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-mood-induction. 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. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Taking fiction seriously: Young children understand the normative structure of joint pretence games.

Joint pretence games are implicit rule-governed activities with a normative structure: Given shared fictional stipulations, some acts are appropriate moves, others are inappropriate (i.e., mistakes). The awareness of 2- and 3-year-old children of this normative structure was explored, as indicated by their ability to not only act according to the rules themselves but to spontaneously protest against 3rd party rule violations. After the child and a 2nd person had set up a pretence scenario, a 3rd character (a puppet controlled by another experimenter) joined the game and performed acts either appropriate or inappropriate to the scenario set-up. Children in both age groups protested specifically against inappropriate acts, indicating they were able to not only follow pretence stipulations and act in accordance with them but to understand their deontic implications. This effect was more pronounced in the 3-year-olds than in the 2-year-olds. The results are discussed in the broader context of the development of social understanding and cultural learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pretend play and social play: The concurrent validity of the Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment.

In play therapy, assessment is more often of children’s behavioral or social issues than children’s play ability. However, understanding children’s play ability by using a reliable and valid play assessment can add to a therapist’s understanding of the child. The aim of this study was to investigate how a child’s performance on a play assessment was related to social peer play. Children’s pretend play was assessed using the Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment. Social peer play was assessed by preschool teachers completing the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale. Fifty-three typically developing preschool children were assessed. A significant positive correlation was found between the level of a child’s elaborateness of play scores and peer play interaction. A significant negative relationship was found between a child’s ability to substitute objects and play disruption. A significant negative relationship was also found between a child’s ability to elaborate play and substitute objects with play disconnection. The results suggest that children’s social competence can be inferred from their play scores on the Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Weak central coherence, poor joint attention, and low verbal ability: Independent deficits in early autism.

C. Jarrold, W. Butler, E. M. Cottington, and F. Jiminez (2000) proposed that weak central coherence is a primary cognitive deficit in autism and speculated that it may even account for theory of mind impairments. The current study investigated whether weak central coherence could account for deficits in 2 behaviors purported to tap capabilities fundamental to a theory of mind: joint attention and pretend play. Twenty-one children (ages 3-5 years) with autism spectrum disorders were matched to 21 control children on chronological age, nonverbal ability, and gender. Pretend play did not differentiate the groups. Weak central coherence, poor joint attention, and low verbal ability contributed significantly and independently to the prediction of autism group membership, a finding consistent with 3 independent cognitive deficits underlying autism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Longitudinal outcomes of young high-risk adolescents with imaginary companions.

The creation and cultivation of an imaginary companion is considered to be a healthy form of pretend play in early childhood, but there tends to be a less positive view of older children who have them. To test the extent that having an imaginary companion in middle school is associated with positive or negative outcomes, an ethnically diverse sample of 152 middle school children at high risk for developing problem behaviors were interviewed about imaginary companions, coping styles, and problem behaviors. Although having a current imaginary companion (n = 13) was associated with using more positive coping strategies, peer nomination data indicated that these children had low social preference with peers. In addition, our data indicated that these children were perceived by their parents as having more problem behaviors compared with young adolescents who never had imaginary companions (n = 108) or children who had imaginary companions in the past (n = 31). However, a longitudinal follow-up at the end of high school indicated that the children who had imaginary companions in middle school showed greater positive adjustment on a multiple-indicator adjustment construct. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of discrete emotions on young children's ability to discern fantasy and reality.

This study examined 3- to 5-year-olds' (N = 128; 54% girls) ability to discriminate emotional fantasy and reality. Children viewed images depicting fantastic or real events that elicited several emotions, reported whether each event could occur, and rated their emotional reaction to the image. Children were also administered the Play Behavior Questionnaire and Pretend Action Tasks to assess play behaviors. Findings revealed age-related improvements in performance and biases in judgment based on the emotion depicted. Children reported that happy fantastic events could occur significantly more often than frightening and angry fantastic events and that happy real events could occur significantly more often than frightening and angry real events. Children's emotional reactions to the images but not play behaviors were significantly related to their fantasy-reality distinctions. Implications for the relation between emotions and children's fantasy-reality distinctions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consulting competently in multicultural contexts.

This article presents personalized reactions to the special issue on Culture, Race, and Ethnicity Challenges in Organizational Consulting Psychology. The first part of the article presents the responses of 4 consulting psychologists to 4 questions. The 4 consultants, an African American woman and man and an Anglo American woman and man, were selected based on their experiences in working with consultees and client systems where diversity and multicultural factors mattered. The second part of the article identifies the common themes that emerged from their 4 narratives plus suggestions to assist consultants in better working with consultees and client systems of diverse culture, race, and ethnicity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of scientific reasoning in knowledge-rich contexts.

In this study of the development of scientific reasoning, 10 5th–6th-grade children ( 5 boys and 5 girls) and 10 noncollege adults conducted experiments over 6 half-hour sessions to explore the causal structure of 2 physical science domains. Feedback in these systems, though relevant to discriminating among hypotheses, was noisy as a result of varying effect sizes and measurement error. After 2 hr on each task, both age groups demonstrated changes in their understanding of the content and in their strategies for generating and interpreting evidence. In general, the adults outperformed the children. Neither valid strategies nor correct beliefs alone was sufficient to guarantee success, suggesting that regarding experimentation either as domain-general induction or as domain-specific learning may oversimplify its complexity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Addressing Diversity Issues in Play Therapy.

Globalization is upon us, resulting in almost daily exposure to and interaction with highly diverse populations. To practice ethical play therapy, play therapists must become culturally competent. Play therapists are called on both to address cultural issues in therapy and to facilitate children's pride in, and preservation of, their culture. Despite this, the existing literature on cultural competence in psychotherapy has rarely been applied to play therapy practice. The author's goal is to do just that so as to provide play therapists with a model relevant to their work. Play therapists must first fully understand the concept of culture and its potential impact on their own lives, the lives of their clients, and the play therapy process. Second, play therapists need to develop adequate levels of culturally related awareness, skills, and knowledge. Last, they can ensure the work they do is more culturally sensitive and competent by following basic guidelines. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping in context: Sociocultural determinants of responses to sexual harrassment.

The authors investigated coping responses to sexual harassment across 4 samples of working women from 3 cultures and 2 occupational classes. Complete-link cluster analyses provide preliminary support for D. E. Knapp, R. H. Faley, S. E. Ekeberg, and C. L. Z. Dubois's (1997) coping framework, suggesting that avoidance, denial, negotiation, advocacy seeking, and social coping are universal responses to sexual harassment. Further, L. F. Fitzgerald's (1990) internal-extemal dichotomy appears to capture higher order relationships among coping responses. In addition, regression analyses suggest that Turkish and Hispanic American women engage in more avoidance than Anglo American women, and Hispanic women also use more denial but less advocacy seeking. No differences emerged in social coping. The authors discuss these results in the context of coping theory, individualism-collectivism, power distance, and patriarchal gender norms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parents and families as contexts for the development of substance use and substance use disorders.

Parenting and familial influences on substance use and substance use disorders (SUDs) are important areas of study both for theories of etiology and for the development of preventive and treatment interventions. The articles in this special section illustrate both the value and the challenges of studying parenting and familial influences. Noteworthy issues include the need for mediational and moderational models examining the processes by which familial influences operate in a longitudinal framework to consider outcomes in a developmental context. Future directions include a multidisciplinary expansion of these studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of meaning contexts for empathic accuracy: Channel and sequence effects.

This study examined the effects of both immediate and cumulative contextual knowledge on empathic accuracy. Participants viewed excerpts from videotapes of 3 simulated psychotherapy sessions and attempted to infer each client's actual thoughts and feelings. Immediate contextual knowledge was varied by controlling the informational channels available. Cumulative contextual knowledge was varied by presenting the excerpts from each tape in either their original order or in a random order. The results revealed that empathic accuracy in this clinically relevant context was primarily dependent upon verbal, rather than nonverbal, cues. Knowledge of the cumulative meaning context was also important, however, in that it led perceivers to respond in a schema-driven fashion that sometimes facilitated, but at other times impaired, their empathic accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers' Behavior Modifications During Pretense and Their Possible Signal Value for Toddlers.

An important issue for understanding early cognition is why very young children's real-world representations do not get confused by pretense events. One possible source of information for children is the pretender's behaviors. Pretender behaviors may vary systematically across real and pretend scenarios, perhaps signaling to toddlers to interpret certain events as not real. Pretender behaviors were examined in 2 experiments in which mothers were asked both to pretend to have a snack and really to have a snack with their 18-month-olds. Episodes were analyzed for condition differences in verbal and nonverbal behaviors, including smiling, looking, laughter, and functional movements. Reliable differences were found across conditions for several variables. In a 3rd experiment, children's apparent understanding of pretense in relation to their mothers' behaviors was examined, and significant associations were found with some of the mothers' behavioral changes but not others. This work provides a first inroad into the issue of how children learn to interpret pretense acts as pretense. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spectacular science: The lie detector's ambivalent powers.

Spectacular science is a mode of scientific inquiry that is created and sustained by popular culture. In this article, I provide evidence for this claim by examining the history of the lie detector. Throughout the 20th century, the technology was nurtured by newspaper and magazine articles, movies, comic books, television shows, and advertisements. Analysis of this rich archive reveals the instrument to be, on the one hand, an automatically functioning machine, the epitome of science. But on the other hand, the lie detector is also a totemistic object that requires the skills of a charismatic magician to work at all. Nevertheless, the instrument was untroubled by such apparent contradictions, because it operated according to a spectacular mode of governance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sociocultural factors and the development of disordered eating: A longitudinal analysis of competing hypotheses.

Sociocultural models hypothesize causal paths in the development of eating disorders, yet few longitudinal studies have controlled for temporal stability, leaving open the question as to causality and the directionality of effects. In the present study, the authors tested portions of the socioculturally based dual-pathway model, specifically, the risk factor hypotheses that internalization of the thin ideal predicts body dissatisfaction, that body dissatisfaction predicts depressive affect, and that depressive affect predicts disordered eating. The authors also examined competing hypotheses (e.g., disordered eating predicts depressive affect) as well as the possibility of simultaneous relationships (i.e., variables would be related to one another within a time frame). The 6 models (3 cross-lagged and 3 simultaneous) were evaluated using 236 female freshmen who provided self-report data during their 1st semester in college and 6 months later. While controlling for temporal stability, structural equation modeling revealed that (a) internalization and body image each were related to the other across time; (b) body image was related directionally, but only in the simultaneous context, to depressive affect; and (c) depressive affect and disordered eating were related reciprocally and temporally to one another. Directions for future research and implications for intervention are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preparing play therapists for disaster response: Principles and procedures.

In the wake of numerous recent natural disasters such as the 2004 tsunami and 2005 hurricanes, play therapists have been asked to provide disaster response. However, the role of disaster response interventionists is vastly different from the typical role of play therapists. In order for play therapists to be prepared for disaster response, an explanation of disaster response principles and procedures is needed. This article will help educate play therapists about how to use their play therapy skills and knowledge in a disaster response environment. Specifically, this article will (a) explain basic principles such as following the Incident Command Structure; (b) discuss the play therapist's role in disaster response in light of the phase of disaster; and (c) recommend disaster response procedures. Examples from APT members' response to the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of orbital frontal cortex damage on the modulation of defensive responses by rats in playful and nonplayful social contexts.

In a series of 3 experiments on rats, 2 hypotheses were tested: (a) that damage to the orbital frontal cortex (OFC) would alter the socially relevant context for executing defensive responses but not their performance and (b) that damage done to the OFC in early infancy would produce more deficits in social behavior than similar damage occurring in adulthood. Bilateral or unilateral OFC damage in adult males did not impair their ability to defend themselves during play fighting and when protecting their food but did impair their ability to modify the pattern of defense in response to different partners. Rats that sustained bilateral damage at 3 days of age not only had deficits in partner-related modulation of defense but also exhibited hyperactivity in their play. The findings thus supported the proposed hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive and social influences on early prosocial behavior in two sociocultural contexts.

In this cross-cultural study, we tested 2 main hypotheses: first, that an early self-concept along with self–other differentiation is a universal precursor of prosocial behavior in 19-month-olds, and second, that the importance attached to relational socialization goals (SGs) concerning interpersonal responsiveness (obedience, prosocial behavior) is related to toddlers' prosocial behavior. Contrary to these predictions, the results show that mirror self-recognition, as an indicator of early self-concept, was correlated with toddlers' prosociality only in the Berlin sample (N = 38) and not in the Delhi sample (N = 39). As expected, however, Delhi mothers emphasized relational SGs more strongly than did Berlin mothers. There were no cross-cultural differences in toddlers' prosociality. On an individual level, mothers' emphasis on relational SGs (obedience) was a significant predictor of toddlers' prosocial behavior. On the basis of these results, we propose that situational helping behavior based on shared intentional relations provides an alternative developmental pathway for understanding toddlers' prosocial behavior. This view differs from the often-cited view that anticipating other people as autonomous intentional agents with their own psychological states gives rise to prosocial behavior in toddlers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of context sensitivity in children's graphic copying strategies.

The authors report on a series of 5 experiments in which 462 5- to 10-year-old children and 109 adults were required to copy geometric figures either with no constraints or following prior exposure to primes consisting of different parsings of the figures. The analysis focused on the graphic strategies adopted by the participants to copy the models. Three developmental steps were revealed in the baseline copying condition. Priming experiments demonstrated that the age-developmental step correspondence varied as a function of the type of prime used. However, the impact of priming differed according to age. It was limited at 6 years, whereas its size was noticeable at the other ages. These results are discussed in the light of developmental models that hypothesize a major role either for endogeneous factors in cognitive development or for exogeneous and contextual factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)