Humans constantly have to coordinate their decisions with others even when their interests are conflicting (e.g., when 2 drivers have to decide who yields at an intersection). So far, however, little ...is known about the development of these abilities. Here, we present dyads of 5-year-olds (N = 40) with a repeated chicken game using a novel methodology: Two children each steered an automated toy train carrying a reward. The trains simultaneously moved toward each other so that in order to avoid a crash-which left both children empty-handed-1 train had to swerve. By swerving, however, the trains lost a portion of the rewards so that it was in each child's interest to go straight. Children coordinated their decisions successfully over multiple rounds, and they mostly did so by taking turns at swerving. In dyads in which turn-taking was rare, dominant children obtained significantly higher payoffs than their partners. Moreover, the coordination process was more efficient in turn-taking dyads as indicated by a significant reduction in conflicts and verbal protest. These findings indicate that already by the late preschool years children can independently coordinate decisions with peers in recurrent conflicts of interest.
Play therapy has emerged as a culturally and developmentally appropriate intervention for addressing the mental health needs of children in a variety of settings, including schools. The inclusion of ...a diverse array of toys by play therapists can allow children to explore issues, process emotions, and develop solutions through their language of play. In particular, some students require safe and open spaces to address experiences with violence or trauma through aggressive play or toys, including weapons. For school-based play therapists, the inclusion of aggressive toys can be difficult due to controversy surrounding the impact of aggressive toys in play along with school-based policies maintaining zero-tolerance. The research team explored the experiences and perceptions of 15 school-based play therapists regarding the use of aggressive toys. Four overarching themes emerged from the data: Aggressive toys in practice, therapeutic factors of aggressive toys, conceptions of aggression and play therapy, and environmental considerations. We discuss the implications for school-based play therapy practice, training, and supervision along with recommendations for future research.
This conceptual article offers an analysis of how children's play with digital media, including apps and touchscreen devices, may influence their learning and development of spatial skills. Many of ...children's formative spatial experiences occur during their play, and a well-established body of research demonstrates the benefits of video and computer games for older children's and adults' spatial skills. Building on this prior work, the current article suggests that app play could benefit young children's spatial skills as well. Our analysis focuses on the unique digital features of children's apps. Children's interactions with these features can reveal spatial information that would be difficult or impossible for children to see during their experiences in the real world. Consequently, app play could expand the types of spatial information children can view. We suggest based on research from developmental psychology that viewing novel spatial information could have benefits for children's spatial skill development. We provide examples of these digital features in publicly available, popular children's apps. Finally, we discuss how this research can be used to raise awareness among parents and educators of the spatial learning opportunities in children's app play.
What is the significance of this article for the general public?This article addresses a potential benefit of touchscreen play for providing children with spatial learning opportunities. We present research and provide examples of how spatial skill development may occur through children's play with publicly available apps that can be downloaded by parents and educators. Since spatial skills are learned through play and support children's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning, it is imperative that children have access to spatial learning opportunities. We make the case that touchscreen play may offer those.
This study explores the longitudinal effect of princess body size of children’s favorite Disney princesses on young children’s body esteem and gendered play over a 1-year period using a sample of 320 ...children, age 3½ at Time 1 and age 4½ at Time 2. Girls whose favorite princess had an average body size engaged in more masculine-type play a year later, but there were no associations between princesses’ body size and developmental outcomes for boys. Children whose favorite princess had an average body size showed a positive relationship between playing pretend princess and body esteem, masculine-type play, and feminine-type play. Children whose favorite princess was thin did not show a relationship between playing pretend princess and body esteem, masculine-type play, or feminine-type play. Our findings suggest that princesses with average body sizes create a protective context for children’s body esteem and may encourage both masculine- and feminine-type play by modeling both masculine and feminine activities and behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Objective:
Early childhood is an important developmental period to focus on the outcomes associated with ethnic-racial identity (ERI) given that children notice racial differences, are processing ...information about ethnicity and race, and have race-related experiences. The present study tested whether three components of ERI (i.e., positive attitudes, negative attitudes, and centrality) predicted children's social functioning (i.e., interactive, disruptive, and disconnected play with peers; externalizing behaviors; and observed frustration and cooperation with an adult). Child sex was also tested as a moderator.
Method:
The present study included 182 5-year-old Mexican-origin children (57% male) of mothers who entered parenthood during adolescence (M = 21.95, SD = 1.00).
Results:
Children's positive ethnic-racial attitudes were associated with greater social functioning (i.e., greater interactive play and less externalizing behaviors) among boys and girls, and less frustration among boys. Negative ethnic-racial attitudes predicted maladaptive social functioning (i.e., greater disruptive play) among boys and girls and more disconnected play among girls. Contrary to expectations, ethnic-racial centrality predicted boys' and girls' maladaptive social functioning (i.e., greater disruptive and disconnected play).
Conclusions:
Findings highlight the importance of fostering children's positive ethnic-racial attitudes and helping them discuss and cope with negative ethnic-racial attitudes to promote more adaptive social functioning.
Public Significance Statement
It has been suggested that children develop an ethnic-racial identity in childhood that impacts their social functioning. This idea was supported by the results of this study, which showed that young children's positive attitudes about their ethnicity/race tended to be linked with more positive social development.
Little is known about the role children's processing of emotions plays in altering children's vulnerability to interparental conflict. To address this gap, the present study examined whether the ...mediational cascade involving children's exposure to interparental conflict, their insecure responses to interparental conflict, and their psychological problems varied as a function of children's preexisting biases to attend to angry, fearful, sad, and happy expressions. Participants included 243 children (M age = 4.60 years) and their parents assessed at 3 annual measurement occasions. Moderated-mediation analyses within a cross-lagged autoregressive design indicated that the indirect paths among interparental conflict, emotional insecurity, and psychological problems were significant for children who exhibited greater attentional biases toward angry and fearful emotions. Greater attention to anger and fear specifically moderated the first link in the mediational path. Interparental conflict was a significantly stronger predictor of emotional insecurity for children who attended to angry and fearful cues longer. Consistent with environmental sensitivity theories, children with attentional biases to angry and fearful emotions exhibited disproportionately higher levels of emotional insecurity following exposure to heightened interparental conflict but also lower levels of emotional insecurity after experiencing minimal interparental conflict.
This study evaluated the effectiveness of two play-based programs in residential settings, a mixed-method study using randomized controlled trial, with the aims to enhance adult-child interaction and ...to reduce children's behavior problems. A total of 24 children (aged between 6 and 10), together with their main carers, were randomly assigned to one of the play therapy programs (attachment-based play or board games). The participants were arranged into groups of four to attend an eight-session program in either condition. Results showed that both programs were effective, and the attachment-based play program was shown to significantly reduce children's emotional problems. Carers' levels of sensitivity toward the children (on physical touch and intimacy) were indicated in the qualitative responses by the carers. Those carers in the board game group showed more understanding of the children and were able to observe them from a different perspective. The limitations and implications of this study are presented.
When adults make a joint commitment to act together, they feel an obligation to their partner. In 2 studies, the authors investigated whether young children also understand joint commitments to act ...together. In the first study, when an adult orchestrated with the child a joint commitment to play a game together and then broke off from their joint activity, 3-year-olds (
n
= 24) reacted to the break significantly more often (e.g., by trying to re-engage her or waiting for her to restart playing) than when she simply joined the child's individual activity unbidden. Two-year-olds (
n
= 24) did not differentiate between these 2 situations. In the second study, 3- and 4-year-old children (
n
= 30 at each age) were enticed away from their activity with an adult. Children acknowledged their leaving (e.g., by looking to the adult or handing her the object they had been playing with) significantly more often when they had made a joint commitment to act together than when they had not. By 3 years of age, children thus recognize both when an adult is committed and when they themselves are committed to a joint activity.
Video Game Play Jadallah, May; Green, C. Shawn; Zhang, Jie
Journal of media psychology,
07/2023, Letnik:
35, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This exploratory study examined the video gaming
experience of 160 urban public-school preteen-age students as well as the
association between video game play and students' performance on a
...standardized cognitive ability test (CogAT), which includes verbal,
quantitative, and nonverbal/spatial batteries. Overall, neither duration of play
nor video game genres played had significant correlations with the CogAT
measures. Similarly, when using an "extreme-groups" approach to
examine relations with playing a subset of games previously linked with certain
enhancements in cognitive skill (i.e., action video games), no significant
effects were observed. These results are thus inconsistent with theories that
predict diminished cognitive performance in children who play a great deal of
video games, but they are also inconsistent with previous work suggesting
possible enhancements in those who play certain types of games. The potential
contribution of this null finding and an alternative explanation are
discussed.
Reports an error in "The interaction of child–father attachment and child–mother attachment in the prediction of observed coparenting" by Jean-François Bureau, Audrey-Ann Deneault, Kim Yurkowski, ...Jodi Martin, Jeffry Quan, Sage Sezlik and Camille Guérin-Marion ( Psychology of Men & Masculinities, Advanced Online Publication, Jul 30, 2020, np). In the article “The Interaction of Child–Father Attachment and Child–Mother Attachment in the Prediction of Observed Coparenting” by Jean-François Bureau, Audrey-Ann Deneault, Kim Yurkowski, Jodi Martin, Jeffry Quan, Sage Sezlik, and Camille Guérin-Marion ( Psychology of Men & Masculinities, Advance online publication. July 30, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/men0000309), the visual representation of interaction effects was erroneously the same in both Figure 2 and Figure 3. Figure 3 depicted the right values of simple slopes, but the wrong visual representation of them. All versions of this article have been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2020-55281-001.) A number of studies have examined the role of coparenting relationships on the development of children’s attachment to their mothers and fathers. However, previous research tends to interpret this link as unidirectional, thereby ignoring the possibility that, in reverse, child–parent attachment relationships could also predict the quality of the coparenting relationship. Furthermore, there is limited work examining how the child–father and the child–mother attachment relationships may interact to predict coparenting. In response to these limitations, the current study drew from an integrative family systems framework and observational measures to examine these possible relations in biparental heterosexual families. To assess child–parent attachment security, 144 preschool-aged children (83 girls; M = 46.89 months, SD = 8.77) completed independent separation–reunion procedures with their mother and father during counterbalanced laboratory visits. During a subsequent home visit, parents engaged in triadic play with their child, from which coparenting cooperation and competition were evaluated. Results showed that child–mother and child–father attachment security were not independent predictors of coparenting; rather, their interaction significantly predicted the quality of the coparenting relationship. In line with theoretical models calling for a family systems approach, study findings highlight the importance of considering the interactive effects of child–father and child–mother attachment relationships when examining family dynamics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
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