This study examined the social and cognitive play behavior of first grade boys and girls in an effort to examine whether the findings of the existing research (mostly conducted in labs or classroom settings using preschoolers) generalized to older children engaged in self-organized free play behavior in a school playground setting.
Twenty-four children (12 boys and 12 girls) were randomly selected from a large local elementary school. These children were observed during their playground activities. Types of play were recorded using the Parten/Smilansky matrix of social and cognitive categories of play.
Findings of the study indicated that the existing research with preschoolers generalized to samples of first graders. Specifically, it was found that:
(1) As expected, older children (first graders) more frequently engage in the higher order types of social and cognitive play than the lower order types of social and cognitive play.
(2) As expected, girls are more inclined than boys to engage in dramatic play; boys tend to prefer more structured and more organized forms of play.
(3) As expected, the incidence of parallel play was low for both boys and girls; however, boys were slightly more inclined than girls to engage in parallel play.
Explanations for findings were discussed in terms of the social/cognitive categorical models' strengths and weaknesses.
Play, according to Tomlinson-Keasy (1993) severs several useful purposes, the most important of which is learning. Indeed, play is considered by developmental psychologists to be the starting point for both social development and skill competence (Tomlinson-Keasy, 1993). Other purposes of play have been delineated by Papalia and Olds (1992) as follows:
Through play, children grow. They learn how to use their muscles, they coordinate what they see with what they do, and they gain mastery over their body. They find out what the world is like and w...