Stages of Play and Development

Stages of Play

• Functional play involves physical play, exemplified by a child dumping out a box of toys.
• Constructive play uses toys to achieve goals, such as building a tower with blocks.
• Fantasy play includes three stages: imitating others, dramatic play, and creating storylines, and can involve make believe games/role playing and dressing up.
• Play with rules involves games with preset rules like Four Square.

Play and Development: Hollos and Cowan Study

• Hollos and Cowan conducted a quasi-experiment studying children from an isolated region of Norway.
• The study assessed social skills by having participants retell a story to a stranger.
• Farm children had less developed social skills compared to their peers, even though both groups displayed no difference between the groups with logic.

Peer Interaction Stages

• Infancy is characterized by prosocial behaviors, conflicts over toys, parental intervention in conflicts, and contagious crying.
• Preschool age involves children spending time in groups that evolve into friendships, typically within the same sex, but some peers are rejected
• Middle and late childhood friendships are maintained through mutual thoughts and feelings rather than objects, social structures become complex, and sociometric status becomes important.
• Adolescence involves spending 29% of time with peers and 13% with adults, cliques decline, and romantic relationships develop.

Peer Influence: Nichols Study

• Nichols investigated the effects of group interaction (STAD) on achievement in a high school geometry class.
• Participants were split into three groups.
• Group one was STAD for quarter one and traditional lecture for quarter 2, group two was the inverse, and group three was the control
• Group one scored significantly higher on test 1 (89%) compared to the other two groups (82% and 79%).

Poverty Risk Factors (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997)

• Poverty risk factors include physical health, cognitive abilities, and nutrition.

Poverty Risk: Pollitt et Al. Study

• Pollitt et al. examined the effects of early supplementary feeding on cognition.
• Guatemalan villages were assigned to either Atole (protein supplement) or Fresco (no protein) supplement groups for 8 years.
• Those who received Atole scored significantly higher on measures of general intelligence after controlling for SES and educational experience.

Trauma and ACEs

• Trauma is an emotionally painful, shocking, stressful, or life-threatening experience, potentially resulting from witnessing an event.
• ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) are traumatic events occurring before the age of 18.

Trauma: Koluchova Case Study

• Koluchova investigated whether severe deprivation could be reversed using a case study of identical twins (Andrei and Vanya).
• The twins experienced abuse for 5.5 years.
• After intervention, they showed no permanent cognitive damage and caught up with peers academically and physically with normal IQ scores by age 14.

Resilience and Protective Factors

• Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, and stress.
• Protective factors are attributes in an individual, family, or community that help manage stressful events.

Resilience: Coan et Al. Study

• Coan et al. investigated the influence of human touch on pain perception.
• There were three conditions: holding hands with spouse, holding hands with strangers, holding hands with no one
• The score with spouse was 2, with stranger 2.6, and with no one, 2.7.