A Developmental Comparison of the Out‐of‐school Recreation and Leisure Activity Participation of Boys and Girls With and Without Physical Disabilities

Similarities and differences were examined in the out‐of‐school recreation and leisure activity participation of 422 children with physical disabilities and 354 children without disabilities. The roles of age (six to eight years, nine to 11 years, and 12–14 years), gender, and disability status were examined with respect to the diversity, intensity, location, companionship, and enjoyment of participation in five types of activities, controlling for family income. The findings indicate that dimensions and types of activity participation are differentially influenced by age, gender, and disability. Age cohort comparisons indicated that children without disabilities experienced a widening social world characterised by more intense social participation, greater participation with non‐family members, and stable levels of enjoyment across the age groups. In contrast, children with disabilities in the various age groups were similar in their intensity of social participation and the nature of their companionship, with 12–14 year olds reporting less enjoyment of social activities than those aged six to eight years or nine to 11 years. The findings support the utility of a developmental and contextual perspective in understanding children’s patterns of participation. The information can be used by service providers and managers interested in creating centre‐based or community‐based recreational opportunities, and in providing information to parents about how to encourage children’s recreation and leisure participation.     

Evidence for social learning in wild lemurs (Lemur catta)

Interest in social learning has been fueled by claims of culture in wild animals. These remain controversial because alternative explanations to social learning, such as asocial learning or ecological differences, remain difficult to refute. Compared with laboratory-based research, the study of social learning in natural contexts is in its infancy. Here, for the first time, we apply two new statistical methods, option-bias analysis and network-based diffusion analysis, to data from the wild, complemented by standard inferential statistics. Contrary to common thought regarding the cognitive abilities of prosimian primates, our evidence is consistent with social learning within subgroups in the ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta), supporting the theory of directed social learning (Coussi-Korbel & Fragaszy, 1995). We also caution that, as the toolbox for capturing social learning in natural contexts grows, care is required in ensuring that the methods employed are appropriate-in particular, regarding social dynamics among study subjects. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://lb.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.