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Poster #207 - Exploring Features of Pretend Play as a Function of Caregiver’s Emotion Regulation

Sat, March 23, 8:00 to 9:15am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Pretend play is a mechanism that allows children to both channel emotional experiences and build important regulation skills (Dempsey, Kelly-Vance & Ryalls, 2013). Pretend play is multidimensional, encompassing both cognitive and affective processes. Studies investigating these features of pretend play have shown differential relations across domains of adjustment, such as creativity, emotion competence, and school success (Russ & Wallace, 2016; Marcelo & Yates, 2014; Yates & Marcelo, 2014). Through pretend play, children also learn to navigate social situations by connecting, sharing, and negotiating with others (McElwain & Volling, 2005).

Although research on pretend play and development is expanding, there is a gap in our understanding of if and how different factors contribute to the development of cognitive and affective features of play. Studies that examined different predictors of play have illustrated that caregivers have a strong influence on the development of children’s play and social and communicative behaviors, particularly during the first few years of life (Valentino, Cicchetti, Toth, & Rogosch, 2011). However, most of these studies focus on caregiver behaviors during a mother-child play task. Little is known about the relation between specific caregiver characteristics, such as their ability to regulate emotions, and children’s capacity to engage in imaginative play and express emotions in solitary pretend play.

The present study sought to examine the influence of caregiver’s emotion regulation skills on the cognitive and affective features of pretend play in a culturally diverse sample of preschool-aged children (N=250, Mage=49 months, SD=3.0; 50% Female; 46% Latinx, 18% Black, 11% White, and 25% Multiethnic-racial). At age 4, caregivers completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004), while the child completed the Affect in Play Scale (Preschool version, APS-P; Kaugars & Russ, 2009), which was coded for children’s fantasy quality and frequency of expression of negative and positive affect. Caregiver-child dyads (N=215, Mage=73 months, SD=2.6) returned for a follow up at Age 6 to complete different tasks, including the APS-P.

Separate regression analyses showed that, after controlling for child gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, IQ, and above and beyond play features at age 4, caregiver’s self-report of emotion dysregulation at age 4 predicted higher fantasy (β=.17, p<.05) and higher negative affect frequency (β=.16, p<.05) in children’s play at age 6 (see Table 1). However, caregiver’s dysregulation at age 4 did not predict positive affect frequency (β=.02, ns).

These findings contribute to the current literature on the development of pretend play features by illustrating the predictive relation between caregiver’s dysregulation and later quality of fantasy and frequency of affect expressed in pretend play. These findings are consistent with psychodynamic theories of play (e.g., Freud and Erikson), which posit that children use play to process and make sense of their negative experiences (e.g., mom’s dysregulation). These findings align with current literature on play patterns of children who experienced interpersonal adversity, which indicate that adversity-exposed children express more negative emotions in their play (Alessandri, 2008). Future research should identify mechanisms that explain the relation between caregivers’ dysregulation and pretend play features.

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