“You can't be grandma; You're a boy”: Events within the thematic fantasy play context that contribute to story comprehension

Abstract

The present study examined the relative contribution of play, metaplay, and productive language competence, within the thematic-fantasy play context, to comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar stories. One hundred twenty lower-middle-class kindergarten children with a mean age of 73.08 months were assigned to 30 play groups (2 boys and 2 girls in each). Each group heard, discussed, and reenacted three familiar fairy tales over a 3-day period with virtually no adult tuition. Videotapes were made during play sessions to measure amounts of play and metaplay. Immediately after the third reenactment, comprehension was measured using a retelling task, a picture sequence task, and a 10-item criterion-referenced test. On day 4, subjects were read an unfamiliar story and similarly tested. A task to measure productive language competence was also administered on day 4. Maintenance of comprehension was measured 1 week later with the same tests. Multiple regression analyses indicated that metaplay and productive language competence are independent constructs, and both contribute to comprehension while play does not. Additionally, only one component of metaplay—directing—contributed significantly to comprehension.