Peer Interactions in Preschool Inclusive Classrooms: The Roles of Pragmatic Language and Self-Regulation

Abstract

Drawing from a social network perspective, we examined the extent to which children with and without disabilities play with each other in preschool inclusive classrooms and identified malleable child characteristics that would support children forming these cross-status play interactions. A total of 200 children with disabilities and 301 children without disabilities participated in this study ( Mage = 52.39 months, SDage = 6.13). Results showed that children with and without disabilities did not differ in the extent to which they formed cross-status play interactions after pragmatic language and self-regulation were taken into account. However, typically developing children were more likely to form same-status play interactions than children with disabilities. Children’s cross-status play interactions were predicted by self-regulation ability, which was fully mediated by their pragmatic language. The impact of pragmatic language on the formation of cross-status play interaction was greater for children with disabilities than their typically developing peers.