Pretend play may be beneficial for young children's social development. However, empirical results to date are inconsistent and limited, which is partly due to a lack of psychometrically sound measures for children's social pretend play competence. The current study aimed to compare and validate different assessment methods for children's social…

This review article starts with an overview of changing education paradigms and the literature on cognitive and linguistic relationships in imaginative play related to comprehension of oral and written texts. Strategies for developing the cognitive and linguistic foundations for text comprehension through play are described. A review of current…

Blocks are one of the most popular playthings for children. The purpose of this article is to describe the use of block play in developing parent-child relations. This paper has two major parts. First, a brief historical overview highlights the critical roles of child's block play in learning and development. Block play contributes to children's…

Theory of mind was assessed in 32 adults with HFA, 29 adults with Asperger syndrome and 32 neurotypical adults. The HFA and Asperger syndrome groups were impaired in performance of the Strange stories test and the Faux-pas test and reported more theory of mind problems than the neurotypical adults. The three groups did not differ in performance of…

Head Start is the largest publicly funded preschool program in the U.S., and one of its primary goals is to improve the school readiness of low-income children. As has been widely reported, the first randomized trial of Head Start in the program's history found some evidence that it is achieving this goal. Receiving one year of Head Start had…

Although childhood death from health-related disorders has decreased dramatically in the United States due largely to advances in medical technology, it is an unfortunate fact of life that children can and do die from medical and health-related problems. A possible role for school psychologists in dealing with this situation is providing direct…

Studied how children (N=60) understand social interaction portrayed on television, and how their understanding changes with age. Results showed younger viewers structured televised content in terms of overt descriptive features, action, and literal repetition of dialogue; older children considered inferential aspects of social interaction and…

Investigated the age at which children first acquire understanding of others' feelings and of ways in which they can affect others' feelings. Also considered the relation of children's development in this domain to their understanding of the nonsocial world. Findings indicated that it was possible to predict the age at which children would pass…

This paper describes two studies which investigated the development in elementary school children of the ability to derive inferences about the subjective states (physiological and psychological) of others. A cued recall procedure was utilized to assess the relative effectiveness of implicitly or explicitly stated emotional states as cues for…

Since adults are socializing agents integral to home and school settings, they should have accurate views of children's feelings. Adults' (N=96) predictions were compared to the predictions kindergarten children (N=32) made about the children's affective responses to eight different categories of experiences. The children's predictions, reported…

Using Vygotsky's theory of development, explores the significance of storytelling and dramatization activities on the intellectual and emotional development of preschool children. Results indicate that dramatizing of children's stories enhances the storytelling of preschool children and, thus, influences their literacy development. (DST)

This set of 13 research reports, bulletins and papers is a product of the Mathemagenic Activities Program (MAP) for early childhood education of the University of Georgia Follow Through Program. Based on Piagetian theory, the MAP provides sequentially structured sets of curriculum materials and processes that are designed to continually challenge…