"Research Findings:" Playfulness is an important personality tendency with an important role in the well-being, mental health, and various other aspects of an individual's life. Previous studies have shown that the development of children's playfulness is related to parents' playfulness. However, limited research has been conducted on…

Research Findings: Digital play is now commonplace in many young children's lives, but not in preschool settings. This situation is likely due to the fact that the existent literature seldom highlights what digital play looks like, the various ways it can be situated, and what young children do when they play together with digital devices in the…

Research Findings: This article describes the development and evaluation of the Behavior and Emotion Expression Observation System (BEEOS), a direct observation tool to characterize preschoolers' social and emotion behaviors during semistructured activities in the classroom. The BEEOS was used to observe 148 Head Start preschoolers, and…

Research Findings: Child temperament is an important construct, but its measurement has been marked by a number of weaknesses that have diminished the frequency with which it is assessed in practice. We address this problem by presenting the results of a quantitative construct validation study. We calculated validity indices by hypothesizing the…

Research Findings: The present study examined the degree to which the association between interactive peer play and academic skills was dependent upon the level of classroom quality for a representative sample of culturally and linguistically diverse urban Head Start children (N = 304 children across 53 classrooms). Peer play interactions within…

Research Findings: Previous research on young children's play has focused narrowly on behaviors that are highly valued in Western societies. The purpose of this study was to draw back the lens on play--to examine a broader range of early childhood pastimes that are more common and meaningful to children of color. Using G. Bateson's (1972) work on…

Research Findings: The present study concerns children's behavioral adjustment in the context of pre-primary schools in Tanzania. Twenty teachers and 320 children from 20 pre-primary schools participated in the study. Teacher-child relationships, children's behavioral adjustment, and teachers' cultural beliefs were reported by teachers; classroom…

Research Findings: Sibling pretend play, collaboration, and creativity during maternal presence and absence were investigated in 24 dyads in early and middle childhood (younger siblings' M age = 5.3 years; older siblings' M age = 8.2 years). Associations between sibling behavior and maternal interaction (e.g., guidance, positive responses) were…

Research Findings: A description of the development and preliminary validation of the Affect in Play Scale-Preschool version (APS-P) is presented by demonstrating associations among preschool children's play, creativity, and daily behavior using multiple methodologies. Thirty-three preschool-age children completed a standardized 5-minute play task…

Research Findings: This study examined the stability of preschoolers' peer play behavior across the school year and the relations between emotion regulation, receptive vocabulary, and the trajectory of social competence deficits. Participants were 331 preschool children attending Head Start; they were primarily African American and from a low-SES…

Examined effects of a reduced-scale play environment on the temporal aspects of complex play behavior. Children playing with playdough in a 7 x 5 x 5-foot structure began complex play more quickly, played in longer segments, and spent slightly more time in complex play than when in full-size conditions, suggesting that scale-reduced environments…

The use of retreat spaces by 65 children in 9 family child care homes was assessed in this study. Family child care providers used daily diaries to collect information about children's retreat frequency and associated behavior. The findings revealed that nearly half of the children used informal, readily available retreats during the research…

Examined how aspects of preschoolers' peer-conflict behavior varied according to partner. Found that initiating and negotiating behavior in early sessions better predicted behavior in the fourth session for the same-partner versus change-partner group. Results indicated that much of preschoolers' conflict behavior was sensitive to influences…

Examined goal-directed behaviors for a group of children with Down's syndrome and a control group of children. Maternal and child behaviors were recorded during joint play. Found that children with Down's syndrome are less likely than normal children to show increases in independent goal-directed play behaviors following a joint play session with…

Examined the nature of conflicts among young preschoolers. Observed 184 three-year-olds in a dyadic play situation. Found that children's conflicts arose in the context of ongoing play and were brief. Concluded that by age 36 months, most children have acquired the skills to play positively with a peer. (JS)