Poster #194 - Patterns of Parent Input During Problem-Solving Play

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Guided play—in which a knowledgeable adult contingently follows a child’s lead in play while simultaneously providing opportunities for learning (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2011)—provides a vital learning context for young children (Weisberg et al., 2013; Zosh et al., 2018). However, the specific behaviors that comprise this unique form of interaction remain unexamined (Yu et al., 2018). As a result, methodological inconsistencies exist across play-based studies and interventions. Here, we describe patterns of parent input during a problem-solving activity, in service of identifying fundamental components of guided play.

Participants were 74 parent-child dyads recruited at a children’s museum in Philadelphia. Children were 4 (M=53.52 mo., SD=3.66 mo., 46.15% female) and 5 (M=66.19 mo., SD=3.63 mo., 46.67% female) years old. Dyads completed a 5-minute problem-solving activity resembling a ‘blicket detector’ (Gopnik & Sobel, 2000), involving categorizing and predicting which shapes were magnetic. Parents knew the activity solution and were instructed to help their children identify the solution within the 5 minutes provided. Interactions were videotaped and coded for parents’ verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Seven verbal behaviors were categorized: declaratives (e.g. “that one sticks!”), imperatives (“put that there”), suggestions (“maybe that one works”), rule statements (“all the yellows stick”), pedagogical questions (“why did those stick?”), behavioral questions (“can I try?”), and confirmation questions (“that one stuck, right?”).

Preliminary analyses were performed on parental verbal input in 39% of the dyads. Parents spoke an average of 92 utterances (SD=26.55) during the activity. The greatest proportion of utterances, averaged across participants, were declaratives (M=35%, SD=8.43), followed by pedagogical questions (M=24%, SD=11.44); imperatives (M=19%, SD=11.55); confirmation questions (M=10%, SD=4.79); suggestions (M=6%, SD=4.72); behavioral questions (M=4%, SD=3.26); and rule statements (M=1%, SD=2.02).

Parents’ pedagogical questions negatively correlated with imperatives (r=-.66, p<0.001) and declaratives (r=-.48, p=0.004). Imperatives also negatively correlated with suggestions (r=-.50, p=0.003). Exploratory factor analyses resulted in two latent variables accounting for 82.331% of the variance: the first component included pedagogical questions, suggestions, and a negative loading on imperatives; the second included declaratives and rule statements (Figure 1). Given the strong negative correlation between imperatives and pedagogical questions, these were considered theoretically distinct behaviors, creating three dimensions of verbal input: Agency input (pedagogical questions and suggestions), hypothesized to maximize children’s agentive role in the activity; intrusive input (imperatives, confirmation questions, and rule statements), hypothesized to minimize child agency; and informative input (declaratives). Rule statements, which uniquely limit children’s agency in problem solving, were grouped with imperatives. Cluster analyses revealed four patterns of parent verbal input (Figure 2).

These preliminary results illuminate the different strategies that parents adopt during a playful problem-solving activity with their children. Further analyses will investigate how parents coordinate manual behaviors with verbal input, and how these behavioral patterns predict children’s learning outcomes. We will also assess children’s verbal and physical responses, using sequential analyses (Luo & Tamis-LeMonda, 2017) to examine the bidirectional, scaffolded nature of guided play. Understanding the strategies parents use to guide their children through problem-solving lays the behavioral groundwork for comprehensively operationalizing guided play.

Authors

• Jacob Lev Schatz, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Haley Weaver, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emily Hopkins, University of Scranton
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alyce Cho, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Molly Schlesinger, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author