ABSTRACT It is no secret that rates of anxiety and depression among school-aged children and teens in the United States are at an all-time high. Recognizing this, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association issued, in 2021, a joint statement to...
Research Articles
From Neurons to Neighborhoods – The Science of Early Childhood Development
How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development—in the womb and in the first months and years—have reached the popular media....
Consequences of Three Preschool Curriculum Models through Age 15
This report of the High/Scope Preschool Curriculum study traces the effects on young people through age 15 of three well-implemented preschool curriculum models—the High/Scope [play based instruction] model, the Distar [direct teacher led instruction] model, and a model in the nursery school tradition. Sixty-eight impoverished children in Ypsilanti, Michigan were...
Hunter-Gatherers and Play
This is a condensed version of a larger article that appeared in the American Journal of Play (Gray, 2009). Analysis of the anthropological literature suggests that hunter-gatherers use play and humor, more or less deliberately, to make their highly egalitarian mode of existence possible. Their methods of governance and sharing,...
The Virtuousness of Adult Playfulness- the Relation of Playfulness with Strengths of Character
Background It was hypothesized that playfulness in adults (i.e., the predisposition to play) is robustly associated with the "good character." Playfulness in adults can be tested via a global cognitive evaluation and an instrument for distinguishing five different facets of playful behaviors (spontaneous, expressive, creative, fun, and silly). Character strengths...
Socioemotional versus Academic Emphasis: Impact on Kindergartners’ Development and Achievement
Differential effects of academically focused versus socioemotional kindergartens were assessed for a range of developmental domains and early skills acquisition in two cohorts of inner city kindergartners. The sample of 307 children was 94% African American and 48% female, with 75% qualifying for subsidized lunch programs and 57% living in...
Children’s Descriptions of Playing and Learning as Related Processes
Many studies have examined children’s understanding of playing and learning as separate concepts, but the ways that children relate playing and learning to one another remain relatively unexplored. The current study asked 5- to 8-year-olds (N = 92) to define playing and learning, and examined whether children defined them as...
The effects of the Head Start classroom experience on some aspects of child development: A summary report of national evaluations, 1966–1969.
This report summarizes the findings of previous technical reports on the immediate changes in child development associated with Head Start and presents a statement of the extent to which these changes have been enhanced or attenuated by different program experiences for different children. Background information presented includes an overview of...
Young Children Are Natural Inquirers: Posing and Solving Mathematical Problems.
Carefully observing young children at play in a mathematically rich environment has led me to reflect on the way children naturally pose and solve interesting mathematical challenges. Here, three examples of the playful learning of six-year-old children illustrate the problem solving and persistence children can display. Teachers are encouraged to...
Brief Report: Effects of Video-Based Group Instruction on Spontaneous Social Interaction of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Four adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were taught to interact with peers by asking social questions or commenting about others during game play or group activities. Participants were shown a video model and then given an opportunity to perform the social behavior depicted in the model when playing a...
An integrative model of the neural systems supporting the comprehension of observed emotional behavior
Understanding others’ emotions requires both the identification of overt behaviors (“smiling”) and the attribution of behaviors to a cause (“friendly disposition”). Previous research suggests that whereas emotion identification depends on a cortical mirror system that enables the embodiment of observed motor behavior within one's own motor system, causal attribution for emotion depends on a separate cortical mentalizing...
Efficacy of the flipped classroom to teach play therapy: A mixed-methods study
This mixed-methods study, including quantitative and qualitative measures, evaluated how a flipped classroom learning environment that included a hands-on experiential skills lab to teach play therapy improved student's knowledge, attitude, and skills related to play therapy. Participating students (n = 18) completed the Play Therapy Knowledge, Attitudes, and Skills Survey...
Creativity, Play, and the Pace of Evolution
The possible role of play in creativity and innovation in animals is explored. After discussing issues involved in key terms and some prior studies on the creative process in humans, difficult issues in applying them to non-human animals are analyzed. If creativity in animals is only to be considered if...
Three Evidence-Based Strategies that Support Social Skills and Play Among Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Research demonstrates young children with autism and other developmental disabilities can benefit from participation in play activities with peers. Play provides opportunities to increase social skills across developmental domains in an integrated manner and provides opportunities to develop a sense of belonging and friendship; these goals are†critical for young children...
Supporting Kindergarten Children’s Social and Emotional Development: Examining the Synergetic Role of Environments, Play, and Relationships
This study examined how teachers support kindergarten children's social and emotional development in everyday contexts. It used an ethnographic qualitative mode of enquiry, employing participant observations and semi-structured and structured interviews to examine the ways teachers optimize opportunities for supporting kindergarten children's social and emotional development. Data were analyzed through...
What is the Relationship between Risky Outdoor Play and Health in Children? A Systematic Review
Risky outdoor play has been associated with promoting children's health and development, but also with injury and death. Risky outdoor play has diminished over time, concurrent with increasing concerns regarding child safety and emphasis on injury prevention. We sought to conduct a systematic review to examine the relationship between risky...
Play, animals, resources: The need for a rich (and challenging) comparative environment
Van de Vliert proposes a comprehensive explanation for differences in freedoms in diverse human populations based on climate and monetary resources. This intriguing approach, though derived from an evolutionary view covering all species, is based exclusively on human populations. This anthropocentric lens is challenged by ways of testing Van de...
Playful handling as social enrichment for individually- and group-housed laboratory rats
Social housing is recommended for laboratory rats because they are highly social mammals but research constraints or medical issues often demand individual housing and, when social housing is practiced, it typically involves housing with only one or two conspecifics. We hypothesized that playful social contact with humans (i.e. tickling), mimicking...
Individual differences in Affective Neuroscience Personality Scale (ANPS) primary emotional traits and depressive tendencies
Background The present study investigated individual differences in the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS), representing measures of primary emotional systems, and depressive tendencies in two independent samples. Methods In order to be able to find support for a continuum model with respect to the relation of strength in the cross-species...
The emergence of primary anoetic consciousness in episodic memory
Based on an interdisciplinary perspective, we discuss how primary-process, anoetic forms of consciousness emerge into higher forms of awareness such as knowledge-based episodic knowing and self-aware forms of higher-order consciousness like autonoetic awareness. Anoetic consciousness is defined as the rudimentary state of affective, homeostatic, and sensory-perceptual mental experiences. It can...
