The present study examined spontaneous symbolic play, declarative joint attention, social referencing and imitation of symbolic play in 3- to 6-year-old children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n= 20) during interaction with their mothers. Compared to a control group (n= 20) matched on age and IQ, the children with ASD initiated less joint attention with their mothers when confronted with a pleasant event and they showed a tendency to play less symbolically and more non-functionally. Contrary to expectations, children with ASD showed no social referencing or imitation deficits. Interestingly, two clusters of intercorrelating behaviours were found in the ASD group: one suggesting symbolic or metarepresentational abilities, the other comprising interpersonal behaviours. The findings support the hypothesis that early social communicative abilities may follow a different developmental pathway in ASD, and stress the importance of a contextual factor, namely the presence of the mother.