In this article, I present an analysis of talk-in-interaction from an introductory Japanese as a foreign language classroom at an American university. An examination of the data revealed language play (LP) to be a highly salient feature of the participants' interactions. LP has come into increasing focus in the second language acquisition research…

Curriculum reform in environmental and science education now taking place in Ghana focuses on the community and ecosystems as the context of education. In Ghana, students conduct science investigations that include games, word searches, crossword puzzles, case studies, role play, debates, projects, and ecological profiles. This curriculum reflects…

The present study evaluated the effects of classwide satiation and embedded reinforcement procedures on preschoolers' activity preferences during scheduled free-play periods. The goal of the study was to increase time allocation to originally nonpreferred, but important, activities (instructional zone, library, and science) while continuing to…

This pilot study investigated the impact of group activity play therapy (GAPT) on displaced orphans aged 10 to 12 years living in a large children's village in Uganda. Teachers and housemothers identified 60 preadolescents exhibiting clinical levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. The participants' ethnicity was African and…

The consequences of bullying are both widespread and severe. It disrupts learning, threatens school safety, and poses long-term emotional repercussions for bullies, victims, and bystanders. Although multiple strategies have targeted bullying, bullying must be understood within a social contextual framework beyond the bully-victim dyad. Davis and…

Objective: Although millions of the world's children are growing up amidst armed conflict, little research has described the specific symptom manifestations and relational behavior in young children exposed to wartime trauma or assessed factors that chart pathways of risk and resilience. Method: Participants included 232 Israeli children 1.5 to 5…

We explored the perceptions of children's cognitive development among Moroccan Arabic and Berber immigrant mothers who cannot read, who are less educated, middle educated or highly educated in the Netherlands. A series of in-depth interviews was conducted with 22 mothers with young children (mean age = 5 years and 6 months). Qualitative data…

In answer to points raised by Dansky (1985) about specific inferences from Simon and Smith's study (1985) and broader issues about a single-session paradigm used in play and problem solving studies, Simon and Smith argue that their study adequately demonstrated how methodological factors in paradigm can swamp the effects of any treatment…

Presents the view that the play environment provides the necessary outlets that stimulate the development of the whole child. (SS)

Purpose: Recently, researchers have begun investigating the learning process that occurs within computer games (learning to play), as opposed to studying games that support explicit learning for educational purposes (playing to learn). With the increasing popularity of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), some research has begun to look…

A favorite destination for kids and adults alike, waterparks provide hours of family enjoyment. From an indoor hotel pool with water slide and spray hydrant to acres of outdoor water play opportunities like those found at Disney's Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon, plenty of fun is ready at hand. Waterparks vary in size, venue design, variety of…

Although genetic influences on individual differences in activity level (AL) are well documented, few studies have considered the etiology of AL from a contextual perspective. In the present study, cross-situational and context-specific genetic effects on individual differences in AL at age 2 were examined. The AL of 312 twin pairs (144…

The long-simmering debate over the commercialization of college sports reached a boiling point recently when CBS, the NCAA's key corporate partner, announced that it was creating a fantasy football league that uses college athletes' names. Not everyone however, is quite so enthusiastic. Some observers see it as part of a continuing assault on the…

When children write plays, their wishes, fears, and secrets face an audience. An audience is not a do-gooder making nice. It is not an authority figure with a grudge against one's race or class. When it laughs at the jokes or applauds, it can be trusted. It is saying this play--and by extension its author--fits into the world on its own terms. In…

The present research examines the ability of children as young as 4 years to use models in tasks that require scaling of distance along a single dimension. In Experiment 1, we found that tasks involving models are similar in difficulty to those involving maps that we studied earlier (Huttenlocher, J., Newcombe, N., & Vasilyeva, M. (1999). Spatial…