How Do You Play? A Comparison among Children Aged 4-10.

Elisa Delvecchio,Chiara Pazzagli,Adriana Lis,Jian-Bin Li,Claudia Mazzeschi

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01833

Elisa Delvecchio, Chiara Pazzagli + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01833

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Abstract

Pretend play has a central role for children's development and psychological well-being. However, there is a paucity of standardized and valid measures specifically devoted to assess the core domains involved in play activities in preschool and primary school children. The Affect in Play Scale-Preschool (4–5 years) and the Affect in Play Scale-Preschool Extended Version (6–10 years) are semi-structured parallel tools designed to explore child's cognitive and affective processes using a standardized play task. The current study administered this 5-min play task to 538 Italian children aged 4–10. The purposes were to compare play abilities in boys vs. girls and in preschool vs. primary school children, to correlate pretend play with divergent thinking and to evaluate the structural validity of the measure along the considered age span. No differences, excepting for Organization, were found between boys and girls, whereas school age children reported higher play abilities then the younger ones. External validity was assessed using correlational analysis with the divergent thinking task (the Alternate Uses Test) for preschoolers and primary school-aged children, in line with findings from Manova. Construct validity, assessed through the Confirmatory Factor Analysis, showed good fits for the two-factor model with cognitive and affective factor for both the Affect in Play Scale-Preschool and its Extended Version. A multi-group factor analysis suggested a partial invariance of the two-factor model across preschool (4–5 years old) and primary school-aged (6–10 years old) children. Results supported the use of the Affect in Play Scale-Preschool and its Extended Version as adequate measures to assess the interplay of cognitive and affective skills in preschool and school age children. The discussion highlights clinical and research implications linked to the possibility to have a unique play task able to assess child's affective and cognitive abilities throughout a quite wide life span (from 4 to 10 years old).

Highlights

Pretend play represents symbolic behavior in which “one thing is playfully treated as if it were something else” (Fein, 1987)
The aim of this paper is to investigate the use of this “common” tool in a sample of preschool and primary school children
This paper investigated reliability and validity of the Affect in Play Scale (APS)-P and APS-P Extended Version with Italian children aged 4–10

Summary

Introduction

Pretend play represents symbolic behavior in which “one thing is playfully treated as if it were something else” (Fein, 1987). Pretend play is characterized by children’s exploration and interpretation of the world in terms of symbols and images, fantasy, make-believes, expression of emotions, and their capacity to understand different situations in an imaginary context (Russ, 2004). Pretend play allows the child to comprehend and discover his world, talk about emotions, and integrate internal states and external actions (Stagnitti et al, 2007). Pretend Play in Italian Children have the opportunity to act out social situations that facilitate their understanding of the world in which they live (BundyMyrow, 2005; Ferland, 2005; Moore and Russ, 2006). Pretend play represents the integration of cognitive and affective processes. Affective processes include expression of emotions and affect themes in the play story

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