This paper discusses the play interaction of a young child with autism and the strategies adopted by her teachers to facilitate her inclusion in and through play. The data are from an ethnographic case study in an inclusive nursery in the South of England spanning 6 months. The aim was to understand and describe the play of a child with autism in…

"Godly Play", an approach to Religious Education in early childhood devised by Jerome W. Berryman, has been utilized by many Christian denominations in Sunday school contexts and it is currently influencing the design of early years' Religious Education curricula in many Catholic dioceses. One of the appealing qualities of the Godly Play process…

During the early childhood years, children learn to interact with one another in ways that are positive and successful. Researchers stress the importance of positive peer relationships in childhood and later life. The absence of positive social interactions in childhood is linked to negative consequences later in life, such as withdrawal,…

Developmental intergroup theory posits that when environments make social-group membership salient, children will be particularly likely to apply categorization processes to social groups, thereby increasing stereotypes and prejudices. To test the predicted impact of environmental gender salience, 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 57) completed…

The relations among infant anger reactivity, approach behavior, and frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry, and their relations to inhibitory control and behavior problems in early childhood were examined within the context of a longitudinal study of temperament. Two hundred nine infants' anger expressions to arm restraint were observed at 4…

The current study investigated the effects of brief exposure to appearance-related media on young girls' body image. One hundred and twenty-one girls aged 3-6 years old participated. Results indicated that exposure did not affect body dissatisfaction or engagement in appearance-related play behaviours. This is the first empirical study to provide…

Concordance between age-6 attachment behaviour and age-8 doll play attachment representations during the school-age period, and associations between these measures and child social adaptation at school were examined. One hundred and twenty-nine 6-year-olds and their mothers participated in a separation/reunion protocol. Two years later, 104…

This study provides a national picture of the time American 6- to 12-year-olds spent playing video games, using the computer, and watching TV at home in 1997 and 2003, and the association of early use with their achievement and behavior as adolescents. Girls benefited from computer use more than boys, and Black children benefited more than White…

Background: Through play children exercise their emerging mental abilities, and for their part, when in collaborative play, caregivers often adjust their behaviours to assist their children's progress. In this study, we focused on comparisons between play of Down Syndrome (DS) children with their two parents as well as on comparisons between the…

Using a sample from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (N = 435; 219 girls), the authors derived several measures of regulation and dysregulation that predicted, both concurrently and longitudinally, children's positive and negative peer interactions in multiple contexts. Observers rated peer interactions in child care and during dyadic play with…

Spatial representation and thinking have evolutionary importance for any mobile organism. In addition, they help reasoning in domains that are not obviously spatial, for example, through the use of graphs and diagrams. This article reviews the literature suggesting that mental spatial transformation abilities, while present in some precursory form…

The current focus on utilitarian outcomes (e.g., fitness, health, skill development) in physical education has not been effective in producing life-long movers and makes physical activity a duty to be performed. An alternative to a utilitarian focus is to have a joy-oriented focus in which physical activity is promoted because it is joyful,…

Background: Indiscriminate social approach behaviour is a salient aspect of the Williams syndrome (WS) behavioural phenotype. The present study examines approach behaviour in pre-schoolers with WS and evaluates the role of the face in WS social approach behaviour. Method: Ten pre-schoolers with WS (aged 3-6 years) and two groups of typically…

This study examined the effectiveness of video modeling to teach a preschooler with autism to imitate previously mastered and not mastered actions during song and toy play activities. A general case approach was used to examine the instructional universe of preschool songs and select exemplars that were most likely to facilitate generalization.…

This mixed methods study examined 73 5th graders' flow experience in a game-based science learning environment using two gameplay approaches (solo and collaborative gameplay). Both survey and focus group interview findings revealed that students had high flow experience; however, there were no flow experience differences that were contingent upon…