Affect In Play Research Articles

Pretend play, divergent thinking, and math achievement in girls: A longitudinal study.

The present study examined longitudinal relationships among early pretend play, divergent thinking, and academic achievement in school-age girls. Theoretically, processes in pretend play should relate to divergent thinking and academic achievement. The aim of the present study was to establish longitudinal correlates of pretend play in school-age girls. It was hypothesized that early measures of pretend play would predict divergent thinking and academic achievement, controlling for verbal intelligence, at a 4-year follow-up. Thirty-one girls in the fourth through eighth grades participated in the study. Four years before the present study, these children received the Affect in Play Scale and a divergent thinking task. Children in the present study were administered a divergent thinking task (Alternate Uses Task). In addition, AIMSweb scores of academic achievement in reading and math were collected from school records. As hypothesized, early pretend play predicted later divergent thinking. Children whose pretend play was more imaginative and organized generated more alternate uses for common objects. Positive affect in play predicted originality of responses. In addition, both pretend play and divergent thinking predicted girls’ mathematics achievement longitudinally. Divergent thinking and play combined accounted for 31% of the variance in math achievement over time. All results remained significant when verbal intelligence was controlled. The present study provides important longitudinal evidence for the predictive power of pretend play in children’s development and adaptive functioning, particularly as it relates to divergent thinking and math achievement in girls.

Once More With Feeling

We are interested in how digital games can be designed for learning in the affective domain. Our studies of how emotions are embedded in games and how games sustain affective learning involve observing gameplay and identifying recurring elements that we identify as design patterns. Design patterns help us think about the role of affect in play, what affect in games looks like, and the different ways affective learning might be achieved in educational and serious games. In this article, we describe and discuss several patterns related to understanding emotions, affective representation, and socioemotional interactions, which are essential components of affective learning. These patterns provide a language to conceptualize how affective learning might be designed into future game projects. To conclude, we discuss the development of a taxonomy of affective patterns to sustain socioemotional learning. We thus hope to stimulate the development of more human-oriented educational games in this domain.

Pretend play processes and anxiety: Considerations for the play therapist.

This study investigated the effect of anxiety on play processes in 43 first-, second-, and third-grade children. Using a mood-induction procedure, this study compared processes in play among children randomized to an anxious or neutral mood-induction procedure. Children were assessed using the Affect in Play Scale pre- and post-moodinduction. In addition, this study examined relationships between pretend play processes and self-reported state and trait anxiety levels using the State Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. Findings demonstrated a significant negative relationship between baseline state anxiety level and organization of the play narrative. Consistent with previous research, children in both conditions significantly improved on multiple play scores over time. Although pretend play processes were not significantly affected by condition assignment, further analysis with a more sensitive measure of affect in play revealed a significant interaction between state anxiety and condition assignment on the amount of positive affect expressed in play. Results indicate that play processes can improve with time and greater state anxiety may impact organization and affective processes in play. Implications for play therapy are discussed in terms of the potential impact anxiety has on play processes.

Changes in Children's Pretend Play Over Two Decades

There is growing recognition that children have less time to engage in play, and, concurrently, recent evidence suggests a decrease in divergent thinking ability in young children. This study investigated changes in pretend play ability during a 23-year period. The same standardized measure of pretend play, the Affect in Play Scale (APS; Russ, 1993; 2004), was the measure of pretend play in all studies. This puppet play task is videotaped and scored from the tapes. Fourteen studies of children from 6 to 10 years of age in school-based samples from 1985–2008 were included in the analyses. A cross-temporal meta-analysis examined correlations between weighted mean scores and year of data collection. Main findings were that imagination in play and comfort with play significantly increased over time. There was no evidence of change in organization of the story or in overall expression of affect in play. When one outlier was removed, there was a significant decrease in negative affect expression in play. Even though children have less time to play, cognitive processes that occur in play are continuing to develop. Whether these pretend abilities are being transferred to creative production is a key question for future investigation.

Affect in Fantasy Play, Emotion in Memories, and Divergent Thinking

ABSTRACT: Theory and research support the involvement of emotion in the creative process. Access to emotion in cognition and memories should broaden the associative process, which is important in divergent thinking and creativity. This study tested the hypothesis that affect in fantasy play in children would be related to divergent thinking and to emotion in memories. Emotion in memories was also expected to relate to divergent thinking. Forty-six first- and second-grade children received a 5-min puppet play task (Affect in Play Scale), an alternate uses task, and an emotional memories questionnaire. Major findings were that affect in play was significantly and positively related to the number of uses generated and originality of the use. In particular, negative affect in play was significantly related to all criteria. In addition, affect in play was significantly related to amount of affect in memory descriptions. Expression of affect appears to be cross-situational. Although amount of affect in memories also related to divergent thinking, it did not function as a mediator between negative affect and divergent thinking. Implications for the importance of affect and negative affect in children's play and emotion in memories are discussed.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Divergent Thinking

This issue of the Creativity Research Journal (CRJ) focuses on divergent thinking. It complements several recent issues of CRJ, including the special issue that was devoted to E. Paul Torrance (Kaufman & Baer, 2006) and the issue that honored the 50th anniversary of J. P. Guilford’s (1950) seminal address to the American Psychological Association (Runco & Plucker, 2000–2001). Although there is a clear focus, this special issue also presents various perspectives on divergent thinking. This variation is entirely consistent with the mission of the CRJ. It is, after all, an interdisciplinary journal, and the topic is itself quite complicated. Creativity has been called a complex, a syndrome, and most recently, a symphony. The last of these may be entirely metaphorical, but it does capture the idea of a “magic synthesis” (Arieti, 1976) quite well. Creative things often do seem to exceed the sum of the individual contributions, and as is the case for a symphony, there is pleasing “blend of inputs.” Blend of inputs does not capture the magic of creativity, which is precisely the reason that symphony may be the best descriptor. Several of the articles in this issue examine divergent thinking tests and divergent thinking test scores. Kim, for example, investigates the factor structure of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). She confirmes the existence of two factors. Tacher and Readdick also use the TTCT, and demonstrate that certain indicators (including flexibility) are associated with certain signs of aggression. Two articles deal with domain-specific knowledge. Runco, Dow, and Smith, for instance, examine the possibility that divergent thinking is influenced by memory, information, and experience. Their results have clear implications for our understanding of domain specificity. Sak and Maker also find relations with domain knowledge, but report that years of schooling were also very critical. They explore educational and enhancement implications. Enhancement is the focus of the next three articles. In the first, Brophy examines divergent thinking in the context of the Creative Problem Solving model (CPS). Benedek, Fink, and Neubauer use a computer training enhancement technique to enhance ideation. In the third article, Garaigordobil shows that a 2-week program emphasizing play improved the TTCT verbal scores of children. Other articles in this issue have other foci but say something about divergent thinking. Russ and Schafer, for instance, examine affect in play and memory in young children. They report that negative affect in play is significantly related to all indexes of divergent thinking; affect in memory descriptions was as well. Zha, Walczyk, Griffith-Ross, Tobacyk, and Walczyk uncover differences between American and Chinese graduate students in terms of scores on a measure of divergent thinking. They also confirm that Americans tend toward greater individualism and that the Chinese lean toward collectivism. The last two of the final three articles help to put divergent thinking into the larger context. In first of these articles, Dailey and Mumford demonstrate that there are several sources of error when judging ideas. Some lead to overestimations and some to underestimations. Note here that the focus of their work is on ideas, not necessarily divergent thinking. This is the best way to view the research on divergent thinking: It contributes Creativity Research Journal 2006, Vol. 18, No. 3, 249–250 Copyright © 2006 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Insufficient responsiveness in ambivalent mother–infant relationships: Contextual and affective aspects

The present study focused on mother–infant relationships across different situations in order to compare the ways secure and ambivalent-resistant dyads modulate positive and negative emotionality. Sixty-one Israeli mothers and their 12-month-old non-risk infants participated in a sequence of free play, Ainsworth Strange Situation, and a task involving filling out questionnaires, one of which referred to anxiety in the dyad. A comparison between the mothers of secure ( n=49) and ambivalent ( n=12) infants indicated that the latter group displayed less positive affect in play, reported more separation anxiety, but, at the same time, did not respond in a sufficient way to their child’s bids for attention after experiencing a stressful separation. This pattern of results throws further light on the antecedents and correlates of ambivalent mother–child relationships.

Emotion in Children's Play and Creative Problem Solving

Theoretically, pretend play facilitates cognitive and affective processes important in creativity. Expression of affect states and affect-laden fantasy are affective processes common to both play and creativity. This study investigated the effect of instructing children to engage in happy or angry play on affect in play and on divergent thinking. Eighty 1st- and 2nd-grade children were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups. It was hypothesized that children in the happy and angry puppet play groups would have more affect in their play and that their mood would be congruent with the play instruction. It was also hypothesized that children in the happy and angry groups would have higher divergent thinking scores than children in the free-play and puzzle conditions. One major finding was that children in the angry play group had more expression of negative affect in their play and more self-reported negative mood than children in the other groups. There were no differences among the experimental groups in divergent thinking. However, self-reported mood during the play and puzzle tasks was significantly associated with originality of the divergent thinking responses. Children who experienced more affect as opposed to feeling neutral gave more original responses. The major conclusion of the study is that the play paradigm can be used to study affective processes in children.

The Role of Dyadic Affect in Play and Infant Sex in Predicting Infant Response to the Still-Face Situation

This study was designed to examine mothers' and 3-month-old infants' affect in play and infant sex as predictors of infants' response to the still-face situation. Infants who evidenced negative affect in play were likely to respond with negative displays during a subsequent still-face situation. Maternal positivity in play was positively correlated with infants' social gaze in the still-face situation. In addition, maternal positivity and infant sex significantly interacted in predicting infant affective response in the still-face situation. For girls, maternal positivity was associated with decreased expressivity. For boys, maternal positivity was associated with early positive bids, which were followed by negative bids and moderately negative affect. Finally, maternal positivity and its interaction with infant sex provide unique information beyond the carry-over effect from infant affect in play to infant response to the still-face. Results are discussed in terms of patterns of individual and joint regulation.

Affective Expression in Children's Fantasy Play, Primary Process Thinking on the Rorschach, and Divergent Thinking

The relationships among expression of primary process thinking on the Rorschach, affective expression in fantasy play, and divergent thinking were investigated in first and second grade children. Sixty children received the rorschach (Holt's scoring system), a play task (Affect in Play Scale), and the Alternate Uses Test. Major hypotheses were supported because the amount of primary process thinking on the Rorschach (frequency and percent) was significantly, positively related to amount of affective expression and primary process expression in play. Also, expression of affect in play (frequency, variety, integration, and comfort) was significantly, positively related to divergent thinking, independent of IQ for both boys and girls. On the Rorschach, percent of primary process was significantly related to divergent thinking for boys. The results suggest that the ability to think imaginatively in a free-association style and the ability to have access to affect-laden material are related processes.