This study examined the bidirectional relationship between children’s playfulness and creative potential and how these factors were longitudinally related to overexcitabilities. The participants were ...parents and teachers of 139 Hong Kong kindergarten children (52.1% boys, M age = 4.4 years, age range = 3.4–5.9 years). At Time 1, the parents reported their children’s overexcitabilities (imaginational, psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, and emotional), and the teachers rated children’s playfulness (physical spontaneity, social spontaneity, cognitive spontaneity, manifest joy, and sense of humor) and creative potential (creative personality traits). Six months later, at Time 2, the teachers’ ratings of playfulness and creative potential were obtained. The results from the cross-lagged model revealed that the path from playfulness at Time 1 to creative potential at Time 2 and the path from creative potential at Time 1 to playfulness at Time 2 were both significant when the children’s age, gender, and their parent’s education were controlled. The indirect relationship between intellectual overexcitability at Time 1 and creative potential at Time 2, mediating through playfulness at Time 1, was also significant. These findings suggest that children who are overexcitable about manipulating concepts and ideas tend to be more playful and exhibit higher creative potential. At the same time, their creative potential may drive them to act playfully and engage in future kindergarten play. Practically, the results highlight the utility of promoting children’s playfulness and creative potential through increased participation in kindergarten group play activities such as sociodramatic play. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Play therapy is widely used with children, including children who experienced sexual abuse. This longitudinal study examined whether more pretend play completion (PPC) at Time 1 predicted fewer child ...difficulties when this was assessed 3 years later at Time 2. Participants were 91 children (aged 3-8 at Time 1), including 51 children who experienced sexual abuse (child sexual abuse CSA). Play was coded with the Children's Play Therapy Instrument, and child psychological difficulties were assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist. More PPC at Time 1 predicted fewer child psychological difficulties 3 years later at Time 2. This was the case in children who had experienced CSA as well as the comparison group, showing that PPC is predicts better psychological adjustment in both abused and nonabused children. The study provides the first longitudinal evidence of the important role of pretend play narrative completion in predicting less internalizing and externalizing difficulties. The findings have important clinical implications for play therapists. It suggests that interventions that encourage children to elaborate and complete their play narratives could facilitate agency and psychological adjustment, as well as recovery after trauma. This is in line with the idea that through play children discover that they can "play with reality" and gain control over how they tell their stories.
Integrating Theory, Evidence and Action (ITEA) is a type of systematic review methodology, which was used to investigate the underlying agents of therapeutic change in one filial therapy approach, ...child-parent relationship therapy (CPRT). The therapeutic powers of play (TPoP) framework was applied to recent peer-reviewed journal articles to extract evidence that TPoP are activated in CPRT. Data were deconstructed to determine the prevalence of TPoP within each subsystem of therapy: the child, parent, therapist, their relationships, and family environment. Meta-analyses revealed that play therapy with full parental involvement (filial therapy) yielded greater effect size than partial or no parental involvement (Lin & Bratton, 2021). Greater understanding about the mechanism of therapeutic change in filial therapy may allow therapists to enhance the strengths of the intervention and understand modifications necessary to individualize treatments for specific presenting problems or populations. A diagram will be presented to conceptualize the sequences and subsystems in CPRT. This study highlights that filial therapy is a developmentally sensitive intervention which facilitates therapeutic change across the life span and throughout the family system. Filial therapy activates all TPoP except counterconditioning fears. The highest number of TPoP was evidenced within the parent-child relationship subsystem. Filial therapy facilitates change in social relationships in families through activating attachment, social competence, empathy, and therapeutic relationships. Explicit integration of TPoP through development of a TPoP goal-setting tool or providing specific feedback about observed activation of TPoP could potentially further strengthen the therapeutic effect of filial therapy. Further observational assessment is recommended to identify the prevalence of implicitly activated TPoP.
Objectives:
Racially ambiguous face categorization research is growing in prominence, and yet the majority of this work has focused on White and Western samples and has primarily used biracial ...Black/White stimuli. Past findings suggest that biracial Black/White faces are more often seen as Black than White, but without testing these perceptions with other groups, generalizability cannot be guaranteed.
Methods:
We tested 3-7-year-old Asian children living in Taiwan-an Eastern cultural context (N = 74)-and Asian children living in the U.S.-a Western cultural context (N = 65) to explore the role that cultural group membership may play in biracial perceptions. Children categorized 12 racially ambiguous biracial Black/White faces and 12 biracial Asian/White faces in a dichotomous forced-choice task and completed a racial constancy measurement.
Results:
Regarding biracial Black/White faces, Taiwanese and Asian American children both categorized the faces as White significantly more often compared to chance levels, regardless of racial constancy beliefs. For biracial Asian/White faces, Taiwanese children with racial constancy beliefs categorized the faces significantly more often as White, whereas Taiwanese children without racial constancy beliefs categorized the faces significantly more often as Asian. However, Asian American children did not show a bias in categorizing biracial Asian/White faces.
Conclusions:
Results suggest that hyperdescent over hypodescent for more commonly studied biracial Black/White faces generalizes in both cultural contexts. However, biracial Asian/White stimuli may be perceived in more fixed-like patterns in predominately Asian contexts, since only Taiwanese children showed increased outgroup categorizations once racial constancy beliefs were endorsed.
Public Significance Statement
Social categorization abilities develop early on in childhood, and yet there remains little research that tests these processes cross-culturally. This skill is essential for our social worlds since we constantly seek out perceptual cues to determine if someone is similar or dissimilar to us (our ingroup vs. our outgroup). However, racially ambiguous or racially-mixed faces complicate these perceptions. With the biracial and biethnic populations representing the fastest growing youth groups globally, it is critical for more cross-cultural research to document developmentally when and how we see ambiguous faces across different cultural contexts so we know what may be universal for our social perceptions.
Creativity is often considered to involve two processes: a generative process that includes forming multiple ideas and an evaluative process where one selects the highest-quality idea that was ...generated (Sowden et al., 2015). Models of creativity have not yet investigated these processes in early childhood. By examining behaviors that naturally involve generative processes (e.g., imaginative play) and evaluative processes (e.g., self-regulation), we may uncover how the development of these systems is involved in creative thought. The current study aimed to examine the interaction between imagination and self-regulation on creativity using a story-stem creativity task. It was predicted that children who had a preference for imaginative play and those who were high in self-regulation would produce the most creative ideas due to their experience engaging in both the generative and evaluative processes. Sixty-six preschool children and their teachers completed measures of creativity, self-regulation, and imagination. Results indicated that the interaction between imagination and self-regulation predicted creativity using a story-stem task. Our results suggest that skills that naturally involve the generative and evaluative processes may be beneficial for creativity in early childhood, providing children with skills that may scaffold their creativity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Children enter preschool with temperament traits that may shape or be shaped by their social interactions in the peer setting. We collected classroom observational measures of positive emotionality ...(PE), negative emotionality (NE), effortful control (EC), and peer social play relationships from 2 complete preschool classrooms (N = 53 children) over the course of an entire school year. Using longitudinal social network analysis, we found evidence that children's traits shaped the formation of play relationships, and that the traits of children's playmates shaped the subsequent development of children's own traits. Children who exhibited high levels of NE were less likely to form social play relationships over time. In addition, children were more likely to form play relationships with peers who were similar to their own levels of PE. Over the course of the school year, children's level of PE and EC changed such that they became more similar to their playmates in levels of these traits. Finally, we observed moderate to strong rank-order stability of behavioral observations of PE, NE, and EC across the school year. Our results provide evidence for the effects of traits on the formation of play relationships, as well as for the role of these play relationships in shaping trait expression over time.
To investigate children's inclusion of language-outgroup members, English-speaking children (8-9 years and 10-11 years of age, N = 57) made inclusion decisions while playing a simulated ball-tossing ...game, Cyberball, and while evaluating hypothetical scenarios involving language-outgroup members who wanted to play with their group. In the Cyberball game, the group norm was to exclude non-English-speaking peers, and participant tosses to a language-outgroup member (i.e., Spanish, Chinese, or Arabic speaking) were coded as a measure of behavioral inclusion. In the hypothetical scenarios, participants made prescriptive and descriptive judgments about their expectations regarding the inclusion of a language-outgroup member. They also evaluated their own and their group's inclusion likelihood. Results revealed that participants' evaluations of how acceptable exclusion was predicted their behavioral inclusion in the Cyberball game. Further, participants were more likely to think that the language-outgroup member should be included and less likely to think that the outgroup member would be included. They also differentiated between their own and their group's likelihood of including a language-outgroup member and reasoned about this decision by focusing on group functioning and language. In addition, there were age-related differences, with participants demonstrating greater inclusivity with age. The findings suggest the complexity of children's social cognition and the importance of providing them with a rich array of opportunities to play with language-outgroup members.
Internalizing and externalizing problems have been related to negative emotionality, and affect regulation deficits in several studies. Certain psychodynamic models of treatment use children's ...symbolic play activity as a medium to mentalize negative emotions in order to develop children's affect regulation. However, the complex associations among these constructs and their associations with outcome have not been examined. This study aimed to investigate, first, whether average mentalization practices in treatment, as well as session-to-session expression of negative emotions and symbolic play predict gains in affect regulation and, second, whether changes in these variables are associated with clinically significant change in symptoms and global function. The sample included 40 outpatient children, who underwent long-term psychodynamic treatment. Nine hundred seventy-five sessions were coded for children's symbolic play, affect expression (anger and dysphoric affect), and affect regulation characteristics, and each treatment was scored for average adherence to mentalizing principles. Time Series Panel Analyses (TSPA) indicated session-to session use of symbolic play predicted gains in affect regulation. A significant 2-way interaction indicated that dysphoric affect expression in high mentalization adherent treatments was associated with higher affect regulation than in low adherent treatments. Partial correlation analyses indicated that mentalization adherence in treatment was associated with symptomatic improvement at trend level of significance, and changes in affect regulation and symbolic play were significantly associated with gains in global function. Findings point to the importance of use of symbolic play, and dysphoric affect expression in the context of mentalization practices for gains in affect regulation and outcome.
Clinical Impact Statement
Although there is preliminary evidence about the effectiveness of psychodynamic therapy with internalizing and externalizing problems, the mechanisms of change are not clear. Question: This study investigated whether mentalization practices in treatment, as well as expression of negative emotions in symbolic play predict gains in affect regulation and symptomatic improvement with a group of internalizing and externalizing children. Findings: Dysphoric affect expression within the context of high mentalization adherence in treatment predicted gains in affect regulation. Moreover, mentalization adherence and improvements in affect regulation were associated with gains in functioning. Meaning: This study is the first to indicate that mentalization practices in treatment may provide a context for containing and processing dysphoric affect, such as sadness, anxiety, and fear expressed in symbolic play. Next Steps: Findings can be used to further investigate how mentalization of dysphoric affect in play improve affect regulation and functioning with internalizing and externalizing problems.
Pretend play is an important part of child development, associated with constructions of adaptive functioning such as creative thinking and positive affect. Research has demonstrated that ...interventions to improve play skills can be effective. In the current study, a 6-session, pretend play intervention was administered to 40 participants, ages 5 to 8 years old, enrolled in an elementary school for girls. The study adapted a manualized individual play intervention to be administered to groups. At baseline and outcome, pretend play skills were assessed using the Affect in Play Scale (Russ, 2004, 2014b), a 5-min pretend play task measuring the cognitive and affective processes of fantasy play. Creativity was assessed using the Alternate Uses Test (Wallach & Kogan, 1965), a measure of divergent thinking, and a storytelling task. State positive affect was measured using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children (Moore & Russ, 2008). Repeated-measures ANOVA analyses indicated significant improvement in play skills for the intervention group compared with controls. For the below-average players, improvements in divergent thinking were also observed at outcome compared with controls. Baseline correlations among pretend play, creativity, and positive affect are also presented, replicating past studies. Taken together, the findings suggest the benefits of pretend play in child development and demonstrate the feasibility of school-based interventions for improving play and creativity skills.
Currently, despite the rapid growth of the population of Chinese immigrant families and children in the United States, preschool-aged Chinese-heritage children are an underrepresented group in ...research. The overarching purpose of this project was to provide a deeper understanding of Head Start Chinese immigrant parents' beliefs about children's social-emotional development, the value of play during the preschool period, and the potential role of cultural orientation. The study followed the steps of a mixed methods explanatory sequential design. First, using quantitative data collected from 213 primary caregivers, the study employed a person-centered lens to explore profiles of parents' cultural orientations and beliefs about play and academics in preschool to better understand the association of these profiles to children's social competencies. Next, 34 primary caregivers from the quantitative study participated in in-depth, focus group discussions to further explore parents' perceptions of children's social behaviors, cultural adjustment experiences, and their perceptions about U.S. preschools. Four reliable profiles were resolved quantitatively and showed within-group variations in patterns of Chinese immigrant parents' beliefs and cultural orientations that related differentially to children's social-emotional competencies as evidenced within peer play at home. Qualitative findings corroborated and elaborated the quantitative findings. These results underscored the importance of engaging with Chinese immigrant parents to inform research and program practices.
PDF
