What Observation Studies Can Tell Us About Single Child Play Patterns, Gender, and Changes in Chinese Society

Abstract

Our study focused on Chinese children’s play patterns in two different Chinese capitals: Chengdu—the capital of Sichuan in southwest China and Hohhot—the capital of the autonomous Inner Mongolia region in northern China. Unlike child psychologists working in China, who prefer survey instruments organized around parent and teacher interviews, the authors relied primarily upon behavioral observations. Their study is based on naturalistic observations of children in different age cohorts interacting in a variety of social contexts. It draws on a social ecology approach to examine the role of social setting, social class, and regional variation on children’s interaction style. The authors wanted to link their findings to both Four Cultures and Six Cultures studies. To that end they adopted a behaviorist approach that used similar methodology to code children’s interactions. They sought to identify the frequency of particular types of children’s interactions that ranged from types of aggressive and dominance displays, cooperative and altruistic acts, to the frequency of acts of retaliation to aggressive act(s). In Chengdu they coded 342 acts; while 120 Hohhotian acts were coded for a total of 462 interaction episodes. Their study is designed to incorporate both analytical perspectives—observation and interviews—to provide a more nuanced commentary on the potential significance of Chinese children’s playful interactions.