A Comparison of Social Pretend Play in Young Children With and Without Disabilities

The strategies used in social pretend play were compared for 15 preschoolers with mild disabilities and 15 nondisabled preschoolers in three integrated preschool sites. Children were videotaped for two 15-minute free-play sessions. Sessions were transcribed and analyzed to determine the strategies used to enter, initiate, maintain, and terminate play. Results indicated that preschoolers with mild disabilities participated in pretend play, but that they tended to use more direct and disruptive strategies to enter play. In contrast, nondisabled preschoolers used more indirect strategies. Both groups of children initiated play without discussing roles in advance, and both groups maintained play through short play dialogues. Differences were found in the pretend play themes used: preschoolers with disabilities had less variety in their themes. Both groups of children generally terminated their play by leaving the area. These findings have implications for interventionists, including the need to extend our notion of what constitutes social interaction for young children with disabilities and the need to expand our interventions beyond teaching simple social skills.     

Social Pretend Play in Korean- and Anglo-American Preschoolers

Ninety-two preschoolers (46 Anglo- and 46 Korean-American) were observed during free play activities and videotaped in an experimental toy play setting. Cultural differences were examined in the frequency of social pretend play, communicative strategies, and pretend play themes. Anglo-American children engaged in more pretend play during free play activities than Korean-American children. In the experimental setting, there were no cultural differences in the frequency of pretend play; however, there were significant differences in children's communicative strategies and in their play themes. Korean-American children's play included everyday activity and family role themes, whereas Anglo-American children enacted danger in the environment and fantastic themes. Anglo-American children described their own actions, rejected their partners' suggestions, and used directives, whereas Korean-American children described their partners' actions and used tag questions, semantic ties, statements of agreement, and polite requests. The findings suggest that play is a common activity for most children. However, the thematic content and the communicative strategies used to structure and maintain pretend play are influenced by culture.     

Conflict and Its Resolution in Preschoolers with and without Disabilities

The sources of conflict, its resolution, and additional conflict components were described for 16 preschoolers with mild disabilities. Conflict episodes were contrasted to those of a comparison group of 15 preschoolers without disabilities. Children were videotaped for two 15-minute freeplay sessions, which were categorized and analyzed using a procedure developed by Laursen and Hartup (1989). Results indicated that children with and without disabilities engaged in conflict on a relatively infrequent basis, and that it was of short duration. In general, there were few differences between the sources of conflict and how they were resolved for children with and without disabilities. There was a tendency, however, for children with disabilities to have more disputes over objects, and for children without disabilities to have more disputes over pretend play. Children resolved their conflicts largely through insistence, and in the majority of conflicts there was a clear winner and loser. Implications for intervention and future research are discussed.     

Effect of School Pretend Play on Preschoolers’ Social Competence in Peer Interactions: Gender as a Potential Moderator

This study investigated the moderating effect of gender on the causal relationships between different school play activities (pretend and non-pretend play) and social competence in peer interactions among a sample of Hong Kong children. Participants were 60 Hong Kong preschoolers (mean age = 5.44, 36.67 % female). Children with matched home pretend play time period were randomly assigned to pretend or non-pretend play groups to take part in pretend or non-pretend play activities respectively in the 1-month kindergarten play training. Children’s pre- and post-training social competences were assessed by their teachers. Results revealed a trend that girls who participated in school pretend play tended to be less disruptive during peer interactions after the training than those who participated in non-pretend play, while boys were similarly benefited from the two play activities. The implications for play-related research and children’s social competence development are discussed.     

Social Acceptance of Children with Intellectual Disabilities in an Integrated School Setting in Zambia: a pilot study

The social acceptance of a group of Zambian primary school children with intellectual disabilities by two groups of nondisabled children was examined. One group were in direct contact with the children with disabilities over a period of six months while the other was not. Nondisabled boys who had been in contact with children with disabilities had more positive attitudes than boys who had no direct contact, while no exposure effects were observed amongst girls. Gender differences amongst nondisabled children who had contact with peers with disabilities were not significant. Amongst the nondisabled children who had no contact with children with disabilities, girls had more positive attitudes than boys. The findings are preliminary, but offer directions for further research and have some implications for integrating children with disabilities into mainstream schools.     

Integration of Preschoolers with Severe Disabilities into Daycare

A diary study was conducted over a 15-week period during which six preschoolers with severe disabilities made weekly visits to a daycare center. The intent was to describe successful examples of interactive or imitative play and to note what events prompted these interactions. The results indicated that very little spontaneous cooperative play occurred between daycare children and children with disabilities. An increase in social and play skills was noted in individual students with disabilities. Anecdotal evidence is presented to support these observations.     

Promoting turn-taking skills in preschool children with disabilities: The effects of a peer-based social communication intervention

The current study evaluated the turn-taking skills of preschoolers with disabilities who participated in a social communication intervention that targeted initiations, responses, and turn-taking skills, and taught children to repair and revise and to avoid interruptions and overlaps. Ten children who enrolled in an inclusive at-risk classroom met the inclusion criteria. A multiple baseline design across two dyads replicated across three additional dyads was used to determine the effects of the intervention. The social communication intervention was highly effective for five children, moderately effective for three children, and mildly effective for two children in increasing the rate of initiations with an immediate peer response from baseline to intervention. The social communication intervention was highly effective for one child, moderately effective for three children, mildly effective for two children, and ineffective for four children in improving turn-taking skills. Generalization results showed that nine out of ten participants demonstrated increased peer play following the intervention, increased levels of child-initiated interactions with a positive peer response, and decreased levels of solitary play. Several implications for practice were derived from the findings. By teaching children turn-taking strategies, the quality of social interactions that children have with their peers is likely to improve. The intervention offers a more systematic technique for teaching social communication and play skills than do informal strategies commonly used by teachers. Social validity assessments indicated that teachers found the intervention acceptable and produced important changes in behavior.     

Links Between Preschool Children’s Social Skills and Observed Pretend Play in Outdoor Childcare Environments

As one of the most advanced play forms in childhood, pretend play often demonstrates positive associations with children’s development. However, results from research that examines the association between social skills and pretend play are mixed, especially when the complexity of pretend play is taken into account. Moreover, few studies on pretend play are conducted in outdoor environments; a setting which affords many opportunities for engagement in pretend play and unstructured social interactions. By observing children’s outdoor pretend play, the primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between different types of pretend play and children’s social skills. Twenty-eight children from high quality childcare centers in a southeast suburban area were observed during outdoor free play time. Using a reliable time sampling protocol, each child’s play was observed and recorded for a total of 45 min to an hour over a 2-week time period. Lead teachers rated children’s social skills in the areas of cooperation, self-control, and assertiveness. Results showed high amounts of pretend play behavior overall, and differential relationships between the type of pretend play children engaged in and children’s social skills. Surprisingly, these relationships were not associated with gender. Findings are discussed in light of the value of pretend play to promote social skill development and the potential for outdoor contexts specifically to encourage these play behaviors.     

Perception of gated, highly familiar spoken monosyllabic nouns by children with and without learning disabilities

A forward-gating procedure employing highly familiar monosyllabic words was used in auditory testing of age- and gender-matched children with learning disabilities and normally achieving children aged 8 to 11 years. The portion of the word presented, or "gate," was longer on each successive trial. Nondisabled children identified an average of one more word than the children with learning disabilities, but the mean duration required for word identification did not differ between groups. Better receptive vocabulary scores were associated with identification of words at shorter durations only among the children with learning disabilities. The two groups of children had similar numbers of different meaningful-word and different non-word incorrect responses. The children with learning disabilities exhibited poorer fine-grained auditory discrimination than a control group of nondisabled children. The study concluded that auditory closure skills for the gating task were as good among children with learning disabilities as among nondisabled children, but that sensory discrimination problems may contribute significantly to the learning difficulties of the former group.     

Classroom behavior of children and adolescents with learning disabilities: a meta-analysis

Meta-analysis was used to review the results of 25 studies that compared the classroom behavior of children and adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) to children without learning disabilities. The data were analyzed from several different methodological perspectives. Results showed that both methodologically strong and weak studies demonstrated significant behavioral deficits of children with learning disabilities compared to their nondisabled peers in each of five overall areas: on-task behavior, off-task behavior, conduct disorders, distractibility, and shy/withdrawn behavior. Both observational and teacher rating data demonstrated these differences. Effect sizes for both groups of studies seemed to cluster around 1 standard deviation, suggesting noticeable and educationally significant impairment in the behavior of children with disabilities. Analysis of grade-level effect sizes suggests some explanation for the large number of referrals often witnessed during the elementary school years. Educational implications of these behavioral differences in terms of implications for mainstreaming are discussed.     

Indonesian Children's Play with Their Mothers and Older Siblings

30 Indonesian children were observed and videotaped on 2 separate occasions while playing with toys to promote imaginative play with their mothers and older siblings. Play episodes were examined for level of play with objects, mutual involvement in social and cooperative social pretend play, maternal and sibling play behaviors, and thematic content. Mothers were interviewed about children's play. Results showed that level of object play and mutual involvement in cooperative social pretend play increased with age. Pretend play with objects and cooperative social pretend play were more frequent with older siblings than with mothers. Older siblings were more actively involved in play activities than were mothers. Siblings joined their younger partners' play activities and made comments and suggestions for pretend play. The findings suggest that older siblings can be effective facilitators of pretend play with young children. The results also show how the sociocultural context shapes children's early play behavior with different partners.     

Universal, developmental, and variable aspects of young children's play: a cross-cultural comparison of pretending at home

Using longitudinal data from five Irish American families in the United States and nine Chinese families in Taiwan, in conjunction with an emerging body of evidence in the cultural psychology literature, we propose universal, culturally variable, and developmental dimensions of young children's pretend play. Possible universal dimensions include the use of objects, and the predominantly social nature of pretend play. Developmental dimensions include increases in the proportion of social pretend play initiated by the child, the proportion of partner initiations elaborated upon by the child, and caregivers' use of pretend play initiations to serve other, nonplay social functions. Culturally variable dimensions include the centrality of objects, the participation of specific play partners, the extent of child initiations of social pretend play with caregivers, the various functions of social pretend play in interaction, and specific themes. These findings raise the theoretical issue of how universal and variable dimensions of pretend play interact in specific communities to create distinctive development pathways.     

Kindergarten children's growth trajectories in reading and mathematics: who falls increasingly behind?

The authors used a large sample of children (N ≈ 7,400) participating in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) to estimate kindergarten children's academic achievement growth trajectories in reading and mathematics. The authors were particularly interested in whether the growth trajectories of children with learning disabilities (LD) or speech language impairments (SLI)--as well as those of other groups of children--were consistent with a cumulative or compensatory developmental cycle. Both LD and SLI children displayed significantly lower levels of kindergarten reading achievement than nondisabled children. However, and over the subsequent 5 years of elementary school, only children with SLI lagged increasingly behind nondisabled peers in their reading skills growth. The authors observed a different pattern for mathematics achievement. Children with LD, but not SLI, lagged increasingly behind nondisabled children in their mathematics skills growth. The authors also observed some consistency in "poor-get-poorer" effects across reading and mathematic achievement for additional population subgroups. Those kindergarten children who were from lower socioeconomic status families, who were African American, and who more frequently displayed learning-related behavior problems initially had lower levels of reading and mathematics achievement and also lagged increasingly behind in their acquisition of these skills over time. Some groups of children, including those with SLI, experience a cumulative rather than a compensatory cycle of achievement growth.     

Examining How and Why Children in My Transitional Kindergarten Classroom Engage in Pretend Gunplay

This self-study of pretend gunplay in my Transitional Kindergarten (TK) classroom was designed to guide me in not only improving my practice within the classroom, but also informing the development of sound classroom policies related to pretend gun-and-weapons play that balance children's developmental needs with my commitment to peace and conflict resolution. The participants in this study include 17 children in my TK classroom in Northern California, but the focus is on 8 students. Data for this study were collected through brief student interviews, audio-recorded classroom discussions, videotaped play, observations, and photographs, which were then analyzed through first and second cycle coding and grouped into significant patterns and common themes. This study allowed me to recognize the different types of pretend gunplay in my classroom, the types of play that induce conflict versus cooperative play, and the specific social needs of my students that are being met through their pretend gunplay. These findings allow me to respond effectively and critically to the developmental needs of my students while being able to recognize the topics that typically occur in pretend gunplay.     

Phonological Awareness,Peer Nominations,and Social Competence Among Preschool Children At Risk for Developing Learning Disabilities

This study examined the relations between phonological awareness skills and social-emotional competence among preschool children who were considered at risk for developing learning disabilities. Phonological awareness skills, loneliness, sense of coherence, and peer acceptance of 98 children with an age range from 5.0 to 6.4 years (39 with a high risk for developing learning disabilities and 59 nondisabled peers) were assessed. The children at risk differed significantly from the nondisabled children on all measures. Their scores on the phonological awareness measures were lower, they viewed themselves as more lonely, felt less confident about their world, and they were less accepted by their peers. Subgrouping, using the sense of coherence and the combined phonological measure as criteria, revealed that the largest number of children at risk were in the group with lowest levels of coherence and phonological awareness skills. The smallest proportion of high risk children was found in the group characterised by its high sense of coherence and high level of phonological awareness. Thus, children at risk for developing learning disabilities revealed two groups of deficits: phonological awareness difficulties and social-emotional difficulties. The results emphasised the need to examine interrelations between peer acceptance and both cognitive-phonological awareness and emotional domains.     

Promoting Independent Interactions Between Preschoolers with Autism and Their Nondisabled Peers: An Analysis of Self-Monitoring

This study examined the effects of self-monitoring on the activity engagement and social interaction of three preschoolers with autism. Each child participated in daily play activities with one nondisabled peer and received little adult direction during an initial baseline phase. Two intervention procedures were then implemented in an alternating fashion during a second condition. The first procedure required an adult to prompt the children to exchange social overtures. The adult also moved beads to record completed exchanges and provided a small post session reward to each child if they accomplished a criterion number of exchanges. During the second monitoring procedure the children moved their own beads while the adult provided fewer prompts and gave a post session reward. The child monitoring procedure was then implemented without prompts during a final follow-up phase. A combined alternating treatment and multiple baseline design were used to examine the effects of each experimental condition. Although all three children exhibited high levels of active engagement during baseline, most of their responses occurred in a solitary fashion. The adult and child monitoring procedures produced equal increases in children's engagement with nondisabled peers during the alternating intervention phase. The child monitoring procedure also maintained children's independent interactions during the follow-up condition. Supplemental observations in follow-up also indicated that children exchanged a wide range of different overtures and exhibited varying levels of consistency in their self monitoring.     

Effective Social Interaction Strategies for Inclusive Settings

Many strategies and interventions exist in the education of young children with disabilities. One area of intervention is that of social interaction, including social skills instruction, peer interaction strategies, and play skills. Interaction and social skill strategies for use with children with and without disabilities for the purpose of increasing social interactions between children with and without disabilities in educational settings is an area many educators of early childhood special education strive to find in an effective and easy to implement format. Several strategies from research are presented in this article. Only strategies that were demonstrated to be successful through reported research are discussed. Strategies are identified according to their ease of implementation and effectiveness.     

Classroom behavior and family climate in students with learning disabilities and hyperactive behavior

The present study aimed to identify subtypes of the learning disabilities (LD) syndrome by examining classroom behavior and family climate among four groups of Israeli students ranging in age from 7 to 10 years: 22 students with LD and hyperactive behavior (HB), 22 nonhyperactive students with LD, 20 nondisabled students with HB, and 20 nondisabled nonhyperactive students. Schaefer's Classroom Behavior Inventory and Moos's Family Environmental Scale were administered to teachers and mothers, respectively. The results revealed that higher distractibility and hostility among both groups with HB differentiated between the two groups with LD. Families of children with HB were reported as less supportive and as emphasizing control less. The academic competence and temperament of the nondisabled students with HB were rated as similar to those of the two groups of students with LD. Both groups with LD were characterized by dependent interpersonal relations and by more conflictual families who fostered more achievement but less personal growth.     

Social pretend play in 2-year-olds: Effects of age of partner

The role of the partner in the development of social pretend play was examined in two related studies. In both studies toddler-age children (Study One: n = 16, Study Two: n = 48) played with same-age and 5-year-old partners. In both studies 2-year-olds engaged in more social pretend play with older than with same-age partners. In mixed play sessions, 2-year-olds and 5-year-olds engaged in asymmetrical interaction. However, 5-year-olds used similar social behaviors with same-age and younger partners. In Study two, the 5-year-old partners (n = 32) were asked either to play with or to teach their younger partners. No differences were found in 5-year-old behavior under the two conditions, and younger children did not engage in more complex social pretend play in subsequent play with age-mates.     

The social status of children with learning disabilities: a reexamination

Although the low social status of children with learning disabilities (LD) has been well documented, little is known about the specific types of peer status problems that characterize these children. The present study utilized current sociometric procedures in order to clarify the nature of social status difficulties encountered by children with LD. Consistent with previous studies, results revealed that children with LD obtain significantly lower sociometric scores relative to their nondisabled peers. Moreover, children with LD were found to be disproportionately overrepresented in the rejected and neglected sociometric groups, and underrepresented in the popular and average groups. Over half of the total LD sample was classified into one of the low status categories, with approximately equal numbers in the rejected and neglected groups. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.