Jean Piaget Society



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JPS 2003 Conference Program

Thursday, June 5, A.M.

Registration (all day)

Thu 9:00-6:00 Mansion

Book Display (all day)

Thu 9:00-9:15 Sauganash E

Opening Remarks

JPS President, Elliot Turiel

Conference Organizers, Artin Göncü and Suzanne Gaskins

Plenary Session 1

Hard work for the imagination

Paul L. Harris, Harvard Graduate School of Education

In thinking about the child’s imagination, I take Piaget’s pioneering description of pretend play as an important starting-point. However, I offer a different stance from Piaget toward the ultimate role of the imagination in the child’s mental life. Echoing Eugen Bleuler, I argue that it is a mistake to think of fantasy or imagination as a primitive or primary mode of thinking. Echoing Vygotsky’s analysis of the fate of egocentric speech, I also argue that the imagination is not a psychological function that is gradually suppressed in the course of development. A key aspect of the child’s imagination is the ability to imagine an unobserved reality—this ability is evident in young children’s pretend play. It is also critical for the understanding of ordinary conversation throughout childhood and into maturity because references are frequently made to unobservables. Such references have an impact on young children’s basic ontology—they end up believing in the existence of various invisible entities and creatures—some that do actually exist and some that do not. They also accept counter-intuitive, metaphysical claims. Effectively, children’s imagination allows them to contemplate, and even to take for granted, creatures and events that they have never actually encountered. I discuss the extent to which young children’s imagination thereby renders them all too vulnerable to unverifiable claims about reality.

Thu 10:30-10:45 Break

Symposium Session 1

Play & Development in a Child Care Center

Organizer: Dominique Colinvaux, Universidade Federal Fluminense

This symposium presents four research studies carried out at the Child Care Centre of the Universidade Federal Fluminense: Creche-UFF, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As an educational institution for young children, Creche-UFF is also a research centre in different subject areas, including Developmental Psychology. We favour different theoretical approaches with their respective emphasis on the cognitive, social and cultural dimensions of human development. The assumption that young children’s development is fostered mainly through play is of central importance. Accordingly the four studies are all related to play and emphasize its contribution to the development of children in various ways, although through different theoretical questions and perspectives. The first study analyses videotaped recordings of a group of eight children from 19 to 24 months old during their two first months at Creche-UFF. The second study analyses these episodes looking at different forms of imitation that occur in children’s interactions while playing. The other two studies approach play activities of older children, from 4 to 6 years of age. In “Childhood, play and culture”, Borba discusses pretend play: analysing children’s (re)presentation of their social world shows how they are determined by a consumer culture which dictates their ways of thinking, feeling, acting and playing. Santos Souza focuses on the relationship between play and spatial arrangements. Making use of evaluation instruments developed by architects, as well as children’s drawings of play areas in Creche-UFF, it is possible to show how spatial features influence children’s play activities.

Childhood, Play and Culture

Angela M. Borba, Universidade Federal Fluminense
Aline Sa, Universidade Federal Fluminense

The quality of the space of CRECHE UFF according to its users’ perspective

Fabiana Santos Souza, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Vera M. R. de Vasconcellos, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

Coping and making sense of self: Children’s spontaneous play in a bone marrow transplant unit

Micheline Silva, Clark University
Seth Surgan, Clark University

Invited Symposium 1

Play and Narrative in the Process of Development: Commonalities, Differences, and Interrelations

Organizer: Ageliki Nicolopoulou, Lehigh University
Discussant: Vivian Paley

This symposium will explore the relationship between play and narrative in the process of development. While there has been a great deal of research and theorizing on both topics, there have been relatively few efforts to address them in an integrated way and to reflect concretely and systematically on the interplay between them. The participants of this symposium will examine some important dimensions of this relationship, consider their significance for children’s experience and development, and offer suggestions for future research and practice.

The interplay of play & narrative in children’s development: Theoretical reflections & concrete examples

Ageliki Nicolopoulou, Lehigh University

Mimesis: Where play & narrative meet

Carol F. Feldman, New York University

The narrative worlds of what is and what if

Susan Engel, Williams College

Thu 10:45-12:15 Merchant PS01

Paper Session 1

Play Theory

Chair: Carolyn Hildebrandt, University of Northern Iowa

Play, Dreams and Imitation Revisited: Piaget’s Implicit Social Theory

Keith R Alward, Berkeley, CA

Written in 1946, Play Dreams and Imitation argued that conceptual reasoning is dependent upon social coordinations and social systems of representation. Piaget distinguishes between mere representation and conceptual representation. The former derives from the dynamics of assimilation and accommodation whereas the capacity for true conceptual thought derives from the intersection of assimilation, accommodation and social experience. This intersection is coextensive with the use of the sign for communication. The sign itself evolves out of a confluence between operational thought and organized social interactions. This constitutes an implicit social theory never fully developed by Piaget.

From playing to explaining: From the logic of fantasy to the logic of scientific discovery

Abel Hernandez-Ulloa, Lancaster University
Jorge Saiden, Australian National University

The theory of equilibration plays a central role in the Piagetian perspective for understanding how this relation makes the development of cognitive structures possible and, from these structures, the construction of ‘structured’ theories that establish how our own reality is in turn ‘structured’. Piaget’s equilibration theory, however, has been criticized and dismissed as non-reliable. The purpose of this paper is to reassess equilibration theory from two convergent perspectives: the functional and the structural. The assimilation process is emphasized in the functional perspective by the construction of fantasies and playful activities. From the structural perspective the accommodation process is central to the construction of objective knowledge that leads to the logic of scientific discovery.

Imitation and play in experimental activity of scientists: An epistemological proposal

Luis Mauricio Rodríguez, Cinvestav-IPN

The reproduction of an experiment by other scientists, in the experimental sciences is a ritualistic imitation of a proposed model, as representation of the external actions of the experimenter. The continuity of this process is a defered imitation due to internalization of the actions. The ritualistic play is the beginning of the other possibilities of interpretation of the model, that the symbolic play gives new significance. In the electromagnetic phenomena, Oersted proposed a model of experimentation. Biot, Davy and Ampere imitated him and at the same time they proposed new varieties of experiment, due to symbolic play of their mental combinations. We present the psychogenetic interpretation of imitation and play as epistemological proposal of the experimental activity of scientists.

Paper Session 2

Language

Chair: Gustavo Faigenbaum, University of Maryland

The relationship between play, language and non-verbal ability in sighted and blind children

Vicky A Lewis, Open University
Jill Boucher, University of Warwick

There is considerable evidence that certain aspects of play in young children are related to their emerging linguistic skills. In a recent study, Lewis et al. (2000) reported that symbolic play, assessed by the Test of Pretend Play (ToPP), correlated significantly with both expressive and receptive language but not with functional play or non-verbal ability. The present paper outlines ToPP and describes the play and language ability of a child who is totally congenitally blind using ToPP and other assessments. The implications of the use of ToPP with children with developmental disorders are discussed.

The Play Behaviour of the Young Blind Child

Roseann E Ferguson, University of Edinburgh
Marianna Buultjens, University of Edinburgh
Jennifer Wishart, University of Edinburgh
Hamish Macleod, University of Edinburgh

There are very few studies on developmental patterns of play in blind children. Studies which do exist suggest that their play is not only delayed but different in quality and quantity. This paper describes a study which gathered descriptive data over a 2 year period on the spontaneously emerging patterns in play behaviour of 16 ‘educationally blind’ children aged 16 to 72 months. All 6 commonly found categories of play in sighted children were observed. However, frequency and duration of engagement varied between subjects and across age groups reflecting both the affordances of the proffered toys and individual developmental profiles.

Understanding /ing/: Sensitivity to grammatical morphemes precedes their production

Dede A. Addy, University of Delaware
Roberta M. Golinkoff, University of Delaware
Jennifer L. Sootsman, University of Chicago
Khara Pence, University of Delaware
Rachel Pulverman, University of Delaware
Sara Salkind, University of Delaware
Kathryn A. Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University

This study reveals that by 16- to 18-months, infants not yet producing the bound morpheme /ing/ are sensitive to its presence and are processing the verb ending in addition to the stem. We examined infants’ knowledge of /ing/ using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm (Golinkoff et al. 1987). While viewing two different actions side by side on a television screen, infants either heard verbs with a grammatical morpheme, (e.g., “dancing”), an ungrammatical morpheme (e.g., “dancely”), or a nonsense ending, (e.g., “dancelu”). Only with the morpheme /ing/, did children watch the matching action significantly longer than the non-matching action.

A comparative study of solitary object exploration in children with autism, Down syndrome, and typical children

Emma Williams, University of Surrey
Natalie Stark, University of Surrey

Empirical evidence suggests that ‘active’ exploratory behaviours in infancy, such as visually guided manipulation, serve an important information-gathering function (Ruff, 1984). Extending this work to autism, this study compares the exploratory behaviour of developmentally matched autistic, Down, and typical children in terms of the: 1) time spent in ‘active’ exploration and, 2) sub-types of exploratory behaviours exhibited. Relative to comparison groups, the children with autism engaged in less ‘active’ exploration and more stereotypical acts. The findings are discussed in relation to the possibility that lower levels of ‘active’ exploration lead to less information being extracted regarding the specific nature of the objects being explored, which in turn delays progression to more advanced forms of play.

On making the boundaries of distinctions permeable: The role of play in coming to see in new ways

Jeanne Bamberger, MIT

We make distinctions to organize, hold steady, the multiplicity of possibles in our experience. But once distinctions are made, objects defined and accepted, insight often occurs when the limits of these distinctions become permeable—accessible across their defining boundaries. In a close case study, I show that playfulness between two children, in the midst of one child’s work on building a tune, results in multiple meanings colliding, boundaries blurring, and initial distinctions becoming permeable. Ambiguity in turn creates a need to seek new kinds of distinctions, generating the emergence of new entities, relations, and new representations.

Thu 12:15-1:30 Lunch

Thursday, June 5, P.M.

Symposium Session 2

Certainty and Necessity in the Understanding of Moral Concepts

Organizer: Tobias Krettenauer, Humboldt University
Organizer: Orlando Lourenço, University of Lisbon

The lines drawn in epistemic research between necessary and certain as well as inherently uncertain knowledge, and the various relations that obtain between them, has always played a central role in Piaget’s theory. Concern over such matters has, however, never been accorded a similar place of prominence in the field of moral development. This oversight is especially unfortunate given the fact that an exploration of these different kinds of moral knowledge could potentially prove helpful in clarifying some of the ongoing controversies in moral research. At the same time, both necessity and certainty are interesting objects of analyses in their own right since they specify different orders of moral knowledge, and a fortiori different levels of moral knowledge acquisition, that have, at least so far, been little investigated.

There are good reasons to anticipate (and the papers that make up this symposium aim to show) that young people’s understandings of certainty and necessity as they apply to moral concepts are related to their ontological as well as epistemological beliefs. At the same time, an individual may experience moral necessity as a “volitional necessity” (Frankfurt, 1988) that is deeply rooted in his or her sense of identity. Certainty and necessity are thus related to individuals’ personal epistemologies, as well as to their moral motivation. Taken together, these concepts provide a potential conceptual bridge across the divide that separates moral judgment and action. The main goal of the symposium is to bring together scholars whose work occupies a place at the interface of personal epistemologies and moral motivation, all in an effort to address the poorly understood role of certainty and necessity in the moral domain.

Reflections on a Rescue: The Role of Necessity in Moral Motivation

John C Gibbs, Ohio State University

Adolescents’ Certainty in Judging Moral Issues, Moral Epistemology and Identity

Tobias Krettenauer, Humboldt University at Berlin

Children’s conceptions of morality, agency, and desire

Bryan W Sokol, Simon Fraser University
Michael J Chandler, University of British Columbia

Turiel’s Dispute with Kohlberg concerning the Child’s Moral Competence: A Plea for Conceptual Clarity

Orlando Lourenço, University of Lisbon, Portugal

Invited Symposium 2

The Cultural Construction of Play

Organizer: Suzanne Gaskins, Northeastern Illinois Univ.
Discussant: Helen Schwartzman, Northwestern University

While the functions of play have been widely debated, the source of play has not—it is almost always defined as being an intrinsic behavior that springs naturally from the child. This seminar will put forth the idea that while play in part emanates from the universal motivation of children themselves, the values and beliefs of different cultures also significantly mold play, not just in its particular content, but also in its amount and characteristics. Parents’ and other socializing agents’ influence on play can either be direct through interaction with the child, or indirect through structuring the child’s everyday activities in systematic ways. We argue that cultures’ stances toward play fall in to three main types: 1) cultures where children do not do a lot of work and play is highly valued, leading to a high level of mediation; 2) cultures where children do not do a lot of work and play is not highly valued, leading to high levels of unmediated play; and 3) cultures where children do substantial work and play is not highly valued, leading to a drop in both mediation and play itself. The presentations will discuss not only the nature of the children’s play in specific examples of these three types of cultures but also how play reflects the particular cultural values as they get instantiated in everyday activity and the developmental implications of the variation.

Caregiver support of pretend play in Taiwan and the US

Wendy Haight, University of Illinois

A developmental ecology of Kpelle children’s play

David Lancy, Utah State University

All in a day’s work: Marginalization of play in the daily lives of Yucatec Mayan children

Suzanne Gaskins, Northeastern Illinois University

Thu 1:30-3:00 Merchant PS03

Paper Session 3

Peer Relations

Chair: David W Kritt, College of Staten Island/CUNY

Children’s developing perceptions of gender inequality

Kristin D Neff, University of Texas at Austin
Althea L. Woodruff, University of Texas at Austin
Carey E. Cooper, University of Texas at Austin

Although the development of children's gender stereotypes has been extensively studied, little is known about children’s perceptions of gender inequality. Therefore, the current study examined if, when, and how children aged 7-12 perceive differences in the power, status, and entitlements accorded to men and women in our society. Results indicate that children have less explicit awareness of gender inequality then might be assumed given their knowledge of power-related gender stereotypes. Results also indicate an age-related increase in perceptions of power inequality (though not status or entitlements), and that perceptions of inequality vary by situational context.

Perceived Gender-Role Orientation, Self-Concept, and Social Competence in Preadolescent Girls and Boys

Sandra L Bosacki, Brock University

This study investigated the relations among perceived gender-role orientation, self-understanding, and social behaviour in 239 school children, (Grade 4, n=78 (40 g), M = 9;7; Grade 5, n=78 (40 g), M = 10;7; Grade 6, n=83 (47 g), M = 11;8) in a mainly Euro-Canadian, middle SES, mid-sized Southern Ontario city. The study involved standardized measures and interviews to assess interpersonal understanding and intrapersonal understanding. Findings showed that significant (p < .05), gendered relations existed between stereotypic feminine gender-role perceptions and particular aspects of self-concept and understanding, and social competence. Implications for socioemotional and cognitive development were discussed.

“She was playing but I was for real”: Teasing, Name-calling, and the Negotiation of Identity in Middle Childhood

Marsha D Walton, Rhodes College
Teresa J Cannon, Rhodes College
Paige K Mossman, Rhodes College
Alexis R Harris, Rhodes College

We examined 689 narratives about interpersonal conflict written by 452 4th-6th graders from two inner-city schools. There were 418 instances of name-calling or verbal teasing reported in these stories. These were coded according to the aspect of the target’s identity that was challenged (e.g., appearance, moral character, ethnicity) and according to the type of response the author reported (e.g., denial, reciprocation, escalation). Grade and gender differences were found and will be discussed in light of a socio-cultural theory that focuses on ways children play with language and context as they participate in cultural practices such as storytelling and name-calling to create ‘possible worlds’ and ‘potential selves’.

Structure and content of friendship reasoning: A comparison across different Western and Asian cultures

Michaela C. Gummerum, Max Planck Institute of Human Development
Monika Keller, Max Planck Institute of Human Development

Friendship understanding has been rarely explored from a cross-cultural perspective. In the present study children (ages 7, 9 years) and adolescents (ages 12, 15 years) from 4 different Western and Asian societies have been asked about friendship intimacy and closeness. The statements were scored independently according to developmental levels and content aspects. The results reveal an interaction of developmental level, content and culture. They confirm differences found between more individualistic and more collectivistic societies. Participants from more collectivist societies are advanced in their developmental stage of reasoning. Comparing content at different stages reveals similarities and differences of reasoning.

Paper Session 4

Biology

Chair: Maria Lyra, University of Pernambuco

The Psychological “Evolution” of Knowledge

Terrance Brown, Chicago IL

In contradistinction to claims that knowledge arises either from the functioning of biologically formed “acquisition devices,” “modules,” “faculties,” etc., or from recording perceptual experience of a reality fixed outside the knower, constructivism claims that knowledge arises through the interaction of the internal structures of the knowing subject with the environment. Moreover, the interactionist perspective asserts that the constructive processes involved resemble the processes of organic evolution. Because our knowledge of how organic evolution works is itself evolving, much confusion has arisen about just what the constructivist thesis means. This paper examines the impact of emerging biological theory on constructivist epistemology.

Primary, secondary and tertiary reactions of young Yellow-crowned parakeets in play

Mildred Funk, Roosevelt University

Young Yellow-crowned parakeets demonstrated all the Piagetian circular reactions in spontaneous activities during their juvenile stage (before 10 months of age). Many of the activities were the same as those listed in the “Operational Causality” and “Reacting to Objects” scales in Uzgiris and Hunt (1989).

Norm of reaction, accommodation, and adaptation to changing social environments

Jean-Louis Gariepy, UNC – Chapel Hill

We examined how pairs of male mice from selectively bred high- and low-aggressive lines accommodate to a dominant or a submissive status after an extended period of interaction. 40% of low-aggression males achieved dominance over their high-aggression partner. Comparisons of interactive patterns before and after established dominance showed evidence for accommodation of conserved processes of adaptation. In relation to the process of phenocopy outlined by Piaget, the greater flexibility of low-aggression males suggests that this phenotype is largely supported by the maintenance of external conditions, by contrast to the high-aggression phenotype, which appears more genetically assimilated.

Thu 3:00-3:15 Break

Thu 3:15-4:45 Lake BOD1

Board of Directors Meeting

Thu 3:15-4:45 Bulls’ Head SY03

Symposium Session 3

Session withdrawn

Symposium Session 4

Developing a (Male) Sense of a (Heterosexual) Self: Positioning Strategies in 10-, 12-, and 14-Year-Olds on the Topic of Girls and Sexuality

Organizer: Michael Bamberg, Clark University

The four symposium presentations are addressing identity formation processes in the transitions from childhood to adolescence, all sharing the basic assumption that “identity” (better: “identities”) are understood as discursive achievements, i.e., as locally situated and interactively accomplished. Consequently, the analyses will focus on how participants in their interactions (with one another) discursively position their “selves” in relationship to such topics as “girls” and “sexuality” and in relationship to each other (and an adult moderator). The data discussed in the presentations stem from the same cross-sectional (and longitudinal) project on adolescent (male) identity formation processes in 10-, 12-, and 14-year old boys, who (in the segments presented for analysis) discuss as topics “girls” (“girlfriends”) and “sexuality”.

In order to be able to extrapolate the differences in the positioning repertoires across the three age cohorts that are assumed to represent developmental differences, the theoretical framework of the project will be briefly introduced followed by two presentations of interactions of a 10-year-old group, one of a 12-year-old, and one of a 14-year-old group. The presenters will show video-clips and present the analyses of the positioning repertoires with detailed transcripts of the segments. The fourth presentation will lead toward an audience discussion by opening up and reorienting toward the theoretical framework within which identity and self are being analyzed.

Although the symposium is not having PLAY as its central theme, the presentations nevertheless will document that identities in the conversational data presented in the four talks are “play-like” frames, offered as exploratory projects, testing out interactively which position is acceptable and which one isn’t, ready to withdraw or alter whatever has been offered. We hope with this symposium to contribute methodologically as well as theoretically to a central theme of developmental theorizing, i.e., the social-interactive constitution of a sense of self and identity.

“We Shoved like Three Girls at a Time”—Hegemonic and Weak Masculinities in 10-Year-Olds

Mariana Barcinski, Clark University

“You Always Hung Around that Fruit-Punch-Girl”—Status versus Vulnerability in ‘Having a Girlfriend’ in 10-Year-old Boys

Caitlin Morey, Clark University
Amelia Dietsche, Clark University

“Go Ahead, Take a Punch at Me”—Adult Status Orientations in ‘Having a Girlfriend’ in 12-Year-Olds

Jacob Farwell, Clark University

“I Think this Conversation Bothers a Few Kids in this Room”—Sexuality and Adult Forms of Positioning in 14-year-old boys

Steven P. Power, Clark University

Poster Session 1

Posters will be available for viewing all day. Authors will be present from 3:00-4:15.

Is it possible to teach wisdom and if so can teachers, in general, do it? [1]

Helena Marchand, Lisbon University

The effect of a fantasy context on preschoolers’ analogical problem solving [2]

Rebekah A Richert, University of Virginia

The role of contrasting information in children’s inductive inferences [3]

Chris A Lawson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Charles W Kalish, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Developing a Theory on the Stages of Energy Concept Development [4]

Xiufeng Liu, State University of New York at Buffalo
Sarah Collard, State University of New York at Buffalo

Focused attention and object play in 10-month-olds [5]

Eleanor Schneider, University of Haifa
Anat Scher, University of Haifa

Ego development predicts change in psychopathology over time [6]

Stefan Ehrlich, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Gil G. Noam, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Meaning Equivalence self-scoring tests enhance deep comprehension of the conceptual content of learned material [7]

Uri Shafrir, University of Toronto
Irving Sigel, Educational Testing Service
Kavita Seeratan, University of Toronto

The Development of Sorting Skills in 18- to 48-month-old Children [8]

Ulrich Mueller, Pennsylvania State University
K H Grobman, Pennsylvania State University
Leia M Sills, Pennsylvania State University

Suspension of Disbelief: A Cognitive Developmental Perspective [9]

Gabriel M Trionfi, Clark University
Marianne Wiser, Clark University

Examining the Relation between Children’s Behavior Characteristics, Parent-Child Interactions, and Attention Regulation in Preschoolers [10]

Julia B Robinson, University of Louisville
Barbara Burns, University of Louisville

The do-it-yourself-guide to verb learning: Infants utilize a coalition of cues [11]

Khara L. Pence, University of Delaware
Roberta M. Golinkoff, University of Delaware
Rachel Pulverman, University of Delaware
Jennifer L. Sootsman, University of Chicago
Dede Addy, University of Delaware
Sara Salkind, University of Delaware
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University

How Naive Theory Interferes with Acquisition of Sophisticated Theory?: Stubbornness of naive theory in reorganizing a cognitive structure [12]

Hiroshi Maeda, International Christian University

Creativity in children’s play and their story telling [13]

Elizabeth Hammond, Eastern Michigan University
Jeffrey L Dansky, Eastern Michigan University

Using video documentation to support teachers as researchers: Understanding the child’s construction of social-emotional knowledge through dramatic play [14]

Elizabeth Pufall, The Boulder Journey School
Camille Armstrong, The Boulder Journey School
Ellen Hall, The Boulder Journey School

Pretend Play and Linguistic Development in Deaf Children Between 3 and 6 years of Age [15]

Núria Silvestre Benach, Autonomous University of Barcelona

On the role of intelligence on emotional comprehension [16]

Carlos Hernández-Blasi, Universitat Jaume I
Francisco Pons, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Cinta Escalera, Valencian Institute for Handicapped People
Ana Suco, Universitat Jaume I

A developmental analysis of children’s understanding of the concept of war. Children in post-war Yugoslavia [17]

Jose P. de Vincenzo, National Louis University
Ivana Dimitrijevic, British Hellenic University
Geraldine Becker, National Louis University
Judith Lanni-Ruggeri, National Louis University

Representing Representation: Towards a Mature Understanding of Interpretive Diversity and Intentional Reasoning [18]

Jesse C Phillips, University of British Columbia
Ulrich Teucher, University of British Columbia

Pretense and deception in birds [19]

Mildred S. Funk, Roosevelt University

Cultural differences in map representation and experimenter mediation [20]

Gowri Parameswaran, SUNY

The effect of education on children’s drawings of emotionally characterised figures [21]

Esther Burkitt, University of Portsmouth
Martyn Barrett, University of Surrey

Multiage Programming Effects on Cognitive Developmental Level and Reading Achievement in Elementary School Children [22]

Andrea M. Fosco, Illinois Institute of Technology
Robert Schleser, Illinois Institute of Technology
Gregory Stasi, Illinois Institute of Technology
Jolynne Andal, Illinois Institute of Technology

Peer Perceptions of Children Engaged In Rough and Tumble Play: Popularity and Strength as a Function of Gender [23]

Gregory Stasi, Illinois Institute of Technology
Robert Schleser, Illinois Institute of Technology
Andrea M. Fosco, Illinois Institute of Technology
Rene Pichler, Illinois Institute of Technology

Creativity in the development of autonomy [24]

Maria Helena Novaes, Pontifícea Universidade Católica
Suely de Almeida Dessandre , Pontifícea Universidade Católica
Ana Carolina Monnerat Fioravanti, Universidade Federal Fluminense

Toddlers’ processing of affect in symbolic self-soothing: The early development of symbolic play skills [25]

Valerie M. Haskell, Clark University
Jaan Valsiner, Clark University
James P. McHale, Clark University

Conceptions of Personal Prerogative in Very Young Children [26]

Elsa K. Weber, Purdue University

Is God a Big Person? Culture, Cognition and Anthropomorphism in Children’s Concepts of God [27]

Melanie A Nyhof, University of Pittsburgh
Carl N Johnson, University of Pittsburgh

Number and Spatial Development Among the Spokane Indian Elementary School Children [28]

Jonas A Cox, Gonzaga University
Samuel G Mahaffy, Wellpinit Indian Reservation School

Scientific Explanations for Physical Phenomena in Preschool [29]

Shira M Peterson, University of Rochester
Lucia A French, University of Rochester

The Communication Development of a Deaf Infant [30]

Silvana Griz, Federal University of Pernambuco
Maria C.D.P. Lyra, Federal University of Pernambuco

Development of Representational and Cognitive Skills: Environmental & Constitutional Factors that Influence Performance in Young Children [31]

Catherine C. Ayoub, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Kathleen Guinee, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Paper Session 5

Play at school

Chair: Jeanette M Gallagher, Temple University

Play and its impact on the educational community

Maria R Ofele, Inst. for Research & Education in Play

The paper is based upon some research work conducted at a bilingual (Spanish-English) school in the City of Buenos Aires, which choose the play as the subject area for an institutional project along the school year. Two different trails were opened: the impact on the pedagogic environment, and the play possibilities as an educationl tool; and the prospective impact this project may have on recess and, indirectly, on out-of-school spots were analyzed. The outcomes from the data collected show significant information: major changes are recorded in the teacher/student area, which unveils enriching experiences for both of them.

Constructing play on the first day of preschool

David W Kritt, College of Staten Island/CUNY
Joyce Terzakos, College of Staten Island/CUNY

Observational data from the first day of preschool for a group of twelve toddlers is presented. A constructivist analysis of toddlers’ initial participation in a structured peer group setting provides insight into the mutual emergence of symbolic play and social interaction. The dialectical tension between children’s exploratory play activity and formative influences in the classroom is examined. Implications for child development and preschool education will be discussed.

Puzzlement, Play and Piaget: The Role of Conflict and Contradiction in Preschool Children’s Sociomoral Development

Stephanie G Lazzaro, Montgomery County Community College
Jeanette M Gallagher, Temple University

The purpose of this paper is threefold: 1) to provide a meaning base for Piaget’s concept of contradiction which may be implemented by teachers and parents of young children; 2) to clarify why pretend (spontaneous) play is a key setting for children’s construction of morality; and 3) to offer examples of early childhood classrooms which support the equilibration process through their use of space and time. Transcriptions of children’s play dialogues will be examined to illustrate the role of equilibration in pretend play. Resolution of social and moral contradictions will be highlighted. The theoretical necessity of including ample opportunities for pretend play in early childhood curricula will be addressed.

Rules of childhood or childhood of rules? Normative development in play: Piaget and Vygotskij revisited.

Fabio Paglieri, University of Siena, Italy

This paper investigates the issue of play rules, criticizing both Piaget’s theory of replacement (rules substitute symbolism in children play) and Vygotskij’s theory of identification (each make-believe situation implies a system of rules, and vice versa). A more refined account is provided by a theory of rules development, which considers social negotiation in symbolic play and rules acceptance in games as related stages of a continuous process. This claim is framed in the general cognitive model of social action developed by Conte and Castelfranchi. It also suggests survival of symbolic play throughout adulthood, against Piaget’s and Vygotskij’s opinion.

Children’s conceptions of illness: A look backward, forward, and inward

Judith L Newman, Pennsylvania State University
Paulina Janovsky, Pennsylvania State University

Reviewing research on children’s concepts of physical illness may provide insight as to ways to appropriately assess children’s understanding of the types of neurological/behavioral disorders that are increasingly present in the classroom (e.g., attention deficit disorder, Tourette syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder). Such information could guide educational interventions about the disorder with classmates of the diagnosed child. Much of the research on children’s physical illness concepts reveals a rather consistent progression through stages that are often described as prelogical, concrete logical, and formal logical. The methodology of such studies will be critiqued and alternatives to the structuralist theoretical framework will be discussed.

Thu 3:15-4:45 Steamboat PS06

Paper Session 6

Spatial and Mathematical Reasoning

Chair: David H Uttal, Northwestern University

Informal arithmetic in Toddlers and Preschoolers

Peter F. Gillette, UC-Berkeley

Three experiments address the performance of young children, aged 32 months to 65 months, on small set, simple arithmetic problems. Children’s ability to solve these problems is considered using two paradigm types: active and passive. These measures differ in whether the child is asked to interact physically with the stimuli. In all three experiments, children did well in their solutions in the active paradigm. The passive paradigm showed a dual pattern of resonse: asked to say whether a result was “okay” or “not okay,” children performed poorly. Asked to predict the result of the transformation using a number word, they performed well.

How to solve the language learning task: Speech-gesture mismatches as an index of spatial language development in Turkish children

Asli H Ozyurek, Koc University
Sotaro Kita, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Shanley Allen, Boston University
Idil Kokal, Koc University
Reyhan Turanli, Koc University
Amanda Brown, Boston University

Previous literature has shown that transitions in children’s cognitive changes (i.e., learning Piagetian conversation tasks) are revealed in their gestures long before they are revealed in their speech as indexed by their speech and gesture mismatches (Goldin-Meadow et al ,1993).We analyze Turkish children’s speech and gesture combinations as they learn how to use spatial language. At 3 and 5 years of age Turkish children can mostly talk about one element of a motion event (i.e., path or manner) but not both due to syntacic complexity of such constructions Yet their gestures reveal the additional information not expressed in their speech. Turkish children then can express both elements in both modalities long before they can do so in their speech. We argue that Turkish children’ s gestures index their stages of development in learning spatial language.

Rethinking the relation of Piagetian theory to semiotic activity: The complexity of reference

Joe Becker, University of Illinois at Chicago

In Piagetian theory, as schemes becomes more coordinated they constitute a system that exists in its own right and generates sets of possibilities. The empirical world is then seen as a subset of those possibilities. In non-Piagetian research in the development of mathematical cognition, similar shifts have been found in children’s sign use. This allows cross-fertilization. Piagetian theory is opened to include an understanding of how sign use extends the construction of knowledge. Non-Piagetian approaches to the development of mathematical knowledge are enhanced by Piagetian insight into the role of part-whole relations in the formation of effective sign systems.

Testing a neo-Piagetian model of the water level task

Sergio Morra, Universita’ di Genova

A neo-Piagetian model of the water level task involves the following predictions. Three variables (physical knowledge, M capacity, and field independence) are jointly needed to account for children’s performance. An M capacity of e+2, e+3, or e+4 is respectively needed for drawing water lines (a) parallel to the bottle’s bottom, (b) horizontal on vertical and horizontal bottles, (c) horizontal also on tilted bottles. In participants with M=e+4 or more, field independence will correlate negatively with both angular error and the within-subject standard deviation of responses to tilted bottles. These predictions were tested successfully (with one exception) on 337 children aged 5-13.

Ontogenesis of money

Gustavo Faigenbaum, University of Maryland

How does an individual become an exchange agent? This paper discusses social and cognitive research, with the aim of identifying developmental milestones in the emergence of the “economic subject.” Research on early social and linguistic acquisitions is combined with illustrations from spontaneous observations, in order to offer a hypothetical road-map of how an individual comes to be a money user and a full member of the market society. Both cognitive skills and normative practices are taken into consideration to explain the preconditions for participating in monetary transactions.

Thu 4:45-5:00 Break

Plenary Session 2

The disappearance of play from the early childhood classroom

Vivian Paley (Author and Educator)

Anyone who spends time with young children quickly recognizes their passionate attachment to fantasy and their need to alter time and place in rapid scene changes. Put any group of children together and they will make up stories that run alongside our own. It is an arrangement that has functioned well until now. But fantasy play is at the barricades with fewer and fewer teachers willing to step up and defend the natural style and substance of early childhood, the source of all this vocabulary building and decoding Socratic questioning.

Once accepted as the most essential feature of the kindergarten age, play must now be justified in the words and practices of the new “early literacy.” Though fantasy propels the child to poetic heights over and above his ordinary level and was considered the original pathway to literacy, it is now perceived by some as an obstacle to learning. We are allowed to nourish play only so long as it initiates reading, writing, and computing.

We continue to call play the work of young children while reducing its appearance to brief interludes. There is barely time to develop a plot or transform a bad guy into a hero. The educational establishment has ceased admiring the stunning originality of its youngest students, preferring lists of numerical and alphabetical achievement goals.

We who value play most may be at fault. We complain of unwanted drills that steal away our time yet we are the facilitators of the new performance standards. By not documenting what we are forced to give up we have created a void quickly filled by those with little faith in play.

Thu 6:15-8:00 Western Stage House

Reception

Reception (no host bar)

Friday, June 6, A.M.

Symposium Session 5

Play as Socio-Political Process in Youth

Organizer: Colette Daiute, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Discussant: Michael Bamberg, Clark University

Theory and research on play focus on young children, although play also serves serious developmental functions across the life span. The proposed symposium presents theory-based case studies to illustrate the forms and functions of play among older children and adolescents in schools, group homes, and community settings. The papers have in common the idea that play occurs in young people’s verbal expressions, media, and performances as responses to and transformations of oppressive circumstances. The papers differ in their formulations of more mature play and the specific theoretical concepts they present to define play as critical social analysis related to development. Colette Daiute reviews theoretical functions of play as they apply to the circumstances and concerns of older children living in challenging environments. These ideas about critical coping are demonstrated via descriptions of how children from diverse backgrounds played with a prevention curriculum via strategic uses of autobiographical narrating to conform to curriculum values and fictional narrating to express knowledge about injustices that made following the curriculum difficult. Louise Ammentorp analyzes devices in an arts program that create contexts, motivations, and skills for academic literacy development among African-American fifth graders. Eduardo Vianna draws on Vygotskian theory to demonstrate how boys creating a film in their group home reflected critically on their experience and, consequently, subverted power relations to explore new motives via the dynamics of play. Cynthia Lightfoot offers examples from adolescent risk-taking and other aesthetic activities to illustrate how expressive forms create a liminal space between what is an what could be by establishing an outsidedness essential to the “creative understanding.” Across these papers, play is, thus, represented as transformed cultural expectations, as a context for creating motivations for skills, as critically simulated worlds, and as mediation between experience and reflection.

Social arts and the Development of Critical Consciousness

Colette Daiute, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Not Just "Child's Play": The Arts as a Tool for Learning

Louise Ammentorp, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Filming life as a developmental tool in a group home for boys

Eduardo Vianna, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Mask, Masquerade, & the Self Sublime: An Exploration of Adolescents’ Aesthetic Activities

Cynthia Lightfoot, Penn State University

Fri 9:00-10:30 Sauganash E IS03

Invited Symposium 3

Pretend play and the symbolic mind

Organizer: Angeline Lillard, University of Virginia

Piaget thought of pretend play, along with language and deferred imitation, as indicating that young children have begun to acquire mental representations. These representations serve as mental symbols for the nonpresent “reality” of what is being pretended. This symposium considers Piaget's view that pretend play marks the onset of symbolic thought from several angles.

First, John Flavell will clarify for us Piaget's view that pretend play is symbolic, explaining what was meant by this claim. Angeline Lillard will then explore how infants begin to enter pretend worlds, by presenting recent research on how mothers convey pretense to toddlers. Changes in mothers' voices, what they talk about, how they move, their joint attention behaviors, smiling, and social referencing are considered, along with young children's apparent comprehension of their mothers' pretense behaviors. Next Robert Kavanaugh and Joseph Lucia will discuss empirical evidence for the onset of symbolic skills in pretense. Their work compares children's performance on the Harris and Kavanaugh pretense understanding tasks, DeLoache’s model room test for symbolic understanding, and children's free pretend play. Finally, Rakoczy, Striano, and Tomasello will present work considering how children begin to engage in pretense actions, in concert with their view that early pretense is not symbolic.

Piaget's view of pretend and symbolic thought

John Flavell, Stanford University

How mothers present pretend play to young children

Angeline Lillard, University of Virginia

Relationships among emerging symbol systems

Robert Kavanaugh, Williams College
Joseph P. Lucia, Williams College

Young children's acquisition and developing understanding of pretense actions

Hannes Rakoczy, Tricia Striano, & Michael Tomasello
Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Symposium Session 6

Learning in Children’s Museums: Design, Process, and Outcomes

Organizer: Eric Amsel, Weber State University

The first children’s museum opened in Brooklyn, NY in 1899, and there are now well over 200 such institutions in the United States alone. Designed to complement and augment efforts in schools, childcare centers, and homes to educate children, children’s museums focus on a variety of themes and subjects, from art to science. There has been a growing awareness among psychologists and educators of the significance and impact of children’s museums as a context for learning and development. The goal of the present symposium is not only to better understand children’s learning in children’s museum contexts, but also to more closely examine what has been learned about how such contexts promote learning. Presentations will touch on three related issues. First, some presentations describe new evidence of children’s learning in museum contexts. The evidence of such learning comes from a case study, naturalistic study, and quasi-experimental study of children’s experiences and interactions in museums on a single occasion and over repeated museum visits. Second, other presentations discuss how children’s museums are designed to promote learning. Presentations focus on design decisions leading to the development of a specific exhibit which is found in different museums and to the creation of an entire space of a particular museum dedicated to infant/toddler development and parental engagement. The third issue, addressed by all, concerns the socio-cultural and constructivist basis of the process by which children learn in children’s museums. Presentations will outline varying assumptions regarding children’s learning in museum contexts, with attention given to the roles of social and/or experiential factors in the nature of children’s learning and the role of parents in museum contexts. In lieu of a discussant, audience participation will be elicited as a way to discuss issues of theory, design, and research bearing on learning in children’s museums and avenues of professional involvement in children’s museums.

Constructivists in Children’s Museums

George Forman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Children’s Science Learning in a Museum Context

Harriet Tenenbaum, Harvard University Graduate School of Education
Gabrielle Rappolt Schlichtmann, Harvard University Graduate School of Education
Virginia Zanger, The Children’s Museum (Boston)

The social mediation of learning in children’s museum contexts

Eric Amsel, Weber State University
Natalie Naluai, Weber State University
Lynne Goodwin, Treehouse Children’s Museum

A place to play, a place to learn

Jeri Robinson, The Children’s Museum (Boston)

Fri 9:00-10:30 Steamboat PS07

Paper Session 7

Early childhood play

Chair: Judith L Newman, Pennsylvania State University

Process versus content: Patterns of play in Japanese and U.S. mother-preschooler dyads

Tracy A Dennis, NYU School of Medicine
Pamela M Cole, Pennsylvania State University
Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, NIMH
Ichiro Mizuta, Kobe College

There is significant debate regarding the utility of the individualism-collectivism dichotomy in cross-cultural research. In the present study, 30 U.S. and 30 Japanese mother-preschooler dyads were observed during unstructured play (M age 55.8 months, SD 4.9). In U.S. dyads, actions and speech appeared to reflect slightly greater emphasis on individualism whereas Japanese dyads expressed greater collectivism, though many similarities also emerged. In contrast to this content-driven analysis, analysis of maternal contingent responsiveness suggested that U.S. mothers responded to child social bids with predominate individualism whereas Japanese mothers tended to match the nature of child bids. The utility of a process versus content analysis of individualism and collectivism is discussed.

The impact of play on the oral and written storytelling of able 5-7 year olds

David Whitebread, University of Cambridge
Helen Jameson, Culford School

This paper reports an empirical study of the impact of play on the oral and written storytelling of able 5-7 year olds. Following Sylva et al (1976) 35 children in an English independent school were asked to produce oral and written stories after they had been read a story and had experience of story props under ‘play’, ‘taught’ and ‘control’ conditions. In the ‘taught’ condition the children were more likely to include conflicts and resolutions in their stories. However, in the ‘play’ condition they produced oral stories with more confidence and wrote more creatively than in the other two conditions.

Socialization through play of 5-year-old children in pre-school

Maria J.S. Lins, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Lindalva F. Da Silva, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

This paper focuses the process of socialization of 5-year children according to the principles of the Theory of Piaget in a pre-school in Rio de Janeiro. The role of relations in school was important to observation. We investigated how children understood themselves and also other people through the way they established some rules in popular games they used to play. Play was the main activity that informed us how these children improved their social development. Children were observed through play. They could show how they organized themselves during play. We noticed new social abilities which indicated the process of socialization.

Adult-Child Play Interaction within the ZPD: Dynamics, Variability, and How Scaffolding Works when it Works (or Doesn’t)

Nira Granott, Tufts University

Scaffolding mechanisms that adults use within the child’s ZPD during adult-child play are analyzed and demonstrated in research findings. It is suggested that to effectively scaffold children’s development, adults vary their scaffolding level according to on-going variability in children’s play. Successful scaffolding is defined and its attributes and mechanisms are identified, as are the attributes of scaffolding that is ineffective in raising the child’s play levels. The analysis focuses on both partners’ activities, interrelates them across time, and examines feedback loops, reactions, reciprocities, and delayed responses, while considering both cognitive and emotional aspects of the play activity.

Fri 10:30-10:45 Break

Plenary Session 3

Interpreting children’s play as cultural activity

Artin Göncü, University of Illinois at Chicago

In my presentation I will maintain that children’s play is a cultural activity of meaning-making and as such play can be best understood by adopting an interdisciplinary stance towards its study. The claim that play is a cultural activity can be supported on two grounds. First, children’s play presents cultural variations as a result of the ecological context and the adult values within which it is embedded. Second, children’s play is an activity of interpretation in which children make an effort to test their understandings of cultural experiences. An examination of the kinds of play in which children engage and the kinds of events represented in play supports this. To illustrate these ideas on empirical grounds, I will present data from my ongoing work on the play of urban, low-income African-American and European-American children and rural, low-income Turkish children. To discuss the influence of contextual factors and adult values on children’s play, I will discuss cultural variations in the constraints imposed on play by adults’ views and structural features of children’s communities such as income and education level of parents and the availability of toys and play partners. Afterwards, I will describe children’s actual play activities to illustrate that both what children represent in play and how they do so are extensions of their cultures. I will then discuss the educational implications of conceptualizing children’s play as a cultural activity. I will end with a statement on why such a conceptualization of play calls for an interdisciplinary approach for its study.

Fri 12:00-12:30 Sauganash E MMTG

Members Meeting

Annual JPS Members Meeting. All JPS members are encouraged to attend

Fri 12:00-1:30 Lunch

Friday, June 6, P.M.

Fri 1:30-3:00 Bulls’ Head SY07

Symposium Session 7

Transition to Literacy Through Language

Organizer: Elaine Reese, Clark University
Discussant: Penelope G Vinden, Clark University

Children’s early language and narrative skills have been posed as a critical factor in their later literacy skills and success in school. This position has its roots in Vygotsky’s (1978) and Nelson’s (1996) perspectives on cognitive development, in which social interaction, especially through the medium of language, advances children’s cognitive skills. The papers in this symposium evaluate this claim in children from a diverse range of cultures, using both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

McCabe, Colinet and Champion conducted an in-depth analysis using three different methods of coding seven-year-old Haitian American children’s narratives. Judgments of narrative quality varied dramatically depending on the coding approach, with narrative strengths for the Haitian American children revealed using an Africanist analysis. MacDonald, Barber, Finau, McNaughton, and Reese present a longitudinal study of the language, narrative, and literacy skills of four-year-olds in three cultures: Maori, Tongan, and Pakeha (European) New Zealanders. Links between children’s language, narrative, and literacy skills are best understood from an intracultural perspective. Children’s narrative and print skills in their home language were strongly linked to their English vocabulary skills. Dickinson details a professional development intervention that took place with preschool teachers of low-income children. Teachers and supervisors in an experimental group participated in a course designed to deepen their pedagogical content knowledge. The teacher intervention enhanced experimental children’s vocabulary knowledge, literacy, and phonological sensitivity.

The general conclusions that emerge from this group of papers are: 1) multiple means of assessing narrative quality are necessary when assessing narrative strengths, especially in cultural research; 2) language, narrative, and literacy are interrelated skills; and 3) families and preschools are both important in attempts to enhance low-income children’s early language and literacy.

The Whole World Could Hear: The Structure of Haitian American Children’s Narratives

Allyssa McCabe, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Yvanne Colinet, University Massachusetts Lowell
Tempii Champion, University of South Florida

Language and Literacy in Maori, Tongan, and Pakeha Families in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Shelley MacDonald, Woolf Fisher Research Centre
Julia Barber, Woolf Fisher Research Centre
Christine Finau, Woolf Fisher Research Centre
Stuart McNaughton, Woolf Fisher Research Centre
Elaine Reese, Clark University

Enhancing Early Literacy Development by Deepening Preschool Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge

David Dickinson, Boston College

Invited Symposium 4

Therapeutic Advantages of Play

Organizer: Cindy Dell Clark, Penn State Delaware County
Discussant: Wendy L. Haight, University of Illinois

Both in clinical experience with youth, and in the context of children’s everyday lives, play has therapeutic advantage. We will explore the therapeutic uses of play, both as formal play therapy and as part of children’s informal, everyday coping with stressful burdens (of diabetes or asthma). Presenters include two experienced play therapists, who will ponder how the process of play therapy can illuminate our general understanding of play. Also included will be insights from a study of children coping with the stresses of illness through their own, unprescribed play.

Play therapy can be formalized and guided, that is, led by a trained play therapist who works with the child in a clinical context. Therapists serve as guiding hostesses for children’s therapeutic play, in order to “facilitate normal child development, but also to alleviate abnormal behavior” (Schaefer 1993). Therapists observe the child’s play as it is situated in a culturally sanctioned activity, and aim to interpret the child’s play in terms which the child accepts and understands. In a sense, an experienced play therapist has undergone situated learning about play, at the hands of children with whom the therapist has explored children’s concerns. For the therapist does not usurp the child’s active role in their own therapy, but provides a conducive context in which to mutually negotiate and frame interpretations, through play. Two therapists will share what they know about play, through the situated learning of their clinical practice.

In order for play to be therapeutic, it need not necessarily involve formal participation by a play therapist. American children use play spontaneously in daily life, at times enacting play that reflects their own troubling issues. This will be demonstrated, in our session, through findings from an ethnographic study of children suffering from diabetes or severe asthma (Clark 2003). Children were found to play out thorny issues of illness and its disruptive treatment, making and remaking sense of the illness experience through play.

Learning from Play Therapy I

Myra Lawrence, Illinois School of Professional Psychology

Learning from Play Therapy II

Carol Raynor, Butterfield Youth Services

Children’s Play in Chronic Illness

Cindy Dell Clark, Penn State University

Fri 1:30-3:00 Merchant SY08

Symposium Session 8

Contextual Influences on Collaboration in Play: Implications for Early Education

Organizer: Susan L Golbeck, Rutgers University
Discussant: Richard De Lisi, Rutgers University

Pretend play is a core feature of cognitive activity during the early childhood period. It supports understanding as well as emotional expression. Psychologists have long recognized both the affective and cognitive significance of play, although the precise mechanisms of its functioning remain in dispute. However, the role of play in early education programs is less clear. In many traditional (e.g., Bank Street) as well as contemporary approaches (e.g., High Scope) play has been accorded a central position in the classroom. However, in others it has been relegated to a secondary status and is viewed largely as an opportunity for energy release. Among many early childhood educators there is a growing concern that opportunities for play in school will diminish as schools increasingly focus on content area curriculum standards. One solution to this dilemma is to better articulate relationships between play, collaboration and children’s learning in school. The papers in this symposium will explore these issues.

Two themes link the work to be presented here. First, play serves a self regulatory function for the child. In play, the child can feely choose to interact or not. And, in the course of interaction the child can transform situations to better suit personal goals. Yet, interaction in the social group constrains these transformations challenging the individual to adapt and to maintain group functioning. A second theme is the influence of context on play and collaboration. Context includes the physical setting, the materials, the presence of adults, other children, expectations for behavior, and more. The quality of children’s collaboration in play varies as a function of contextual factors. Such factors must be taken into account as educators plan for young children’s learning.

Papers from four research programs concerning collaboration and play will be presented. Leseman considers the ecobehavioral structure of early childhood education settings and the ways in which such structure affords/restrains collaborative-constructive behavior. Golbeck & Eberly consider children’s collaborative activity with blocks. Data from three studies suggest that the quality of children’s collaboration during block play varies as a function of gender, task structure and adult presence. Caulfield considers children’s collaboration during pretend play with replica figures. Here, the contextual variable was type of toy (Power Ranger figure or family figure). Richner & Nicolopoulou focus on play and storytelling in a preschool classroom where children told stories as part of an ongoing storytelling and story-acting practice. Story telling and play fostered narrative development while building a common classroom culture.

Taken together, these papers illustrate diverse methodologies and perspectives on the process of play and collaboration in early childhood education. Two of the studies were based upon observations of children in ongoing educational programs. Two were conducted in structured observational situations. All four are grounded in a strong socio-cognitive orientation towards play.

Peer cooperation and cognitive co-construction in kindergarten: Effects of task structure, teacher involvement and children’s personality characteristics

Paul P Leseman, University of Amsterdam

Building with others: Contextual influences on young children’s geometric understanding in block play

Susan L Golbeck, Rutgers University
Jody Eberly, The College of New Jersey

Differences in collaboration in preschoolers’ pretend play with action figures and family figures

Matthew J Caulfield, New Jersey City University

Follow the leader? Girls’ and Boys’ Use of Group Storytelling in the preschool Classroom

Elizabeth S Richner, Lehigh University
Ageliki Nicolopoulou, Lehigh University

Symposium 9

Novelty and directionality in developing systems

Session withdrawn

Fri 3:00-3:15 Break

Fri 3:15-4:30 Sauganash E PL04

Plenary Session 4

The development and function of play: Rough-and-tumble play and pretend play

Anthony Pellegrini, University of Minnesota
Peter Smith, University of London

We will ground this presentation in the developmental tradition of Darwin, Groos, and Piaget. This orientation has development unfolding as a process of person-context interactions. Judgments about developmental function are made in terms of design features, cost: benefit analyses, and empirical evidence from deprivation and supplementation (training) studies. We also consider two metaphors for the function of play: Scaffolding (deferred benefits) and metamorphic (immediate benefits).

We first consider the main forms of play in evolutionary perspective, highlighting features such as pretence in play that (with a few possible exceptions) are specifically human. We focus our presentation on rough-and-tumble play (found in many mammalian species), and pretend play.

We first define rough-and-tumble play (R&T) in terms of behavioral, structural, and ecological characteristics. We then document costs associated with boys’ and girls’ R&T (in terms of time and caloric expenditure) from childhood through adolescence. We conclude that R&T probably serves immediate functions in both childhood and adolescence, especially for boys, although deferred benefits are also possible.

We then define pretend play and consider it’s universality in different cultural contexts. An earlier generation of research on pretend and sociodramatic play, and the effects of ‘play training’, are critically reviewed. More recently, pretend play has featured as one likely component of the acquisition of a ‘theory of mind’ in childhood. The evidence for this is considered. It is argued that pretend play may be a facilitator of theory of mind, but that the evidence does not justify concluding that it has a necessary function in this respect.

Fri 4:30-4:45 Break

Symposium Session 10

Watching our language: Peering at reform, teaching, and learning through the lenses of “work” and “play”

Organizers:
Dirck Roosevelt, University of Michigan
Helen Featherstone, Michigan State University
Discussant: Eleanor Duckworth, Harvard University

Language shapes perception, constitutes worlds, renders, through its lacunae, other possible worlds moot. Correspondingly, the establishment of a rhetoric is a bid to govern the thinking of those who come within its sway. This symposium addresses hidden assumptions in the current discourse of school reform, ones that we argue are consequential for reform efforts. We argue that one root metaphor has become so omnipresent in discussions of schooling that it has become virtually invisible: that of work. We advance the contrasting construct, once honored but now marginalized, of play. In addition to surfacing and critiquing the figures of work and play, we use them as conceptual-analytic tools, demonstrating some of what is made visible by analyzing educational phenomena through these contrasting frames.

The symposium joins a long debate about the nature of childhood, the role of teachers, and the purposes of schooling. Learning as work is an omnipresent construct both in the everyday speech and in the standards and accountability rhetorics. In documents such as the NCTM (2000) Principles and Standards, the language of “task”—defined by the American Heritage Dictionary (1981) as “a difficult or tedious undertaking”—is ubiquitous. We ask how the frame of play helps us understand the educational cost of the worldview embedded in such language. In addition, we ask for a closer examination of possible meanings and valences for “work.”

Session Structure: After the chair provides a theoretical introduction, the presenters will pursue the lines of inquiry outlined above, using work and play as analytic lenses for each of three subjects: primary level education, mathematics standards and curriculum, professional development. The discussant will invite general discussion and then provide concluding observations.

Developing Practitioners: Work and Play in Re-learning Mathematics Teaching and Teacher Education

Helen Featherstone, Michigan State University
Kathrene Beasley, Lansing Public Schools

Play/work a dangerous dichotomy: Building theory from educational practice in urban schools

Thea Abu El-Haj, University of Pennsylvania
Katherine Schultz, University of Pennsylvania
Rhoda Kanevsky, Philadelphia Public Schools

Development as Work: Vocation and Engagement in the Montessori Method

Jackie Cossentino, University of Maryland

(Inter)Play vs. (School)Work: What Mass-Market Mathematics Curriculum Can’t Do

Bill Rosenthal, Hunter College

Fri 4:45-6:15 Sauganash E DISC

Book discussion session

Jean Piaget’s Play, Dreams, and Imitation

The discussion will be facilitated by:

Terrance Brown, Private Practice, Chicago
John Flavell, Stanford University
Susan Gelman, University of Michigan

Paper Session 8

Methods and Measures

Chair: Ulrich Teucher, University of British Columbia

Assessing intellectual development: Three approaches, one sequence

Theo L Dawson, Hampshire College

In this paper, I compare three developmental assessment systems, employed to score a set of 152 interviews of engineering students: the Perry Scoring System (Perry, 1970), the Hierarchical Complexity Scoring System (Dawson, 2002b) and the Lexical Abstraction Assessment System (LAAS) (Dawson & Wilson, in review). Overall, the Hierarchical Complexity Scoring System and Perry Scoring System agree with one another within the parameters of inter-rater agreement commonly reported for either one of the systems, and the Perry system and the LAAS agree with one another about as well as the LAAS and the Hierarchical Complexity Scoring System, upon which the LAAS is based.

Constructivist Artificial Intelligence

Filipo S Perotto, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Yu Chin Lai, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Rosa Maria Vicari, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Although Artificial Intelligence is an interdisciplinary science, it has been too tied to its classical paradigms, that tried either to make intelligence emerge from the construction of artificial neural networks or to model quite hard and limited cognitive structures, imported from non-constructivist psychological theories. This paper intends to show how the AI incorporated some concepts from Jean Piaget’s psychology, and how they can aid to overcome limitations that those models imposed. We will approach some epistemological orientations this new paradigm proposed, and we will also present some models the Constructivist AI already accomplished in the search for a computational agent that is really intelligent.

Piaget and deconstruction: Textbook authors tackle formal thought

Dalton Miller-Jones, Portland State University
Cynthia Miller-Jones, Portland School District
Jeanette McCarthy Gallagher, Temple University

Most textbook presentations of formal thought center upon the adolescent’s use of formal (propositional logic) and the ability to deal with “abstraction.” As a result, almost no attention is paid to later Piagetian research (including his revised model of equilibration) dealing with such areas as contradiction and reflecting abstraction. A review of textbooks is presented in a table which highlights relevant concepts from Piaget’s work that are either not included and/or not accurately portrayed. Suggestions for improvement of textbook writing are given.

Standardized Testing in the Early Grades: A Constructivist Perspective on Intelligence and Ability

David W Kritt, College of Staten Island/CUNY
Vivian Shulman, College of Staten Island/CUNY

Despite a generation of critique, the use of standardized tests with young urban children remains common. Data from a citywide effort using a standardized intelligence test to identify gifted children yielded data on both children selected for the gifted program and children who did not meet the criteria. Critical analysis of patterns of individuals’ subscale sores is used to critique the testing on its own terms and suggests the need for reconceptualizing children’s abilities and the educational response. A constructivist perspective on intelligence and ability will be emphasized in the discussion, which will also critique the widespread reliance on testing in the schools.

The Character of and Academic Response to Jean Piaget's Clinical Method in Its Early Years

Susan J Mayer, Harvard Graduate School of Education

This paper traces the evolution of Jean Piaget’s clinical method as evidenced in his five early books, and then analyzes the academic response to that method in England and in the United States as evidenced in scholarly reviews and in child development texts of the time.

Fri 4:45-6:15 Steamboat PS09

Paper Session 9

Culture and Education

Chair: Sandra L Fraley, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Play and Culture: Peer social organizations in three Costa Rican preschools

Helen M. Davis, UCLA/Neuropsychiatric Institute

A comparative study of three Costa Rican pre-K classrooms showed quantitative and qualitative differences in play and the social organizations of peers. The sites varied economically and socially: a rural, public preschool, an urban, University Lab preschool, and a preschool in an urban low-to-middle income neighborhood. Children’s spontaneous play was influenced by the cultural structuring of classroom activity settings and teachers’ socialization practices. Comparative ethnographic data show distinctive patterns of social play that support large group, elaborated and complex play with few leaders at the rural site and small group, inventive play with many leaders at the lab site.

Creative workshop and microgenetic analysis

Cristina Dias Allessandrini, Universidade de São Paulo
Lino de Macedo, Universidade de São Paulo

The Creative Workshop is analyzed in the context of creating and carrying out a project. The main purpose is to relate Piaget’s epistemological foundation to its practical application, making a microgenetic analysis of the subjects’ behaviors - children, teenagers and adults. The regulation process of the schemes of action examines, by means of interviews and observation, the cognitive-affective dimension of the subjects’ actions during these workshops. A segmentation of sequences is based on significant units progressively constructed by the interlocutors defined by the intentions-projects. Results focus on a reinterpretation of the Piagetian structures in terms of their functional conditions of construction.

Fostering Green Attitudes: Implementation and Evaluation of Three Environmental Education Programs

Michel Ferrari, University of Toronto
Leslie Pashby, University of Toronto
Karin Selst, University of Toronto
Joanna Weis, University of Toronto

Environmental education is a growing area of concern in the elementary classroom, especially as an area of moral education. Three studies are described that attempt to promote environmental awareness using different approaches to enhance student awareness of these key environmental concerns. All three studies show the challenges faced in implementing an environmental education that is sustainable and well integrated into the public school curriculum. Environmental education can lead children to consider how the way they live their lives affects the sort of environment they inhabit and to ponder the values (like empathy) that underlie our treatment of other living things.

Cultural continuity and community control as a hedge against social harm: A look at school achievement and drop-out rates in Canada’s First Nations’ Youth

Darcy Hallett, University of British Columbia
Christopher E Lalonde, University of Victoria
Grace Iarocci, Simon Fraser University
Leigh L Koopman, University of British Columbia
Julie L Desroches, Simon Fraser University

Although Aboriginal youth in Canada generally meet with less academic success than their non-Aboriginal counterparts, our research shows this only be true of some bands. In our study, we explore this variation by examining the relations between a set of community-level protective factors and the educational achievement data and drop-out rates, collapsed at the band level, for every First Nations youth in the province of British Columbia. What our evidence shows is that these measures of community control and cultural continuity provide a strong buffering effect, insulating Aboriginal youth from the risks of failing or dropping out of school.

Play in the early childhood classroom: What matters most?

Joan B McLane, Erikson Institute, Chicago

Play is central to the practice of most professionals who work with young children, and many regard it as the most developmentally appropriate way for young children to learn. However, in recent years, doubts and questions about the educational value of play have become widespread. This paper examines the beliefs and practices relating to play of 80 early childhood teachers in the Chicago area and discusses their implications for the current debate on play in educational settings. Findings indicate considerable agreement in what teachers say about play, as well as considerable variation in teachers' actual classroom practice, particularly in how they perceive their role in relation to children's play.

Fri 6:15-8:00 Western Stage House

President’s Reception

The reception will include the presentation of a Jean Piaget Society Life-Time Achievement Award to Peter Pufall.

Saturday, June 7, A.M.

Symposium Session 11

Development in Digital Social Worlds: In Memory of Rodney R. Cocking

Organizer: Patricia Greenfield, UCLA
Discussant: Sandra Calvert, Georgetown University

No one realized more than Rod Cocking the importance of the new media and the dearth of research on their developmental impact. Before his tragic death, Rod, then Director of the Program on Developmental and Learning Sciences at the National Science Foundation, encouraged the proposal of a multi-site Children’s Digital Media Center, led by Sandra Calvert at Georgetown University. This Center became one of the first three NSF Centers in developmental science. Our symposium is dedicated to Rod’s memory and to his scientific vision. In it, we present the first fruits of the UCLA site of the Children’s Digital Media Center. Our discussant will be Sandra Calvert.

We validate Rod’s vision by presenting new scientific research on the digital social worlds constructed and experienced by teenagers. In recognition of the vast array of communicative tools found on the Internet, the projects on our panel are diverse in both the methodologies they employ and the online communication media they examine. We investigate teen use of a variety of Internet applications (e-mail, web surfing, home pages, chatrooms, and Instant Messaging) and discuss the impact of these applications on different aspects of development (psychosocial adjustment, discourse styles, racial and ethnic identity, and health concerns).

Four projects using diverse methodologies will be presented. The first presentation uses diary studies to examine early and mid-adolescents’ psychosocial adjustment as it relates to Instant Messaging and other Internet uses. The second presentation uses conversational analysis to study how teens communicate in their online chat conversations. The third presentation is a discourse analytic exploration of ethnic identity in teen chatrooms. The last presentation explores the narrative and graphic content of personal home pages created by teens with cancer. Together, we show the many ways that teens construct and participate in their digital social worlds.

“Postcards from the Web”: Profiles of Adolescent Online Activity & Adjustment

Elisheva Gross, UCLA
Jaana Juvonen, UCLA
Shelly Gable, UCLA

How Teens Establish Coherence in Online Chat Conversations

Kaveri Subrahmanyam, California State University, Los Angeles
Patricia Greenfield, UCLA

Out of Body and Into Text: Exploring Race in Teen Chatrooms

Brendesha Tynes, UCLA

Online Illness Narratives: An Examination of Home Pages Created by Teens with Cancer

Patricia Greenfield, UCLA
Lalita Suzuki, HopeLab and UCLA

Sat 9:00-10:30 Sauganash E SY12

Symposium Session 12

Playing the Meso- and South-American way: Situated play and the active role of the child

Organizer: Kristine Jensen de López, Aalborg University
Discussant: Suzanne Gaskins, Northeastern Illinois University

The aim of the symposium is to present an ethnographic and ecological approach to the study of children’s play, in particular relating to the development of socio-cultural practices, perspective taking, sibling caretaking, and the role of language. The studies, although taking their departure in different cultural settings, share a common agreement of “recognizing play as a complex and situated activity with integral players”. Each contribution concentrates on a specific aspect of play in relation to the particular activities and practices in which the children participate. Rindstedt and Aronsson present data illustrating the way older Andean siblings initiate complex sociodramatic practices with their younger siblings as a means of diverting younger siblings. Sibling caretaking also involves the older sibling interpreting the desires of the younger ones and holding the role of “translating” rhetorical questions from adults. Jensen de López argues that Zapotec children’s engagement in sociodramatic play serves them to bootstrap themselves into the different cultural practices in becoming a cultural learner in their community. Reynold adopts a verbal art as performance analytic framework to reinterpret how Maya children appropriate adult public performances and interpret them in imaginative play. Through imaginative peer play the children use the language and public performances of older siblings and parents in understanding their own experiences and in developing an individual perspective about what it means to be a moral human being. Maynard addresses the issue of teaching and guiding processes in cooperative play through nonverbal and verbal behaviours. She argues that these develop in parallel with younger sibling’s ability to cooperate and participate in joint play activities, such as symbolic play. She also investigates the children’s abilities to handle “opposition” among interacting partners. The normative activities of social organization in the community have an impact on the children’s interactions with each other in play.

¿Quieres bañar? Sibling caretaking, play and perspective taking in an Andean community

Camilla Rindstedt, Uppsala University
Karin Aronsson, Linköping University

Weddings, funerals and other important games: Zapotec (Southern Mexico) children’s sociodramatic as play cultural bootstrapping

Kristine Jensen de López, Aalborg University

Play imitating life imitating play: Antoñero children’s performances of El Desafio (the challenge) as El rey Moro (the Moorisch King)

Jennifer F. Reynolds, Northwestern University

The social organization of Zinacantec Maya siblings support: Language and teaching in everyday interactions

Ashley Maynard, University of Hawaii

Symposium Session 13

Change Mechanisms in Microdevelopment

Organizers:
Nira Granott, Tufts University
Michael F Mascolo, Merrimack College
Discussant: Kurt Fischer, Harvard University

The symposium focuses on processes that create change in microdevelopment. Microdevelopment refers to developmental changes that occur during relatively short time periods – anywhere from minutes and hours to weeks to months. The study of microdevelopment provides an important vehicle for understanding the structures and processes of development. This follows for several reasons. First, in so far as microdevelopment involves the construction of local skills that will later be coordinated into more global systems, microdevelopment sets the stage for macro-development. In this way, microdevelopment functions as an essential component of the developmental process. Similarly, once a given developmental level of functioning has been achieved, microdevelopmental processes function to build upon and elaborate those developmental achievements. Finally, to the extent that micro- and macro-development involve similar and overlapping processes, microdevelopment can serve as a window into broader developmental processes.

The analysis of microdevelopment provides a ready vehicle for assessing transition mechanisms in development. Analysis of microdevelopment also has the advantage allowing one to document the entire process of development on video, capturing the process of change itself. One can analyze somewhat longer time spans through more dense sampling methods which facilitate observation of change. The presentations in this symposium combine theoretical explanation and empirical research for analyzing and demonstrating mechanisms of change. A variety of change mechanisms are examined, including joint regulation between individuals, the role of behavioral variability and regression in elaborating new skills, the narrative, social and cognitive scaffolding of micro-development, as well as the appropriation and coordination of skills elements by individuals within joint interactions. Special attention is given to the ways in which individuals seize meanings constructed jointly within social interactions.

Nurturing Microdevelopment: The Narrative Scaffolding of Post-Formal Thought

Julia Shaw, SUNY-Empire State College

Identifying Change Mechanisms in Children’s Science Concepts

James Parziale, University of Massachusetts – Boston

Variability and Synthesis: How Microdevelopment Creates Progress

Nira Granott, Tufts University

Individual Construction within Joint Activity: Assessing Microdevelopment through Intersystemic Relations

Michael F Mascolo, Merrimack College
Pamela Lambert, Merrimack College
Katie Mahoney, Merrimack College

Sat 9:00-10:30 Steamboat PS11

Paper Session 11

Self and Culture

Chair: Jean-Louis Gariepy, UNC – Chapel Hill

Self-compassion: An alternative way to conceptualize and measure self-attitudes

Kristin D Neff, University of Texas at Austin

This paper will define the construct of self-compassion and describe the development of the Self-Compassion Scale. Self-compassion entails being kind and understanding toward oneself in instances of pain or failure rather than being harshly self-critical; perceiving one’s experiences as part of the larger human experience rather than seeing them as isolating; and holding painful thoughts and feelings in mindful awareness rather than over-identifying with them. Evidence for the validity and reliability of the scale is presented in a series of studies. Results indicate that self-compassion is significantly correlated with positive mental health outcomes, and that it is distinguishable from self-esteem.

Cultural Variations in Native and non-Native Conceptions of Agency

Ulrich Teucher, University of British Columbia
Jesse C Phillips, University of British Columbia

The Agency-Communion (or Individualism-Collectivism) dichotomy has been used widely to identify cultural differences in social behavior. In this context, North American Native cultures have been labeled as collectivist. However, our comparative study shows that Aboriginal youths count themselves as “active agents” with the same frequency as do their non-Native counterparts. Where Native youths do differ is that they are much more likely to describe actions in the service of others. Without losing the persuasive means of individualist notions, agency can and should, we argue, be broadened to make room for ways of being “collectivist” and agentive at the same time.

Unify this: Age-graded & cultural variations in young people’s developing conceptions of self-unity

Travis B Proulx, University of British Columbia

Existentialists and early psychological theorists emphasized the experience of the synchronically coherent self (the self as unified cross-sectionally across roles). The focus of this paper is the changing ways in which young people (of different ages and from different cultures) differently understand the unity or synchronic coherence of their own and others’ selves. Trading on methods derived from the work of Chandler et al. on the diachronically continuous self, 90 Native and non-Native adolescents were tested. Results indicate strong developmental and cross-cultural differences in the ways that claims for self-unity are warranted.

Self-Continuity and Personal Projects: Abstract reasoning and everyday undertakings as functions of the self

Monika Brandstätter, University of Victoria
Christopher E Lalonde, University of Victoria

Selves are commonly understood to both change and remain the same. We experience ourselves and others as temporally stable or continuous, but we also expect persons to change and often strive to change ourselves. Young persons typically resolve this paradox of personal persistence and change in one of two ways. Some trivialize change and emphasize more enduring aspects of the self (Essentialism). Others construct a personal narrative in which change itself provides a form of continuity (Narrativism). The present study explores the ways in which these abstract conceptions of the self are expressed in the everyday life of young adults. Using Personal Projects Analysis, and the Self-Continuity Interview, we report on the ways in which routine plans and personal strivings function to maintain and modify personal conceptions of change and stability.

Judgements and justifications about reflective racial tolerance in 11-22 years old

Rivka T Witenberg, The University of Melbourne
Stephen Mihailides, The University of Melbourne

Using a cognitive developmental methodology this study asked children, adolescents and young adults aged 11-22 to reason about and make judgements about dilemma-like stories based on real life incidents about events that could be resolved with either tolerance or intolerance. Particularly, the analysis assessed the relationship between judgements and justifications about racial tolerance. Three major justifications emerged: fairness, empathy and reasonableness. Fairness applied across the ages, in contrast empathy decreased whilst reasonableness increased with age. The best predictor of tolerance was fairness explaining 11% of the total variance with higher levels of fairness related to higher levels of racial tolerance.

Sat 10:30-10:45 Break

Plenary Session 5

Of Hobbes and Harvey: The imaginary companions created by children and adults

Marjorie Taylor, University of Oregon

The creation of an imaginary companion who becomes a regular part of the child’s social world is one index of a particularly intense engagement in pretend play. This type of sustained role play is common in young children (40-60% have imaginary companions),but is not well understood. In the past, having an imaginary companion was sometimes interpreted as evidence that a child was having difficulty making real friends or was experiencing psychological distress. However, the results of recent research show that imaginary companions play a healthy role in children’s cognitive and emotional development. In this talk, I will describe imaginary companions and some of the characteristics of the children who create them. In addition the talk will cover gender differences in role play (i.e., girls tend to create imaginary companions whereas boys often impersonate a favorite character) and cultural differences in parental reactions to imaginary companions and impersonation. Finally, I will discuss adult forms of fantasy behavior and present results from recent research investigating the relationships between adult fiction writers and the characters they create for their novels.

Sat 12:00-1:30 Lunch

Saturday, June 7, P.M.

Sat 12:00-1:30 Lake BOD2

Board of Directors Meeting

Symposium Session 14

On Cognitive Development

Organizer: Leslie Smith, Lancaster University

The very notion of cognitive development is ambiguous in two ways.

First cognition: any adequate account of the human mind has to cover cognition. But cognition has two sets of properties in human minds with a causal origin which is generative of normative outcomes. Causal processes are at work in biology and in the culture. But these processes have a normative dimension in that their successful outcomes can be value-laden—beautiful minds, good ideas, true knowledge are shot-through with normativity.

Second development: any adequate account of development runs directly into the problem of combining causal and normative properties in a unitary account. Development is growth for the better, where this comparative in explicitly normative. But development starts somewhere in the causal nexus—there is no “immaculate conception” as Siegler recently put this, or “ex nihilo, nihil fit” [nothing in, nothing out] as the sages put this two millennia before him.

Thus adequate accounts of both cognition and development require there to be causality and normativity in the same account. But how could causal and normative processes be included in the same account? What is their relationship? The problem here is a dilemma. The dilemma is how to do justice to both causality and normativity in an adequate account of cognitive development without lapsing into triviality, on the one hand, or committing the naturalistic fallacy and breaching Hume’s rule, on the other.

Some version of this dilemma has long been known, at least since Aristotle. Unfortunately, a solution is apparently no nearer in sight two millennia later, for example in Damon’s recent Handbook of child psychology. Proposals for resolving this dilemma are addressed in the four papers in this symposium.

Cogito ergo..... which inference was Descartes really making?

Leslie Smith, Lancaster University

Assimilating Ontogeny into Phylogeny: American and European Attempts to Preserve Teleology for Development in a Darwinian World.

Brian D. Cox, Hofstra University

Transcending Hume: Fact and Norm in Development

Mark H. Bickhard, Lehigh University

Ontology and the Construction of Purposes: A Developmental Account of Pretending and Hypothesizing

Eric Amsel, Weber State University
Victoria Martin, Weber State University

Sat 1:30-3:00 Sauganash E IS05

Invited Symposium 5

Thinking outside the toybox: Technology, play, and development

Organizer: Justine Cassell, MIT

Technology is often seen as the more active agent in interactions with children, and either perceived as a threatening and negative force in children's development, or a panacea to all ills. Thus, we often read that technology is dangerous to children or stifles their creativity. Or, alternatively, that it opens up new possibilities or engages children's minds.

This symposium will try to expand this limited understanding of the role of technology in children's development, and the role of technology in the study of children's development, by looking at technology and children's play. In this context, the panelists are all developmentalists, and are all currently implementing technologies for children. The format is designed to address several intertwined issues:(1) technology for work vs. play (there is no intrinsic link between technology and work, nor is there a need for technologies for children to be packaged as 'edutainment', and use play as bait for nasty educational tasks), (2) technology for education vs. learning (much technology for children is labelled "educational" but children also learn and develop through play, and technology may uniquely support this playful learning), (3) children playing with technology may provide a unique context in which to study the nexus of cognitivist and situationist theories of development ([a] technology can be seen as the other, the partner in play, and lead children to reflect on identity, and [b] the kind of interactivity possible in technology can support the process of externalizing internal representations

The hundred languages of children: Digital tools and emerging literacies

Edith Ackermann, MIT

The value of play for children's learning in digital spaces

Sandra Calvert, Georgetown University

Technology as Peer and Playful Companion

Justine Cassell, MIT

Ambient Wood: Designing playful learning experiences with a difference

Yvonne Rogers, Indiana University

Using technology in toys to create playful learning interactions: Examples and cautionary tales from a developmental psychologist's adventures in corporate toyland

Erik Strommen, Playful Efforts

Paper Session 12

Play and Culture

Chair: Noriko Saito, California State University - Los Angeles

Playing with the dead or how culture influences form and function of play

Adrian Medina-Liberty, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Trevino Gutierrez, Universidad de las Americas

We provide a brief overview of major theoretical frameworks (i.e. psychoanalysis, social psychology and Piagetian psychology) and we emphasized that almost all these approaches disregard the cultural dimension which is consider simply as an external context for play. Next, we described an empirical study of children’s play prior to and during the celebration of the “Day of the dead” in Mixquic, Mexico. Based on a combined perspective of cultural psychology (i.e. Vygotsky, Bruner) and symbolic anthropology (i.e. Turner, Geertz), we present some preliminary results that show that both structure and content of play were defined in terms of sociocultural determinants.

Sandtray Assessment through Play

Michel Ferrari, University of Toronto
Chandi Fernando, University of Toronto

This study examines the effects of war on children. Thirty-three children from Sri Lanka aged 5- 19 were assessed using Sandtray Activities that involved each child creating Sandtray scenes with 15 miniatures, from among 300, along with stories about the scenes created. Preliminary results suggest gender differences manifest through violent themes, especially in stories by boys or by girls who have directly experienced war. Other girls expressed themes of nurturing. Older children have more elaborate stories and make more sophisticated use of the miniatures. Sandtray activities assess how children assimilate traumatic war experiences though an activity that they consider play.

Parakana Indian Children at Play

Yumi Gosso, Universidade de São Paulo
Emma Otta, Universidade de São Paulo

Parakana Indians inhabit a reserve in the Brazilian Amazon region and their economy is based on hunting, gathering, and agriculture. They maintain their language and many of their original traditions. There is no television and the contact with “toria” (White people) is reduced. We observed 29 Parakana Indian children in their natural environment. Make-believe and construction play were more frequent among “konomia” (4-6 years-old), whereas games with rules prevailed among “otyaro” (7-12 years-old). Parakana children live in a highly challenging environment, which may have deep implications for their development.

Pretend play in two Brazilian communities

Maria L S Morais, Universidade de São Paulo
Emma Otta, Universidade de São Paulo

Pretend play of children aged four to five years-old from two Brazilian communities - one of a big metropolitan city (Sao Paulo) and another of a littoral scarcely populated site (Ubatuba) - was compared. Sao Paulo’s children engaged in more make-believe play than those of Ubatuba and girls showed more symbolic transformations than boys. Sao Paulo’s children engaged in more caretaking, media fantastic themes and play fighting than those from Ubatuba, and these children simulated more animal activities than those from Sao Paulo. Girls performed more caretaking and daily activities than boys, and these engaged in more play fighting than girls.

Organized youth sports: play or work, progress or problem?

W George Scarlett, Tufts University

The paper begins with a brief historical overview of organized youth sports—from the civil war era to today. It traces the links between organized youth sports and various movements, urbanization and character education in particular. It shows how organized youth sports have always had their proponents and critics, how they have always been both idealized and vilified. It explains too how they have always reflected shifts in work and family life even as they have played a part in effecting those shifts. Finally, it shows how today’s organized youth sports constitute a rich and complex phenomenon not easily captured by simple characterizations.

Sat 1:30-3:00 Steamboat PS13

Paper Session 13

Conceptions of Mental Life

Chair: Kristin D Neff, University of Texas at Austin

Mother and Child Mental State Talk during Play and Children’s False Belief Understanding

Dagmar Pescitelli, Simon Fraser University
Timothy P Racine, Simon Fraser University
Jeremy I M Carpendale, Simon Fraser University
William Turnbull, Simon Fraser University

The talk of 64 mothers and their 3- to 5-year-old children was examined during a structured play session. Mental state terms were coded as a function of speaker and referent. Mothers’ and children’s mental state talk were positively related. A positive association was found between mothers’ reference to their own mental states and their children’s false belief scores, and between children’s ‘we’ statements that referenced both mother and child’s mental states and children’s false belief scores. These results contribute to research showing that maternal use of mental state terms during interaction may be beneficial for their children’s social understanding.

A Critique of Competence Models of Joint Attention

Timothy P Racine, Simon Fraser University
Jeremy I M Carpendale, Simon Fraser University

We find it curious that many developmentalists seem to reject Chomskyan nativism as a solution to the problem of language acquisition yet accept and advocate what we would consider competence views of joint attention. We discuss selected joint attention models by whether they favor a competence or a performance explanation of this phenomenon. We then describe a model that emphasizes both psychological and extra-psychological determinants of joint attention. We conclude that there are logical difficulties in arguing that an infant must have an inner a priori biological or conceptual competence before engaging in even sophisticated joint attention behaviors (e.g., pointing).

Maternal mental state talk and children’s understanding of mind: What are the relations

Emily S Cleveland, Clark University
Elaine Reese, Clark University

Examined relations among children’s attachment security and understanding of mind, and maternal mental state talk. Two significant findings emerged from this study. Results support the hypothesis that attachment moderates the relation between maternal mental state talk and children’s understanding of mind, such that there is a significant correlation for securely attached children but not for insecure children. However, the data do not support Ruffman et al.’s (2002) finding of a direct causal role of maternal mental state talk on children’s understanding of mind; rather, it appears that children’s understanding of mind mediates maternal mental state talk in these conversations.

Epistemological Recursion Regarding Institutional and Brute Facts in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

Darcy Hallett, University of British Columbia

Research regarding epistemological development has sketched a fairly consistent account of how people come to see knowledge as increasingly person-relative and rationally constructed. Recent research, however, has suggested that epistemic development may differentially occur for different kinds of knowledge at different points of the lifespan. The data presented here uses an interview procedure specifically designed to probe people’s epistemic understanding of ‘institutional’ and ‘brute’ facts. These data support the conclusion that epistemic development may well be a rather disjointed phenomenon - that is, adolescents and young adults are often simultaneously at more than one stage in the course of their epistemic growth depending on the type of knowledge being considered.

Individual Differences in Early Social Pretend Play: Associations with Family and Peer Experience

Stephanie C Zerwas, University of Pittsburgh
Celia A Brownell, University of Pittsburgh

Relations between the mother-child affective relationship and individual differences in social pretense with a same-aged peer were examined in a longitudinal study of 450 three-year-old children (217 boys). Observational measures of mother-child interaction (15, 24, 36 mos.) and peer social play (36 mos.) were collected. Results show that maternal sensitivity (15 mos.) is significantly related to complexity of children’s social pretense with a peer. In addition, children’s verbal ability, pretend-agent use during solitary play, peer friendship, peer age, and peer experience all independently predict the complexity of social pretend play at 36 months.

Sat 3:00-3:15 Break

Paper Session 10

Education

Chair: Darcy Hallett, University of British Columbia

A Comparison of Performance on Piagetian Tasks between Japanese Children who received Piagetian Play Curriculum and Japanese Children who received Non-Piagetian Play Curriculum

Noriko Saito, California State University - Los Angeles

The study explored the extent of measurable differences in performance on Piagetian tasks among six-year-olds who received Piagetian play curriculum for three years, and children who did not receive Piagetian play curriculum. Seventy-five subjects were divided into two groups: (1) Piagetian Play Curriculum Exposure (2) Non-Piagetian Play Curriculum Exposure. All subjects exposed to the Piagetian Play Curriculum performed significantly better on the three Piagetian tasks as compared to subjects exposed to non-Piagetian Play Curriculum.

The evolution of partner choices in play vs. cognitive tasks in 3 to 7 years children

Tamara Leonova, University Blaise Pascal

This study explores the development of social affordances perception within strategic partner choices paradigm. Previous research has underestimated young children’s capacity to understand the person social utility. Participants were children aged 3 – 7 years. Every participant saw two targets described by personality traits. Questions related to strategic partner choices in different tasks (play vs. cognitive tasks) were asked. Finally, subjects indicated how much they liked each of the targets. The results revealed a developmental increase in social utility understanding in children.

Playing with Symbols: An Analysis of the Relation between Play and Early Symbolic Development

David H Uttal, Northwestern University
Maeve Hennerty, Northwestern University
Melanie L Bostwick, Northwestern University

Because children sometimes have difficulty understanding symbolic relations, teachers and parents often encourage them to play with concrete objects as substitutes for abstract symbolic representations. For example, magnetic letters and numbers are found in most American homes, and children are often encouraged to play with these objects frequently.

We will present an alternate perspective on the relations between concreteness, play, and symbolic development. We suggest that having children with play with concrete objects may convey both advantages and disadvantages. Most importantly, we will suggest that play can focus children’s attention on the concrete properties of a symbolic object, rather than on what the symbol represents.

Play and Emotion: The effect of strong affect on adolescent girls’ development A contribution to evolving developmental theory and some evidence.

Sandra L Fraley, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Developmental theory is often divided into two broad streams of thought: 1) theories that focus on skills and 2) theories that focus on relationship as the context for development. However, the strongest influence on development may be emotional valence, whether as positive motivator or as negative repeller. Emotion then becomes a powerful determiner of the development of particular skills and specific relationships. Thus, ultimately, emotion provides the context for development and shapes the variation in development. As a painter’s brushstrokes define her art, emotions define the individual and provide the context for variation in development.

The Roles of Affect and Cognition in the Development of Interest

K Ann Renninger, Swarthmore College
Suzanne Hidi, University of Toronto

In the this paper, it will be argued that once interest is triggered, cognition contributes to the likelihood that interest will be sustained, and that valuing emerges in relation to the quality of understanding and the challenge that a subject content (e.g., mathematics) affords. Based on a review of the way in which interest has been operationalized in the literature, four phases of interest development will be identified. These include: triggered situational interest, maintained situational interest, emerging (or less-developed) individual interest, and well-developed individual interest. Discussion will focus on the roles of affect and cognition in each of the identified phases of interest development. It will be suggested that a four-phase model of interest development articulates the respective roles of affect and cognition in the development of interest, and, as such, enables consideration of three issues that have hampered the study of interest, affect, and cognition in the past. Casting findings from studies of interest in terms of developmental phases provides an explanation for differences reported in the literature. It also suggests a basis for research in which the differing relations between affect and cognition in the development of learning can begin to be mapped.

Sat 3:15-4:45 Sauganash E IS06

Invited Symposium 6

Pretending in animals

Organizer: Robert Mitchell, Eastern Kentucky University
Discussants: Greta G. Fein, Edy Veneziano

The purpose of this symposium is to present theory about and evidence of pretense by animals. McCune will begin the symposium by presenting her neo-Piagetian analysis of the development of pretense during sensorimotor development, applying this to available evidence from nonhuman primates. Patterson will follow McCune with a presentation of her observations of the development of pretense in the gorilla Koko, an animal who uses sign-language. Next, Mitchell briefly touches upon the history of concerns and ideas about pretense in animals (primate and nonprimate), some difficulties in defining pretense, and methods to obtain evidence of pretense in animals. Discussion will follow, initiated by Fein, who has studied closely the issue of determining exactly when human infants begin to pretend, and seconded by Veneziano, who has examined early developments in pretense in human infants. This symposium should stimulate listeners to examine their own ideas about pretense and to think critically about how one discerns the existence of symbolic abilities in any species, including humans.

Pretending as representation: A developmental and comparative view

Lorraine McCune, Rutgers University

Pretend play in a signing gorilla

Francine (Penny) Patterson, The Gorilla Foundation

Pretense by animals: History, theory, methods and difficulties

Robert W. Mitchell, Eastern Kentucky University

Poster Session 2

Posters will be available for viewing all day. Authors will be present from 3:15-4:45

Transgressors and Victims: Children’s Narrative Accounts of Their Conflicts with Others [1]

Cecilia Wainryb, University of Utah
Marcie Langley, University of Utah

Feeling left out: Children’s narrative accounts of their experiences with exclusion [2]

Beverly Brehl, University of Utah
Cecilia Wainryb, University of Utah
Ryan Gilson, University of Utah

The relationship between dramatic play and social behavior in Chinese children aged from 4 to 7-years old [3]

Wei-ying Jing, Beijing Normal University
Hui-chang Chen, Beijing Normal University

Observers’ use of behavioral markers to identify pretense actions [4]

Rebekah A Richert, University of Virginia
Angeline S Lillard, University of Virginia
Lili Ma, University of Virginia

Children’s comprehension of storybooks: Reality-fantasy differentiation and identification of obstacles [6]

Jacqueline D Woolley, The University of Texas

Cognitive Ability and Play Behaviors in Preschool Twins [7]

Nicole M Nadeau, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Paula Mullineaux, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Lisabeth F DiLalla, SIU School of Medicine

Three-year-olds painting as individual creation and social collaboration [8]

Alexis N Lamb, Smith College
Peter B Pufall, Smith College

The Advantages of Digital Video Clips to Contextualize Data Points in Developmental Research on Play [9]

George E Forman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

African-American, Latin-American, and Asian-American children’s evaluations of cross-race friendships [10]

Nancy Geyelin Margie, University of Maryland
Stefanie Sinno, University of Maryland
Heidi McGlothlin, University of Maryland

Ethnic-racial prejudice and stereotypes: A developmental exploratory study with Spanish children [11]

Alejandra Navarro, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
Liliana Jacott, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
Angela Gonzalez, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
Bibiana Galeano, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid

Children’s Understanding of Imposition in Social Situations [12]

Denise M Goldbeck, Simon Fraser University
William Turnbull, Simon Fraser University

Can Children with ADHD Understand Other’s Minds and Emotions? Looking for answers to their socialization difficulties [13]

Cristen Gabriele, Clark University
Penelope G Vinden, Clark University

The effect of causal violations on young children’s knowledge of mental representation in pretense [14]

David M Sobel, Brown University

Young Children’s Role Play: Social Cues and Fantasy Orientation [15]

Anne M Mannering, University of Oregon
Marjorie E Taylor, University of Oregon

Requests: A Mechanism for the Sib Effect? [16]

Gabriel Trionfi, Clark University
Melissa A Smith, Clark University
Penelope G Vinden, Clark University

The Origins of Joint Attention at Play: Correlations between Action Understanding and Free Play [17]

Camille Wilson, University of Chicago
Amanda L Woodward, University of Chicago

The Development of Communicative and Help Seeking Behavior in Infancy [18]

Ulrich Mueller, The Pennsylvania State University
K H Grobman, The Pennsylvania State University

Low- and middle-income young children’s script knowledge [19]

Miyoung Sung, Seoul National University
Soonhyung Yi, Seoul National University

When Playing is Caring: Children’s experiences and mothers’ perceptions [20]

Pamela A Raya-Carlton, University of Missouri-Columbia

Moral development in a violent society: Colombian children’s moral concerns in the context of survival and revenge [21]

Roberto Posada, University of Utah

The Moral Competence Development in Children Using Dilemma Discussion [22]

Patricia U Bataglia, University Bandeirante of São Paulo
Deise D Oliveira, University Bandeirante of São Paulo

Predictors of Imaginary Companions in Early Childhood [23]

Stephanie M. Carlson, University of Washington
Jamie Gum, University of Washington
Angela C. Davis, University of Washington
Andrea Molloy, University of Washington

Mainland Chinese Adolescents’ Judgments and Reasoning about Democratic Government [24]

Charles C Helwig, University of Toronto
Mary Louise Arnold, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Dingliang Tan, Nanjing Normal University
Dwight Boyd, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

The use of deception-based simulation strategies in a hiding game [25]

Hernan Sanchez, Universidad del Valle
Orozco Mariela, Universidad del Valle

The Force of Emotional Thinking: Happy/Unhappy Victimizers in a Forgiving Scenario [26]

Orlando M Lourenço, University of Lisbon
Estela P Fonseca, University of Lisbon

Children’s Understandings of the Emotions of Victims who Respond to Unfairness with Opposition, Compliance, and Subversion [27]

Leigh A Shaw, University of Utah

Violence Exposure and Preschoolers’ Social and Play Behavior [28]

Jo Ann M. Farver, University of Southern California

The relative salience of different perceptual cues in young children’s social categorization. Do photograph and pictograph stimuli represent the same? [29]

Silvia Guerrero, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Ileana Enesco, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

The way children design a computer game [30]

Belen Garcia-Torres, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Ileana Enesco, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

The Development of Adults’ Beliefs and Ideas about Childrearing: Effects of Experience with Children [31]

Marie-Anne Suizzo, The University of Texas at Austin
Wan-chen Chen, The University of Texas at Austin
Angel Liang, The University of Texas at Austin
Jessica Cheng, The University of Texas at Austin

Preliminary investigation on the relation of children’s anxious levels to teacher’s authoritative orientation [32]

Qinmei Xu, Zhejiang University
Qinghua Yuan, Zhejiang University

The potentialities and limits of the narrative approach in moral development and moral education [33]

Helena Marchand, Lisbon University

Paper Session 14

Play and Technology

Chair: Nira Granott, Tufts University

Rules, events and intentions relating to ‘behaving’ artifacts: Exploring young children’s anchors in understanding while learning to program a robot

David Mioduser, Tel Aviv University
Vadim Talis, Tel Aviv University
Sharona T Levy, Northwestern University

This paper describes a study aimed at depicting 5-6 year old children’s changing understanding of controlled systems, as they construct them over an extended period. It was found that through extended constructive play, young children could extract the rules underlying a robot’s behavior in a way that can then be used independently of the events within which they are embedded. Ascribing intentions to the robot did not change with experience. However, these intentions later provide a bridge and meaning to the more extensive technological rule-building. With experience, more rules can be used to reason about such devices.

Preschool Children’s Social Cognition and Language During Play with “Talking” and “Nontalking” Rescue Heroes

Doris Bergen, Miami University

Technology-enhanced “talking” toys are popular playthings; however, little is known about how children play with such toys. In particular, how children understand the “communicative actions” of the talking figures and assimilate those into their play has not been investigated. Sixty-four children, ages 3 1/2 to 5 (32 M/ 32 F) played with three Rescue Hero figures, either talking or nontalking ones. Analysis of the total group of children shows that the affordances of the two types of figures were activated by the children and that over 50% of the children pretended with the figures, showing a wide variety of themes. The group who played alone and the group with a peer pretended more, did more unique actions, labeled and described figures more, and used more words and sounds to accompany actions. They also had more Rescue Heroes themes and more themes in general.

Adult Games: Playing with Time and Space

Julia Penn Shaw, SUNY-Empire State College

A game has a domain; with rules; for manipulating a finite set of variables; to achieve an undetermined outcome; against a known limitation (e.g., time limit, opponent). In the “Dimensional Thinking” game, the domain is symbol systems; the variables are cards for ten narrative symbols cards selected from a story; and the outcome is a “personally meaningful” arrangement of the cards. What about the rules? Intelligent adults playing Dimensional Thinking use time and space frames (chronologies, rankings, partitions, images) to construct meaning. This study investigates how adults learn about their own - and others - dimensional thinking styles.

Growing up with television. A playful pedagogy for media awareness

Orozco Guillermo Gómez, Universidad de Guadalajara

This paper presents a proposal for a pedagogical “playful” approach to media audience education. Based on the premise that children’s interaction with TV is mediated by multiple factors that remain for the most part unnoticed, my intention is to make TV viewing experience more evident and understandable for the TV viewers through a series of games. This proposal emphasizes those elements that relate to the strengthening of curiosity and the ability to make critical questions. The paper discusses examples of games that can be played in school or at home in order of benefit and integral education perspective that intends to form children as intelligent and critical audience. The games are: 1. Playing TV Style, a play that intends to bring “TV representations” forward into direct consciousness by taking roles, such as cameraman 2. Playing with TV, a game that will make more explicit the mediated environment TV creates and the understanding process involved. And, 3. Playing in reference to TV, a game that introduces the “agenda setting” issue by using the actual TV programming guide as a toy.

How children negotiate economic decisions in Ultimatum and Dictator Games

Monika Keller, Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Michaela C Gummerum, Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Masanori Takezawa, Max Planck Institute for Human Development

This study connects two hitherto unrelated research traditions of developmental psychology of fair distribution and experimental economics (game theory). Children from grades 6 and 8 played two economic games (Ultimatum and Dictator Game). They stated their individual preferences and negotiated the final resource sharing in a group of three. The results reveal significant effects for the type of game and age. Children, similar to adults, act strategically and offer less in Dictator than in Ultimatum Game. However, participants in this study offer more in both games than what was expected from research with adults. Videotaped group discussions will be analyzed for fairness reasons and perspective-taking.

Plenary Session 6

Children at work; scientists at play

Marc Bornstein, The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

My talk concerns the following specific topics in the development of children’s play. First, I describe a single integrated ordinal developmental system of early childhood play that entails two broad categories—exploratory and symbolic play—that subsume a series of levels, and I account for the play of children in two everyday situations in these terms, one when the child is engaged in solitary play and the other when the child engages in collaborative play with mother. I then present data from observations of children’s and mothers’ play at each level, data for short- and long-term stability of child and mother play, and data on the roles of interpersonal and physical contexts on child play. Afterward, I elaborate briefly on symbolic play as an independent construct, bringing to bear experimental data on play’s relations with attention and language and contrasting data on play and language among deaf and hearing children. Last, I outline an ecological model focused on antecedents of child symbolic play in the child, in the parent, and in the culture. Child play is a perennially “hot” topic in developmental science; my talk summarizes some relevant contributions of my research to understanding the development of child symbolic play.