Measuring Children’s Modern Play Experiences: Examining Links between Play and Development in the Digital Age

• In Event: 1-220 - Play Today: Investigating and Encouraging Play in the Contemporary Developmental Environment

Integrative Statement

Through play, young children acquire and develop key cognitive, social, and school readiness skills (Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, & Singer, 2006). Evidence for this learning comes primarily from researching play in formalized educational settings (e.g. classrooms and preschools). With curricular changes reducing in-school play opportunities (Miller & Almon, 2009), out-of-school, free-time play may be an increasingly important developmental opportunity. Scarce research has overcome the challenges of assessing free-time play in children’s every day environment. These studies have found that different types of play are associated with different outcomes. Active physical play, for example, was linked with higher adaptive skills while playing with commercial toys was linked with more creativity (Lehrer, Petrakos, & Venkatesh, 2014). Furthermore, digital play may be replacing traditional play during children’s free-time (Hofferth, 2009). Interactive digital devices, however, have the capacity to deliver simulations of traditional play experiences requiring research that examines the differing effects of play types to consider them a category of play. Finally, children’s socio-cultural setting may shape the types of play in which they engage as well as the outcomes of this play. The current study uses parent report and ecological momentary sampling to assess different types of children’s free-time play and links these activities to social and cognitive skills.

In a study of children ages 2.5 to 7.11 in the US (n = 146) and Mexico (n = 181), parents completed a self-report questionnaire that assessed their children’s school readiness, behavior problems, and positive social behaviors as well as the regularity at which they participated in different types of play (including interactive screen media). Children completed observational measures of their short term memory, executive functioning, and receptive vocabulary. For two weeks, parents received 8 surveys a day delivered at random times on their smartphone in which they were asked to categorize their child’s play at the moment of the survey signal. Analyses revealed some similarities between the two countries being studied but also considerable differences. Frequency of multiple types of play was associated with higher levels of school readiness with associations detected for number play, letter play, and board/card game play in both countries. In the US, cognitive outcomes such as school readiness and memory were more regularly related to different types of play while in Mexico, play was more consistently related to social behaviors including fewer behavior problems and more positive behaviors. Digital play was rarely and inconsistently related to outcomes. In the US, smartphone/tablet use was linked to lower vocabulary but computer use was associated with lower levels of behavior problems. Overall, while the frequency of children’s play predicted positive developmental outcomes, the specifics of the play type and outcome typically differed between the two cultural contexts. These results support other work indicating associations between certain types of play and positive outcomes, but they emphasize the need to consider the potential impact of culture on these relationships. Additionally, the findings indicate that if digital play replaces traditional play, children may be trading off a developmentally positive activity for a more neutral one.

Authors

• David Bickham, Boston Children's Hospital
  Presenting Author

• Summer Moukalled, Boston Children's Hospital, Center on Media and Child Health
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael Rich, Boston Children's Hospital, Center on Media and Child Health
  Non-Presenting Author