Play Interactions Research Articles

Following children with severe or profound intellectual and multiple disabilities and their mothers through a communication intervention: single-case mixed-methods findings

There is limited research targeting communication interventions for children with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. This study addressed outcomes from a communication course for parents of children with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities and follows up on a previous publication by Rensfeldt Flink et al. (2020). Potential observable changes in the children’s and parents’ communicative behavior were studied as well as the parents’ experiences of the intervention process and the effect of the course on parent–child communication. A mixed-methods design with a case-study framework was used. Two mother–child dyads participated. Data were collected before, during, and after the course. Video-recorded repeated play interactions by the dyads were coded and analyzed for the mothers’ responsivity and use of augmentative and alternative communication and the children’s interactive engagement. Longitudinal interview data from the mothers were analyzed thematically. No clear signs of behavioral change were observed in the coded video data. However, thematic analyses showed that the mothers experienced changes to communicative behaviors. Moreover, the course affected both mothers’ reasoning about communication with their child and their child’s communicative needs. The mothers’ narratives contributed insights into how reflective processes might guide action in parent-mediated communication interventions. The implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.

The face never lies: facial expressions and mimicry modulate playful interactions in wild geladas

Play fighting, the most common form of social play in mammals, is a fertile field to investigate the use of visual signals in animals’ communication systems. Visual signals can be exclusively emitted during play (e.g. play faces, PF, context-dependent signals), or they can be released under several behavioural domains (e.g. lip-smacking, LS, context-independent signals). Rapid facial mimicry (RFM) is the involuntary rapid facial congruent response produced after perceiving others’ facial expressions. RFM leads to behavioural and emotional synchronisation that often translates into the most balanced and longest playful interactions. Here, we investigate the role of playful communicative signals in geladas (Theropithecus gelada). We analysed the role of PF and LS produced by wild immature geladas during play fighting. We found that PFs, but not LS, were particularly frequent during the riskiest interactions such as those including individuals from different groups. Furthermore, we found that RFM (PF→PF) was highest when playful offensive patterns were not biased towards one of the players and when the session was punctuated by LS. Under this perspective, the presence of context-independent signals such as LS may be useful in creating an affiliative mood that enhances communication and facilitates most cooperative interactions. Indeed, we found that sessions punctuated by the highest frequency of RFM and LS were also the longest ones. Whether the complementary use of PF and LS is strategically guided by the audience or is the result of the emotional arousal experienced by players remains to be investigated.Significance StatementFacial expressions and their rapid replication by an observer are fundamental communicative tools during social contacts in human and non-human animals. Play fighting is one of the most complex forms of social interactions that can easily lead to misunderstanding if not modulated through an accurate use of social signals. Wild immature geladas are able to manage their play sessions thus limiting the risk of aggressive escalation. While playing with unfamiliar subjects belonging to other groups, they make use of a high number of play faces. Moreover, geladas frequently replicate others’ play faces and emit facial expressions of positive intent (i.e. lip-smacking) when engaging in well-balanced long play sessions. In this perspective, this “playful facial chattering” creates an affiliative mood that enhances communication and facilitates most cooperative interactions.

INTERSUBJETIVIDADE E INTERLUDICIDADE NA CRECHE: BRINCAR E CONSTITUIÇÃO PSÍQUICA DO BEBÊ

ABSTRACT The article addresses intersubjectivity, highlighting one of its indicators, interplay, in order to reflect about the importance of playful constructions between adults and small children in psychic development. The skit chosen for analysis was extracted from diaries constructed from observations-interventions in a nursery class, in order to investigate the potency of playful interaction in the pair: adult and baby. The permanence of babies in nursery school makes professionals monitor many acquisitions in the baby’s development. In this way, the results indicate that the presence of the adult in the play scene allows new experiments for the baby, which can be a support in their psychic development.

Autistic preschoolers' engagement and language use in gross motor versus symbolic play settings.

Background and aims: Although adjustment of the environment is recommended as a support strategy in evidence-based interventions for children with autism, the impact of doing so (and the how and why) is not well understood. One essential environmental factor to consider when providing supports for preschool-aged autistic children is the play setting, specifically, the materials available in the child's play context. The aim of this study was to compare engagement states and number of utterances produced by preschool-aged autistic children within symbolic vs. gross motor play settings. Examining the relationship between gross motor play settings and children's social engagement and spoken language use is particularly important to explore for autistic children given differences in their sensory processing, motor skill development, and choice of and interaction with toys relative to neurotypical peers. Methods: Seventy autistic children aged 25-57 months were videotaped during natural play interactions with a parent. Children's social engagement and number of spoken utterances were examined in five minutes each of play with symbolic toys and play with gross motor toys. Continuous time-tagged video coding of the child-caregiver engagement states was conducted, and the child's frequency of spoken language was identified using language sample analysis. The specific variables examined were; (a) engagement with caregiver, (b) engagement with objects only, (c) unengaged (no evident engagement with objects or people), and (d) total number of spoken utterances. The relationship between play setting (symbolic vs gross motor) and child language and engagement state variables was examined with linear mixed effects modelling. Results: Significant main effects were revealed for the interaction between play setting and autistic children's engagement. Young autistic children were more likely to engage with caregivers in play environments with gross motor toys (moderate effect) and also were more likely to have periods of unengaged time (not overtly directing their attention to objects or people; small effect) in this setting. Further, when in a setting with symbolic toys, autistic children were more likely to spend their time focusing attention solely on objects (large effect). No interaction was found between play setting and total number of utterances spoken by autistic children. Conclusions and implications: This study confirmed the importance of continued research focused on understanding the relationship between children's play settings and their social engagement and language use. Although preliminary, findings support the idea that there is an interaction between preschool-aged autistic children's social engagement and their play settings. Further, our results suggest that there can be value in clinicians differentiating children's play settings (i.e., gross motor vs symbolic) when assessing and supporting social engagement capacities of young autistic children.

Playful interactions and facial mimicry in infant bonobos (Pan paniscus)

The capacity to promptly and congruently respond to others’ facial signals has at its basis a mirror neuron mechanism. In Rapid (< 1 sec, RFM) and Delayed (1–5 sec, DFM) Facial Mimicry the expression emitted by an individual (trigger) is perceived and replicated by an observer. The occurrence of mimicry phenomena has been demonstrated almost exclusively in the play domain. Here, we aim at evaluating the presence of RFM/DFM during playful interactions between infant bonobos (Pan paniscus), one of the most playful primate species. We video-recorded 435 play sessions between five infants (< 48 months of age) belonging to the bonobo colony hosted at the Wilhelma Zoo (Germany). Via a frame-by-frame video-analysis, we demonstrated the presence of both RFM and DFM. These two phenomena were enhanced by face-to-face interactions between playmates. Hence, the access to others’ faces allows the player to perceive, decode and replicate signals, thus promoting a mutual intersubjective engagement with the partner. The occurrence of DFM suggests that in bonobos, as in chimpanzees, such mirror event is present just starting from infancy. The less automaticity characterizing DFM compared to RFM could be due to the involvement of more complex and time-demanding cognitive processes. Neither RFM nor DFM increased the duration of play sessions. Probably, the mimicry phenomena in infant bonobos are not recruited for manipulating the sessions, which are highly balanced and fair, but possibly for sharing the playful mood between interacting subjects thus increasing their level of familiarity and affiliation.

Preschool children’s social and playful interactions with a play-facilitating cardboard robot

Robots are increasingly finding roles in contexts involving children, including companions in therapy and education. Children’s perceptions of and interactions with robots is a well-researched topic, but more focus is needed on the important role of play in Child–Robot Interaction. Play is essential to how children experience the world and thereby presents both opportunities and challenges for designers who aim to create positive experiences for children involving robots. We present a study investigating how a simple play-facilitating cardboard robot becomes a social interface and create meaningful and playful experiences for preschool children. We observed 214 children engaged in free play with the robot. The analysis produced four social interaction themes and five play patterns, illustrating the most salient reactions. The results show that the robot was successful in enabling play and that the children indeed treated the robot both as a social agent, but also as a material object. In line with existing research, our observations suggest that the children attributed both animate and inanimate properties to the robot, possibly explaining the duality of the observed playground behavior. We use these findings to provide four implications for the design of play-facilitating robots.

Evidence of auger heating in hot carrier cooling of CsPbBr3 nanocrystals

Hot Carrier (HC) Dynamics in Lead halide perovskites shows a unique hindered hot carrier cooling. In the present study, we use femtosecond transient absorption technique to interrogate CsPbBr3 to study the role of different carrier cooling mechanisms in HC cooling process. This is accomplished here by considering fitting of the high-energy region of photoinduced bleach with a Fermi-Dirac distribution instead of Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution. This approach reveals important time dependent parameters like quasi fermi level, apart from carrier temperature. Under low carrier densities with N < <1, the dynamics revealed bleach recovery in time scales > 1 ns revealing dynamics is governed by electron-hole radiative recombination. The HC cooling dynamics under low carrier density (2 *1017/cm3) revealed the cooling is predominantly dominated by short lifetime component of ~0.26 ps. This time is significantly elongated as compared to lifetime of longitudinal optic (LO) phonon lifetime in perovskites, clearly indicative of Froehlich interaction in play along with large polaron formation. However, under higher carrier densities > 1018/cm3, additional lifetime component contributes to HC cooling with a time constant of ~17 ps. This time constant could be assigned to Auger heating. The role of LO phonon filling and Auger heating was ascertained also on the basis energy loss rate vs carrier temperature fitting with these individual cooling models. To ascertain the role of Auger heating we also used different sized samples which showed the scaling of Auger heating times in agreement with size dependent Auger recombination times as reported in the literature. Such long HC cooling opens avenues to possibly extract hot carriers before cooling leading to development of HC photovoltaics.

Playing together, laughing together: rapid facial mimicry and social sensitivity in lowland gorillas.

In nonhuman animals, the phenomenon of rapid facial mimicry (RFM)-the automatic, involuntary, and rapid (<1 s) replication of others' facial expressions-has been mainly investigated in the playful domain. In immature lowland gorillas Gorilla gorilla gorilla both play face (PF) and full PF (FPF) are rapidly mimicked between the players. This makes the species suitable to test hypotheses on the factors influencing RFM during play. The observations on 3 captive groups of lowland gorillas (N = 27) revealed that contrary to expectations, the closeness of social bond negatively influenced the occurrence of RFM but it did not affect either RFM latency or its overlapping index (OVERLAP). RFM was affected by the degree of symmetry of play fighting: the more balanced the session, the higher the occurrence of RFM. Players of the same sex class responded faster than players of different sex. These findings suggest that RFM may help synchronizing behaviors of playmates matching in size (same-sex) and promote symmetric playful interactions. "Laughing together" (measured by the RFM OVERLAP) lasted longer when the responder perfectly mirrored the partner expression (PF→PF; FPF→FPF). If PF and FPF convey information on the different play roughness degree, through "laughing together" the players could coordinate their actions and share positive moods and playful intensity. If the perfect congruency in the motor resonance, also known as social sensitivity, can foster a possible emotional dialogue between gorillas remains to be investigated.

Infant educators’ use of mental-state talk in Australia and China: a cross-cultural comparative study

ABSTRACT This study compares the mental-state talk of infant educators in Australia and China in order to determine the nuanced differences in the ways that they use this talk with the infants in their room. Participants are 44 native English-speaking Australian educators from centres in Sydney, Australia and 30 native Chinese-speaking infant educators recruited from centres in and around Hangzhou, China. Twenty-minute samples of each educators’ naturally occurring play interactions with infants during play were coded to determine the frequency of their desire, emotion, perception, cognition and modulation of assertion talk. Each mental-state term was also coded according to the referent of that mental-state. We examined the extent to which Australian and Chinese educators’ use mental-state talk and how the referents of such talk differed by mental-state talk type and culture. Australian educators used significantly more mental-state talk than their Chinese counterparts. Different patterns of referent use across cultural cohorts and mental-state talk types were identified. Findings have implications for the socialisation of very young children into culturally specific ways of talking and thinking about the mind.

Mediating Effect of Fathers’ Parenting Behavior on the Relationship Between Young Children’s Temperament and Peer Play Behavior

Objectives: Understanding peer play behaviors in young children is crucial because children's personal characteristics influence their peer play behaviors. In this study, we investigated the relationship between children’s temperament (4 years old), fathers’ parenting behavior (5 years old), and peer play behavior (6 years old) using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Korean Children (PSKC). In addition, the mediating effect of fathers’ parenting behavior on the relationship between children’s temperament and peer play behavior was investigated.Methods: A total of 1,070 children and their fathers were extracted for analysis from the Korean Children's Panel Study (PSKC) 2012 (Year 5) to 2014 (Year 7). The correlations between the relevant variables and the mediating effects of fathers’ parenting behavior were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and AMOS 25.0.Results: Correlation analysis showed that children’s emotionality and sociability were associated with fathers’ parenting behavior, whereas their sociality and activity were associated with their play disturbance. Next, there was no mediating effect of fathers’ warmth on the relationship between children’s temperament and children’s peer play interactions. The full mediating effects of the fathers’ control on the relationship between the child’s temperament (emotionality and sociability) and peer play behaviors such as disruption and disconnection were confirmed. Children’s activity had a direct effect on their peer play interaction and disruption.Conclusion: Peer play behavior revealed the importance of fathers’ controlling parenting behaviors and children’s temperament, especially in peer play disruption and disconnection. In particular, we confirmed the influence of father’s controlling parenting behavior on children’s sociability and emotionality temperament.

The mediating role of parental playfulness on parent–child relationship and competence among parents of children with ASD

PurposeThe difficulties of a child diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can lead to behaviours that are quite challenging for parents to understand and address. Most of the parental studies of ASD focus on the challenges faced by the parents. This study aims to adopt a strength-based model that investigates the mediating role of parental playfulness in the association between parent–child relationship and parental competence.Design/methodology/approachThis study is a quantitative study that adopts a correlational research design. The mediation analysis explores the role of parental playfulness as a mediator in the association between parent–child relationship and parental competence. The sample consisted of 120 parents of children diagnosed with ASD from India, selected using a purposive sampling technique.FindingsThe mediation analysis results indicate that playfulness among parents of children with ASD was found to function as a partial mediator in the relationship between parent–child relationship and parental competence. This could suggest that more playful parents have better parent–child relationships and are competent in parenting.Research limitations/implicationsThese findings have importance in understanding the role of playful interaction on parent–child relationships and parenting competence, having implications for further research. Enabling playfulness in parenting will enhance children and parents to promote their relationship and thus feel competent to bring positive light in their lives.Practical implicationsMost often, the clinicians are concerned with addressing only the autistic symptoms; it is also essential to look into parental well-being. Practical playful interaction training should help parents establish a rapport, understand, adjust and adapt with their child.Social implicationsPractical intervention and training plans can be suggested to all family members to improve the condition of the child and the family’s general well-being. As the study focused on the clinical population, the findings could provide useful inputs for mental health professionals and counsellors.Originality/valueThere are some theoretical and empirical evidence that support positive outcomes of playfulness on personal well-being (Atzaba Poria, in press; Yue et al., 2016; Proyer, 2014). Although there has been some interest in the impact of children’s playfulness on their development (Bundy, 1997), little is known about the influence of parental playfulness on parents and children. Therefore, addressing these gaps, this empirical study focusses on investigating the role of parental playfulness in parent–child relationship and parental competence, rather than considering external challenges of parents based on the ASD child’s behavioural challenges and autistic features.

Two forms of mother–child reciprocity and their links to children's cooperativeness

AbstractThe present study examined links between mother–child reciprocity and early elementary school children's cooperative behavior, an important marker of adjustment during this age. The study identified two distinct forms of mother–child reciprocity—following the child's lead and sharing the lead—and examined their interplay with maternal perception of the child. Mothers were observed in play interaction with their children (N = 106), and three groups were identified: mothers who followed their child's lead, mothers who shared the lead equally with the child, and mothers who showed neither form of reciprocity. Mothers’ view of their child as relatively non‐compliant or compliant was also assessed, and used in conjunction with reciprocity group to predict children's cooperation (two dependent measures: observed cooperation with the mother and teacher‐reported cooperative behavior at school). Consistent with prediction, children's observed cooperation with maternal requests was greatest when mothers followed the lead of children whom they viewed as relatively non‐compliant, and when mothers shared the lead with children whom they viewed as compliant. Teachers rated children as more cooperative in the classroom when mothers followed their children's lead, regardless of maternal view of child compliance. The results suggest that the two forms of reciprocity, following and sharing, are distinct.

Getting into the Same Boat – Enabling the Realization of the Disabled Child’s Agency in Adult–Child Play Interaction

The purpose of this study was to find out how an adult can enable or hinder the realization of a disabled child’s agency in play interaction. We focused on the child’s play invitations, which were constructed as dispreferred by the adult. The data consisted of nine videotaped playing situations with five nurses and five disabled children in a children’s neurological ward. The microanalysis with interventionist applied conversation analysis focused on one playing situation between one nurse and one three-year-old boy with no spoken language. The nurse responded to the child’s play invitations constructed as dispreferred by her in three different ways. Two of them were about trying to control the situation, either through managing the child’s behaviour or by guiding the plot of the play. The third way of responding was negotiating through dialogical playing, which enabled the realization of the child’s agency. The findings can be utilized widely for developing child-centred practices.

PACMHCI V5, CHI PLAY, September 2021 Editorial

Since its inaugural edition in 2014, the ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY) has grown to become the premier ACM SIGCHI venue for playercomputer interaction, bringing together researchers and professionals across all areas of play, games, and human-computer interaction. This year, CHI PLAY has moved its publications to a journal-based model, and we are pleased to present the first issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction that contains full paper contributions from the CHI PLAY community. This issue has 64 papers that were accepted in the 2021 cycle of the CHI PLAY conference. Over two rounds, a total of 250 papers were submitted for review and our acceptance rate is 25.6%. Thework published in this volume represents the contributions from the 2021 program committee, including external reviewers, associate chairs, and editors. Together, we have engaged in a revised reviewing process that saw several major changes. First, we moved to a revise and resubmit process to address existing inequities in submission and review, improve the quality of the review process, and increase the reach of our community's research. Second, we made major changes to our review form to improve the review process, while also easing the burden of review, along with explicitlywelcoming different contribution types and managing the complexities of interdisciplinary evaluation. We would like to acknowledge the efforts that our community has made in adapting to this new process, ensuring rigorous review during a global pandemic, and working together with the submitting authors to achieve high-quality scholarship. In this issue, the majority of contributions are empirical in nature, with fifteen papers classified by the authors as using qualitative methods, fifteen using quantitative methods, and nine using mixed methods. We also publish seven papers presenting design artefacts and three presenting technical artefacts. Finally, we include four papers employing meta-research methods, two papers that present new methodological approaches, and nine papers that contribute to the development and validation of theory.

The multimodality of infant's rhythmic movements as a modulator of the interaction with their caregivers

Children’s rhythmic movements during the first year of life possess a meaningful predictive validity for later communicative development. However, their role within adult-child interactions is still underexplored. In this study, we examined whether children’s rhythmic movements were significantly responded by adults and the role of multimodality and object use in this process. We observed 22 dyads of 9-month-olds and their parents in natural play interactions. Infants’ multimodal rhythmic movements increased the probability of adult responding. Adults offered different types of responses and significantly followed the child’s focus of attention. These dynamics could support communicative development by promoting joint attention frameworks.

Playful Strategies in Print Advertising

The fact that people are increasingly eager to seek out playful experiences in their everyday lives is part of a trend known as the ludification of culture. Scholars find that, in a time characterized by information overload, consumers are open and drawn to media products that offer entertainment through playful interaction. Meanwhile, the advertising industry is faced with the quandary of how to stand out and attract consumers’ fleeting attention in a landscape that has become highly competitive. Print advertising in particular faces a budget decline and has to compete with digital advertising forms that know richer affordances to appeal to consumers’ attention. For this reason, this article explores how print advertising uses playful strategies in order to stand out from the crowd and appease the demand to provide entertaining interaction for consumers. In doing so, the article focuses on the following research question: How do advertisers make use of playful communication strategies in print advertisements to stand out in the contemporary attention economy? To gain a comprehensive answer to this research question, a qualitative approach was taken. A thematic analysis of print advertisements was conducted, going through multiple rounds of coding that eventually resulted in the emergence of three central themes of playful strategies: (1) the use of playful visual design that is meant to instill a playful mindset; (2) the use of strategies based on a pleasurable interactive experiential logic; (3) the liberation of unspoken topics of a dark, solemn, and negative nature in a playful way. This study identifies playful aesthetics and their capacity for interactivity, resembling that of games, in static media forms such as print advertising; moreover, it identifies how playfulness can be used as a mode of production (playification) for the advertising industry as part of the creative industries. The conclusions and implications drawn from this article are thus theoretically and practically impactful. Regarding the former, contributions to an understanding of aesthetic interactivity and negative pleasurable experiences are made, and a need for further inquiry in playification is identified and encouraged. Regarding the latter, the benefit for advertisers to use playful print advertising strategies in their marketing mix is illuminated and ethical concerns regarding the persuasion of the strategies are expressed. The article closes by pointing out directions for future research.

‘What? Olaf is the taxi driver?’

While children’s remarkable ability to co-construct spontaneous fantasy narratives in pretend play interaction has been noted, sequential organization embedded in the collaborative construction of narratives have received little research attention. Drawing on an ethnomethodological and conversation analysis perspective, the current study examines the sequential organization of pretend play narratives co-constructed in children’s play interaction. Close sequential analysis based on 30 hours of audio and video recordings reveals an array of resources and interactional practices used to construct and maintain the spontaneous narratives. Sequential analysis allows to observe sense-making procedures embedded in the way participating children respond to and develop the storyline. The paper concludes with a reflection on how real-world knowledge informs and regulates the co-constructional process of fantasy narratives.

Action bids in children with speech impairments

The paper illustrates a practice, which we have called ‘marking’, observed in play interactions between parents and children with Down syndrome (DS) aged 3–8 years. Markings are minimal turns that rely on prosody, embodied resources and indexicality to foreground events within an ongoing activity and convey a stance toward them. Markings can be both retrospective and prospective (i.e. referring to a just-occurred or an incipient event). As first pair parts, they are open action bids that prompt recipients to display their co-orientation towards the referent. Responses from parents (i.e. second markings) can take the form of repeats or expansions; after prospective marking the recipient can also add support to the incipient activity the child has marked. We discuss marking as the core constituent of a larger family of actions for ‘sharing noteworthiness’, but also as a designedly undetermined action bid with specific conversational uses for children and adults alike.

Play fighting in wild spotted hyaenas: like a bridge over the troubled water of a hierarchical society

Play fighting, the most iconic form of social play, has been hypothesized to serve multiple evolutionary roles as a function of the age of the players. Although widely practised by youngsters, in some mammal species this form of play can also be present in adults. Here, we aimed to test these hypotheses by looking at the play-fighting behaviour of spotted hyaenas, Crocuta crocuta, by analysing the behaviour across age classes. Spotted hyaenas live in fission–fusion societies characterized by a rigid, nepotistic system of dominance hierarchy. Yet, the species is also characterized by social flexibility, which is evident from the high levels of support, cooperative behaviours and alliances. All these social features make spotted hyaenas a valuable model to explore play fighting at every age. We found that both immature individuals and adults invested a comparable amount of time in playful activities and showed similar motivation in initiating and maintaining their playful interactions. By play fighting, immatures can improve their motor and physical skills as predicted by the motor training hypothesis and, in agreement with the social assessment hypothesis, adults can gain information on social partners with whom they will have to interact in the future. Finally, contrary to our expectations, we found that those playful interactions characterized by strong competition (measured via play asymmetry index) also had the longest durations independently from the age of the players involved. Owing to the absence of escalation into real fighting, both immatures and adults appear to be able to manage the playful sessions despite their unbalanced nature. All these findings suggest that play fighting in spotted hyaenas can function as a ‘safe social bridge’ navigating both immatures and adults into the real future competitive challenges of the clan.

Children’s Connectedness with Siblings and Friends from Early to Middle Childhood during Play

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present study was to investigate children’s connected communication during play with a sibling and friend from early to middle childhood. Participants included 65 4-year-old focal children at time 1 (T1) and 46 7-year-old focal children at time 2 (T2) who were videotaped at home in separate semi-structured free play sessions with an older or younger sibling and a same-aged friend at both time points. Data were coded for connectedness in communication (e.g., smooth and flowing or disjointed and fragmented) across relationship contexts and time. Research Findings: Focal children made more failed attempts at establishing connectedness and engaged in more self-talk with their siblings than with their friends, whereas they maintained connectedness more often with their friends. In terms of the partners’ balance of participation, at T1 focal children ended connected interactions more often than their siblings, and the siblings engaged in more self-talk and unclear statements. In contrast, the balance of participation did not differ between friends at T1 and T2, nor did siblings differ at T2, suggesting friend partners made equal contributions to the play interactions, whereas developmental differences were apparent for siblings. Practice or Policy: The findings contribute to our understanding of developmental and relationship differences of children’s connected communication during play from early to middle childhood. Parents and educators need to be aware that opportunities for connection and disconnection during sibling play are typical and provide experiences for children to practice communication skills.