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.     

The influence of social status on children's merit-based resource allocation: The potential explanation of expectation

How 3- to 11-year-old children integrate recipients' merit and social status when allocating resources was examined in 2021 and 2022. Study 1 (Han Chinese, n = 309, 150 girls) showed that while children prioritized merit, they developed from favoring high-status recipients to favoring low-status recipients. Study 2 (n = 194, 98 girls) and Study 3 (n = 138, 68 girls) revealed that children held stereotypes about the relation between merit and social status which shifted with age from expecting high-status peers to expecting low-status peers to work harder, these expectations corresponded allocation decisions. These findings suggest children shift from perpetuating to rectifying inequity and changing stereotypes about people of different social status may serve an important function in the process.     

Young children's adaptive partner choice in cooperation and competition contexts

Choosing adequate partners is essential for cooperation, but how children calibrate their partner choice to specific social challenges is unknown. In two experiments, 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 189, 49% girls, mostly White, data collection: 03.2021–09.2022) were presented with partners in possession of different positive qualities. Children then recruited partners for hypothetical tasks that differed with respect to the quality necessary for success. Children and the selected partner either worked together toward a common goal or competed against each other. From age 5, children selectively chose individuals in possession of task-relevant qualities as cooperative partners while avoiding them as competitors. Younger children chose partners indiscriminately. Children thus learn to strategically adjust their partner choice depending on context-specific task demands and different social goals.     

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.     

Pretend play by African American children in head start

Play behaviors of African American 4-year-olds from impoverished families were observed naturalistically. Children's free play was videotaped in Head Start classrooms over several weeks in the playhouse, block corner, and outside play yard. Play was categorized into cognitive play types—functional, constructive, and pretend play. Children most frequently engaged in functional play. Contrary to Smilansky's findings, impoverished children also engaged in pretend play. This play type was high in quality (object use, number of participants, and subtypes of pretense exhibited) but low in quantity (number and duration of play episodes) compared to other types of play. These findings are discussed in the context of theories of pretend play.     

Children's hypothetical reasoning about complex and dynamic systems

Children's hypothetical reasoning about a complex and dynamic causal system was investigated. Predominantly White, middle-class 5- to 7-year-old children from the Greater Toronto Area learned about novel food chains and were asked to consider the effects of removing one species on the others. In Study 1 (N = 72; 36 females, 36 males; 2018), 7-year-olds answered questions about both direct and indirect effects with a high degree of accuracy, whereas 5-year-olds performed at chance. Six-year-olds showed intermediate performance. Using food chains with clearer constraints, Study 2 (N = 72; 35 females, 37 males; 2020–2021) replicated these findings. These results indicate that the ability to think about hypothetical changes to dynamic causal systems develops between 5 and 7 years. Implications for science education are discussed.     

Arithmetic learning difficulties in children

This study explored the arithmetic skills of 39 children with arithmetic learning difficulties (ALD), compared to two control groups, one consisting of normally achieving children matched to the ALD sample for chronological age (n=28), and another comprising younger normally achieving children matched to the ALD sample for arithmetic level (n=28). To determine the relative contribution of reading impairments to arithmetic performance, the ALD group was further classified according to the presence or absence of reading difficulties into a mixed ALD (n=24) and specific ALD (n=15) group, respectively. The ALD group performed well below their chronological age counterparts in terms of the developmental maturity of their arithmetic problem solving. These children demonstrated a reliance on slow, counting-based procedures to solve arithmetic problems and, in this regard, they performed similarly to their younger, arithmetic-matched normal peers. Children with ALD also employed direct fact retrieval reliably less often than their same-age peers, but did not differ from their younger, arithmetic-matched counterparts. There were few significant differences between ALD children with and without accompanying reading problems. The findings suggest that children with ALD appear to show delayed development of arithmetic skills rather than specific processing deficits or abnormalities when comparison is made with both their chronological age and arithmetic-matched normal peers.     

A Good Story: Children With Imaginary Companions Create Richer Narratives

In line with theories that children's pretend play reflects and extends their narrative skills, children with imaginary companions were predicted to have better narrative skills than children without imaginary companions. Forty-eight 5½-year-old children and their mothers participated in interviews about children's imaginary companions. Children also completed language and narrative assessments. Twenty-three of the children (48%) were deemed to have engaged in imaginary companion play. Children with and without imaginary companions were similar in their vocabulary skills, but children with imaginary companions told richer narratives about a storybook and a personal experience compared to children without imaginary companions. This finding supports theories of a connection between pretend play and storytelling by the end of early childhood.     

Preschool children’s use of meta-talk to make rational collaborative decisions

In collaborative decision-making, partners compare reasons behind conflicting proposals through meta-talk. We investigated UK-based preschoolers’ (mixed socioeconomic status) use of meta-talk (Data collection: 2018–2020). In Study 1, 5- and 7-year-old peer dyads (N = 128, 61 girls) heard conflicting claims about an animal from two informants. One prefaced her claim with “I know”; the other with “I think”. Dyads identified the more reliable informant through meta-talk (“She said she knows”). In Study 2, 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 64, 34 girls) searched for a toy with an adult partner making incorrect proposals. Children refuted this through reporting what they had witnessed (It cannot be there because “I saw it move”, “she moved it”). In preschool period, children start using meta-talk to make rational collaborative decisions.     

Children's concepts of gears and their promotion through play

The mechanical transmission of motion, which is observable in gears’ turning direction (TD) and turning speed (TS) can be understood as part of the core concept “force and motion”. Previous studies have suggested that most children before the age of nine have naïve concepts of gears’ TD and TS. However, these studies relied on children's explanation data and might have therefore underestimated young children's potential. Moreover, these studies did not examine whether preschoolers can overcome their naïve concepts through teaching. Recently, educators have proposed guided play as an educational approach that combines children's play with teacher guidance in a purposefully designed environment. We conducted two subsequent studies. In Study 1, we investigated the children's (naïve) concepts of gears’ TD and TS with a cross‐sectional approach using a nonverbal test procedure. This study comprised 248 children aged 5–10 years and 73 adults. The results showed that the proportion of children with adequate concepts increased with age. More specifically, 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds differed significantly from 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds, indicating a developmental shift around this age. However, naïve concepts of TS were more persistent with age than naïve concepts of TD. Altogether, the results indicated the potential to foster 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds’ concepts of both TD and TS in an intervention. Thus, in Study 2, we developed and tested a guided play intervention to foster 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children's concepts of TD and TS. We conducted a prepost‐intervention design with a guided play group (n = 19) and a free play group (n = 21). The results suggested stronger learning gains in the guided play group (d_TD = 0.337, d_TS = 0.758) than in the free play group (d_TD = 0.224, d_TS = 0.158).     

Children's Developing Descriptions and Judgments of Pretending

Two studies investigated 4- to 7-year-olds’ knowledge about pretending. In Study 1, children (N = 66) defined pretending and described examples of own and others’ pretending. In Study 2, children (N = 52) defined pretending and then completed a battery of measures that examined their understanding that pretending involved mental states. In Study 1, older children articulated more defining features of pretending than younger children. When describing how they or others pretended, children focused on action or appearance, regardless of whether they had included more defining features in their definitions of pretending. In Study 2, the more defining features children articulated, the better their performance on the battery. We discuss the implications of these data for the role of pretending in children's developing theory of mind.     

The development of audiovisual speech perception in Mandarin-speaking children: Evidence from the McGurk paradigm

The developmental trajectory of audiovisual speech perception in Mandarin-speaking children remains understudied. This cross-sectional study in Mandarin-speaking 3- to 4-year-old, 5- to 6-year-old, 7- to 8-year-old children, and adults from Xiamen, China (n = 87, 44 males) investigated this issue using the McGurk paradigm with three levels of auditory noise. For the identification of congruent stimuli, 3- to 4-year-olds underperformed older groups whose performances were comparable. For the perception of the incongruent stimuli, a developmental shift was observed as 3- to 4-year-olds made significantly more audio-dominant but fewer audiovisual-integrated responses to incongruent stimuli than older groups. With increasing auditory noise, the difference between children and adults widened in identifying congruent stimuli but narrowed in perceiving incongruent ones. The findings regarding noise effects agree with the statistically optimal hypothesis.     

Improving Social Competence Through Emotion Knowledge in 2-Year-Old Children: A Pilot Study

Research Findings: The goal of this study was to determine the efficacy of an educational intervention program to improve emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and social competence in 2-year-old Spanish children. This study makes two original contributions because there are no validated education programs for such young children and because it aims to show how an intervention focused on emotion-related aspects affects children’s social competence. The pilot study was conducted on 57 Spanish 2-year-olds divided into an experimental group (n = 38) and a control group (n = 19). The children were assessed for overall development, emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and social competence before and after the intervention. The program was carried out in the classroom in 30-min weekly sessions over a 6-month period. The findings showed significant progress in emotion knowledge and social competence as well as slight progress in emotion regulation. Practice or Policy: Our results show that emotions should be part of the curriculum starting in early childhood. On the one hand, 2-year-olds can benefit from planned interventions that improve social competence through emotion knowledge. On the other hand, 24 months is developmentally speaking the perfect age to start acquiring emotion knowledge through the simplest components.     

Do Children and Adults Take Social Relationship Into Account When Evaluating People’s Actions?

Two studies examined whether children (5- and 6-year-olds; 8- and 9-year-olds, n = 214) and adults (n = 72) consider social relationship when evaluating unhelpful or helpful actions. Participants learned about a person-in-need who was (or was not) helped by someone they knew (a friend) and someone they did not know (a stranger). Older children and adults judged an unhelpful friend as meaner than an unhelpful stranger, and judged a helpful stranger as nicer than a helpful friend. Younger children did not judge an unhelpful friend as any meaner than an unhelpful stranger, and they judged a helpful friend as nicer than a helpful stranger. These findings suggest that a mature appreciation of how social relationship matters for evaluation emerges relatively late in development.     

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.     

The Effects of Person Versus Performance Praise on Children’s Motivation: Gender and age as moderating factors

Two studies were conducted to determine how gender and age moderate the long‐term and post‐failure motivational consequences of person versus performance praise. In Study 1, fourth‐ and fifth‐grade students (n = 93) engaged in a puzzle task while receiving either no praise, person praise, product praise, or process praise. Following a subsequent failure experience, behavioural measures indicated that product and process praise enhanced motivation and person praise dampened motivation for girls, but that there were few effects of praise on subsequent motivation for boys. In Study 2, a parallel procedure with preschool children (n = 76) showed that person, product, and process praise all enhanced motivation, relative to neutral feedback, for both girls and boys.     

The Relation Between Toy Gun Play and Children's Aggressive Behavior

To assess the relation between toy gun play and aggression, thirty-six 3- to 5-year-olds were observed in free play in their daycare center and coded for amount of real aggression, pretend aggression, rough-and-tumble play (R & T), and nonaggressive pretend play. Based on a questionnaire completed by the parents, the children were also coded for the amount they played with toy guns in the home, the rated aggressive level of their preferred television programs, the rated aggressive level of their most preferred toys, and amount of parents' physical punishment of the children. Of all children, 56% played with toy guns in the home, most of whom were boys. Multiple regression analyses indicated that amount of parents' punishment strongly predicted real aggression in both boys and girls, and amount of toy gun play strongly predicted real aggression in boys. However, when it came to pretend aggression, aggressive level of children's preferred toys was the strongest predictor, while toy gun play negatively predicted pretend aggression. Toy gun play did not predict nonaggressive pretend play, but parents' punishment negatively predicted nonaggressive pretend play. These results indicate that toy gun play and parental punishment are positively associated with a higher level of real aggression but not pretend aggression. This pattern is discussed in terms of a cuing effect theory versus a cathartic effect theory. It also argues for distinguishing between real and pretend aggression and other forms of play in future studies.     

Children and adults' intuitions of what people can believe

Two preregistered studies tested how 5- to 6-year-olds, 7- to 8-year-olds, and adults judged the possibility of holding alternative beliefs (N = 240, 110 females, U.S. sample, mixed ethnicities, data collected from September 2020 through October 2021). In Study 1, children and adults thought people could not hold different beliefs when their initial beliefs were supported by evidence (but judged they could without this evidential constraint). In Study 2, children and adults thought people could not hold different beliefs when their initial beliefs were moral beliefs (but judged they could without this moral constraint). Young children viewed moral beliefs as more constrained than adults. These results suggest that young children already have sophisticated intuitions of the possibility of holding various beliefs and how certain beliefs are constrained.     

Five-year-old children value reasons in apologies for belief-based accidents

Accidents can be intent-based (unintended action-unintended outcome) or belief-based (intended action-unintended outcome). As compared to intent-based accidents, giving reasons is more crucial for belief-based accidents because the transgressor appears to have intentionally transgressed. In Study 1, UK-based preschoolers who were native English speakers (N = 96, 53 girls, collected 2020–2021) witnessed two intent-based or belief-based accidents; one transgressor apologized, the other apologized with a reason. Five-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, favored the reason-giving transgressor following a belief-based accident but not an intent-based accident (where an apology sufficed). In Study 2, 5-year-olds (N = 48, 25 girls, collected 2021) distinguished between “good” and “bad” reasons for the harm caused. Thus, 5-year-old children recognize when reasons should accompany apologies and account for the quality of these reasons.