imitate their child's play, getting down on the floor, getting near where their child is and imitating what their child is doing," Ingersoll explains. "What they're doing with the toys, what they might be doing with their body, gestures they might be using, sounds, words they might be using."

"Five minutes here, 10 minutes there, during daily interactions," she says.

It's worked for Jonah.

"He has actually dramatically improved," Randall says.

He didn't participate in the actual study, but his mother says he's benefited greatly from the results.

"He has responded very well to the imitation," says Randall. "He really enjoys seeing others act like he does. It kind of engages him more and with other people he is more interactive. It's been wonderful."

For Ingersoll, it's a step in the right direction -- progress -- in the field of autism research.

"We're getting a better idea of what autism looks like within the first year of life, first two years of life and the better idea we have of what it looks like, the better idea we have of the best ways to treat it," she says.

Ingersoll is currently working on a similar study on imitation in adolescents with autism.

If your child is on the autism spectrum and you'd like to get involved with the research happening at the MSU Autism Lab, call 517-432-8031 or visit the lab's website: http://psychology.msu.edu/AutismLab/ .