Neuroscience
I remember, aged five or so, a friend and I were the cool police motorcyclists from the TV show CHiPs. Our props were limited to the usual paraphernalia of a suburban home and yet somehow both of us knew when the other person was on foot or on his Kawasaki motorbike, which routes through the house were motorways, where the baddies were located, and most important, we both understood the plot of our game.
For a new study, a team of psychologists in Australia has taken an interest in the conversation that allows this kind of coordinated imaginary game-play between childhood friends. Frances Hoyte and her colleagues video recorded three boys aged five to six - Alan, Bradley, and Max - as they played with each other in pairs for half an hour. Alan and Bradley had previously identified each other as being "very best friends", as had Bradley and Max. Alan and Max were "just a little bit friends."
Each pairing from this trio was asked to play together with various props available to help them on their way, including brightly coloured building blocks, wooden discs, bottle tops and pebbles. The toys were chosen deliberately to be open-ended, "so that the materials did not prescribe a specific agenda for play."
Hoyte's team identified three conversational themes in the boys' playtime interactions. The first, found in the conversations in all three pairs, the researchers called "making together". "The goal of the first talk type," the researchers said, "was to co-construct a representation of some real or imaginary object."
The second kind of talk - "sharing personal information" - was only found between the pairs of boys who were best friends. The final talk type - "storytelling" - was also found only between best friends and involved the boys bringing a fictional scenario to life. In one, Alan and Bradley blasted off into space together in a rocket. Sometimes events are described in the third person, other times the children assume the character roles themselves:
Hoyte and her colleagues admitted they really need to study more children and to follow patterns of changing play conversation over time. This way they'll be able to discover how friendship levels and play influence each other, and also whether joint imaginary play has consequences for language development.
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Frances Hoyte, Jane Torr, and Sheila Degotardi (2013). The language of friendship: Genre in the conversations of preschool children Journal of Early Childhood Research DOI: 10.1177/1476718X13492941
--Further reading--
Kids with invisible friends have superior narrative skills
Fantasy-prone children struggle to apply lessons from fantasy stories
Background TV disrupts children's play
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Fantasy-prone Children Struggle To Apply Lessons From Fantasy Stories
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- What Do Young Children Know About Managing Fear?
The recent film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things are prompted much debate about whether it's appropriate to subject children to material which they could find frightening. It's rather topical then that a new research paper...
- Young Girls Particularly Prone To Getting Stuck In Role Of Bullying Victim
Young girls are far more prone than boys to getting stuck in the role of bullying victim. That's according to a new investigation by psychologists who studied hundreds of children at 17 primary schools in Hertfordshire and North London. Dieter Wolke...
- Background Tv Disrupts Children's Play
It's a rainy afternoon, there's a TV quiz show jabbering in the background, a young child plays sweetly with her toys, and Mum (or Dad) flicks idly through the newspaper - what could be wrong with this domestic scene? According to Marie Schmidt...
- Where Did All The Memories Go?
What’s your earliest memory? If you’re an adult, it’s unlikely to be from before you were three and half to four years old. So what happens to your memories from before that age? It’s not that you never had any: two and three-year-olds gladly...
Neuroscience
How young boys build imaginary worlds together
For a new study, a team of psychologists in Australia has taken an interest in the conversation that allows this kind of coordinated imaginary game-play between childhood friends. Frances Hoyte and her colleagues video recorded three boys aged five to six - Alan, Bradley, and Max - as they played with each other in pairs for half an hour. Alan and Bradley had previously identified each other as being "very best friends", as had Bradley and Max. Alan and Max were "just a little bit friends."
Each pairing from this trio was asked to play together with various props available to help them on their way, including brightly coloured building blocks, wooden discs, bottle tops and pebbles. The toys were chosen deliberately to be open-ended, "so that the materials did not prescribe a specific agenda for play."
Hoyte's team identified three conversational themes in the boys' playtime interactions. The first, found in the conversations in all three pairs, the researchers called "making together". "The goal of the first talk type," the researchers said, "was to co-construct a representation of some real or imaginary object."
The second kind of talk - "sharing personal information" - was only found between the pairs of boys who were best friends. The final talk type - "storytelling" - was also found only between best friends and involved the boys bringing a fictional scenario to life. In one, Alan and Bradley blasted off into space together in a rocket. Sometimes events are described in the third person, other times the children assume the character roles themselves:
Bradley: They breathe out fire out their um shoesAnother story these boys concocted together appeared to involve shooting their entire family. The researchers chose not to dwell on the disturbing content of this particular game and focused instead on the common features of joint imaginary play, including: negotiation, sharing of power and control, and frequent use of declaratives and imperatives, and mental process verbs such as "think," "know" and "say". The researchers observed that: "The children also share a sense of what would be exciting, or appealing to imagine. Possibly, this shared outlook or view of the world underpins their narrative construction and allows them to successfully create the story together."
Alan: There we go (noise effects)
Bradley: And then off they go
Bradley: They keep on burning their feet
Alan: Yeah
Bradley: And they don't say "ow"
Hoyte and her colleagues admitted they really need to study more children and to follow patterns of changing play conversation over time. This way they'll be able to discover how friendship levels and play influence each other, and also whether joint imaginary play has consequences for language development.
_________________________________
Frances Hoyte, Jane Torr, and Sheila Degotardi (2013). The language of friendship: Genre in the conversations of preschool children Journal of Early Childhood Research DOI: 10.1177/1476718X13492941
--Further reading--
Kids with invisible friends have superior narrative skills
Fantasy-prone children struggle to apply lessons from fantasy stories
Background TV disrupts children's play
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Fantasy-prone Children Struggle To Apply Lessons From Fantasy Stories
Part of being human is the ability to imagine other worlds, to fantasise. It's a vital talent that underlies many others, including planning, lying and problem-solving. But we need to be able to keep fantasy distinct from reality - a lesson I learnt...
- What Do Young Children Know About Managing Fear?
The recent film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things are prompted much debate about whether it's appropriate to subject children to material which they could find frightening. It's rather topical then that a new research paper...
- Young Girls Particularly Prone To Getting Stuck In Role Of Bullying Victim
Young girls are far more prone than boys to getting stuck in the role of bullying victim. That's according to a new investigation by psychologists who studied hundreds of children at 17 primary schools in Hertfordshire and North London. Dieter Wolke...
- Background Tv Disrupts Children's Play
It's a rainy afternoon, there's a TV quiz show jabbering in the background, a young child plays sweetly with her toys, and Mum (or Dad) flicks idly through the newspaper - what could be wrong with this domestic scene? According to Marie Schmidt...
- Where Did All The Memories Go?
What’s your earliest memory? If you’re an adult, it’s unlikely to be from before you were three and half to four years old. So what happens to your memories from before that age? It’s not that you never had any: two and three-year-olds gladly...