Content area
Full Text
This study investigated different forms of pretend and physical play as predictors of preschool children's affective social competence (ASC). Data were collected from 122 preschool children (57 boys, 65 girls; 86 European American, 9 African American, 17 Hispanic, and 10 other ethnicity) over a 2-year period. Children participated in emotion knowledge interviews, mothers rated children's emotion regulation skill, and observations were conducted of children's emotional expressiveness with peers in both Years 1 and 2. Naturalistic observations of children's peer play behavior were conducted to assess the proportion of time children spend in pretend and physical play in Year 1. Analyses revealed that sociodramatic play predicted children's emotional expressiveness, emotion knowledge, and emotion regulation 1 year later, after controlling for Year 1 ASC skills. Rough-and-tumble play predicted children's emotional expressiveness and emotion regulation 1 year later, whereas exercise play predicted only emotion regulation. Some associations between sociodramatic play and rough-and-tumble play and children's ASC were moderated by gender.
Affective social competence (ASC) has been identified as a useful construct for understanding the emotional processes that contribute to children's social adjustment (Arsenio, Cooperman, & Lover, 2000; Denham et al., 2003; Dunsmore, Noguchi, Garner, Casey, & Bhullar, 2008). Halberstadt, Denham, and Dunsmore (2001) outline a model detailing three components of ASC: (a) sending affective messages, (b) receiving affective messages, and (c) experiencing affect. According to the model, the ability to integrate and control the interaction of these three skill areas is a key element of ASC. Thus, the model is transactional in nature and emphasizes the processes connecting affect and social interaction. However, the relations among ASC skills outlined in the model remain to be verified empirically. Moreover, most research has focused on the consequences of children's ASC skills, with less attention paid to the experiences that may account for individual differences in children's ASC. The fine-grained nature of Halberstadt et al.'s model offers a framework for empirical investigations that can disentangle and examine more conclusively the separate components of ASC in specific contexts. For that reason, their model is used to guide the present study.
Pretend Play: Fantasy and Sociodramatic Play
Theoretical arguments suggest that children's participation in particular play forms may have important implications for the acquisition of ASC. One form of play that...