Poster #72 - The Role of Play Goal Specificity in Parent-Child Interactions During a STEM Activity

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Parent-child interaction styles in play affect what and how children learn during that play (Sobel et al., 2021). These styles describe the autonomy and agency that parents and children provide each other through a play experience (Medina & Sobel, 2020). Interaction styles may be parent-directed, with parents setting goals and providing instructions, child-directed, with children setting goals without parent guidance, or jointly-directed, with parents and children setting goals and solving problems together (Callanan et al., 2020). The styles parents and children take on can be products of personality or culture (Chavajay & Rogoff, 2002), but may also be associated with features of the play experience, such as provided play goals.

Play goals range in specificity from extremely open ended (“play with this toy”) to highly defined (“play with this toy in exactly this way”). Research demonstrates that play goal specificity impacts one element of parent-child interactions: the language parents use with their children (e.g., Pagano et al., 2020). Beyond language, the level of involvement parents and children expect from each other during play can also influence the outcomes of children’s playful learning experiences (Callanan et al., 2020). Therefore, we examined whether and how the specificity of provided play goals is associated with parent-child interaction styles during a playful STEM activity.

Researchers contacted families (N = 69) over Zoom. Then, children (Mage = 7.8, SDage = .96 years) and parents were recorded completing a playful, 35-minute, activity with one of three randomly assigned goals: an open-ended goal, that served as a control condition, a guided goal with some specifications, or a closed-ended goal with step-by-step instructions. Activities were coded for parent-child interaction styles (Callanan et al., 2020). Videos were split into three-minute segments and judgments were made about the style (e.g., parent-directed, child-directed, or jointly-directed) that best characterized the segment’s interactions. Following the Callanan and colleagues coding scheme (2020), we counted the number of segments in each interaction category, and then classified families as the majority category label. Analyses focused on the role of goal specificity in parent-child interaction style.

Figure 1 demonstrates differences in the distribution of families exhibiting each interaction style by goal specificity, χ2(4, 69) = 18.0, p = .001. We used a multinomial logistic regression to examine the role of goal conditions in the likelihood of families exhibiting specific interaction styles. The likelihood of exhibiting a parent-directed style was higher for those families provided the guided goal than those provided the open-ended goal, b = 2.14, p = .02. No other comparisons were significant.

These findings demonstrate that parent-child interaction styles vary with play goal specificity. Open-ended goals seem to be associated with child-directed interactions. Potentially, the agency provided by open-ended goals creates opportunities for parents to step back and for children to lead the play. This connection between goal specificity and interaction styles may have a role in learning outcomes from play (e.g., Bonawitz et al., 2011). Implications for the design of playful experiences will be discussed.

Authors

• Danielle Rothschild, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Naomi Polinsky, Northwestern University

• Brian Andrus

• David H. Uttal, Northwestern University