The initial session play therapy behaviors of maladjusted and adjusted children were compared to investigate the value of children's play for diagnostic purposes. The frequency and the intensity of 13 categories of play behaviors were considered as factors in discriminating maladjusted children from adjusted children. The 15 children in the maladjusted group had been referred by their parents for counseling but had not been in counseling previously, and their teachers had reported that they had exhibited two or more behaviors indicative of emotional disturbance. The 15 children in the adjusted group were rated by their teachers as exhibiting none of the behaviors Indicating emotional disturbance, and their parents recognized no need for counseling. All subjects were 5 to 9 years of age, and the two groups were matched for age and sex. The Play Behaviors Adjustment Rating Scale (PBARS) was used to rate each child's play behaviors in an initial videotaped 36-minute play therapy session. The frequency and the intensity were rated for thirteen play categories: exploratory, incidental, creative or coping, dramatic or role, relationship building, relationship testing, self-accepting, self-rejecting, acceptance of environment, nonacceptance of environment, positive attitudinal, ambivalent attitudinal, and negative attitudinal. The results of the chi-square analysis indicated that maladjusted children exhibited significantly more self-accepting and nonacceptance of environment behaviors as well as more intense dramatic or role behaviors and acceptance of environment behaviors than did adjusted children. Further investigation showed: (a) maladjusted girls expressed dramatic or role behaviors more often and more intensely than maladjusted boys, (b) maladjusted boys showed more self-accepting and nonacceptance of environment behaviors than maladjusted girls, (c) maladjusted boys exhibited more self-accepting behaviors than adjusted boys, (d) adjusted girls expressed more positive attitudinal behaviors than adjusted boys, and (e) adjusted boys engaged in more exploratory play and were more intense in negative attitudinal play than adjusted girls.

Children diagnosed with autism are often described as having limited or restricted activities that serve as reinforcers as compared to neurotypical peers. Many theories suggest that one of the many ways children develop is through participation in play. This results in children coming into contact with new environmental stimuli. The procedures used to enhance play skills for children diagnosed with autism typically involve training novel responses with novel stimuli (e.g., toys). This is often done using naturalistic procedures. Because multiple procedures are used, it is unclear what procedure or combination of procedures causes the increases in play repertoires. This study investigated an important component of the treatment package know as reciprocal imitation training. Specifically, the study examined whether increased opportunities, contingent imitation without the requirement to imitate, or contingent imitation with the requirement to imitate would increase the number of toys a child diagnosed with autism would play with. The results showed dramatic increases in the number of toys the child independently chose to play with and an increase in the spontaneous use of different response topographies across novel stimuli only when the student was required to imitate a model. The results are discussed in terms of mediated generalization, the use of common responses, stimulus class formation and stimulus class expansion.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2009. / Open access. Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-84). Print copy also available.

This thesis connects with and extends inter alia the recent but as yet peripheral move within the sociology of childhood to open up children's agency to empirical analysis. Drawing heuristically upon actor-network theory and thought of this kind its aim is to expose the networks of heterogeneous associations upon which children's agency and power depends. Focusing upon children's every day play activities; the analytical lens is extended to consider the role of nonhumans that are embedded in children's mundane play interactions within their local neighbourhood and within their school playground. In doing so, this thesis argues that nonhumans are crucial participants in social interaction that are implicated in and pivotal to the heterogeneous networks of associations that children, as heterogeneous engineers, actively create to achieve their particular goals and desires. As a corollary to this, an analytical incorporation of nonhumans has drawn attention to the wider role that nonhumans play in the life worlds of children. In respect to this, the argument this thesis advances is that nonhumans,in their diverse forms, are functionally important in holding children's social relations in place. Drawn from ethnographic fieldwork with children, this thesis argues that children's agency, power and social relations, take their form and are an outcome of the heterogeneous associations that take place between humans and `things'.

The purpose of this study was to examine the processes and patterns of communicative interaction which preschool and elementary school-aged deaf and hearing siblings utilized to initiate, maintain and terminate dialogs during play. Specifically, the focus was to determine if the processes and patterns of communication differed when a deaf sibling interacted with an older hearing sibling who has been exposed primarily to a simultaneous visual-auditory (SimVA) pattern of communication, as compared to when a deaf sibling interacted with a younger hearing sibling who has been exposed to both a SimVA and a sequential visual (Seq V) pattern of communication. Video-taped playbouts were observed between each of two sibling dyads at play within a single family: (a) an older dyad composed of a seven-year-old hearing child and her five-year-old deaf sister, and (b) a younger dyad with the second-born deaf sister and her three-year-old hearing brother. The video-tapes were coded to determine: the kinds of play siblings engaged in; the use and expression of behavioral and communicative elements of attention-getting, exchange of information, and termination processes of dialogs; who initiated and terminated dialogs; the occurrence of turn-taking during message delivery; and the expression of patterns of communication used by siblings during dialogs. Only three of five possible kinds of play were actually noted, of which social play was the most frequently observed kind of play taking place between siblings within both dyads. In the older hearing and deaf sibling dyad, it was found that the older hearing sister predominately used visual processes and patterns of communicative interaction when conversing with her deaf sister, whereas the deaf sibling relied extensively on visual-auditory processes and patterns of communication when conversing with her hearing sister. In the younger dyad, visual-auditory patterns of communication predominated both hearing and deaf siblings' expression of processes and patterns of communication with each other. New terminology reflecting siblings' behavioral and communicative patterns of communication are introduced. This study represents the first known research examining the processes and patterns of deaf and hearing siblings' behavioral and communicative interactions of dialog. The findings are discussed in relation to potential applications to early intervention programs for hearing families with deaf and hearing siblings and to future research directions. Overall, the findings from this study appear to indicate that deaf and hearing siblings communicate in ways largely influenced by developmental maturation and the communicative environments to which each child has been exposed during language acquisition processes. The findings are also consistent with Vygotsky's theory of a sociocultural origin of language development.

Adult attitudes toward the Barbie dolls are ambivalent, with many saying they encourage a variety of undesirable tendencies. This paper looks at the dramatic play that actually occurs with the dolls, much of it involving the normal behavior that one would expect in children who are becoming enculturated through imitation of the adult behavior they see around them. But also common is play that most adults would think of as unconventional or deviant. To what extent are parents, particularly mothers, aware of this? How does this play relate to enculturation? Does it serve other functions? And what implications does it have for the age at which children should be given Barbies and the need for adult supervision or instruction of the children? This thesis describes the types of play engaged in and considers possible answers to the questions raised above. / Department of Anthropology

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-108). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.A.)--Eastern Illinois University, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-53).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Northeastern University, 2008. / Title from title page (viewed June 24, 2009). Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Dept. of Counseling and Applied Educational Psychology. Includes bibliographical references (p. 153-170).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, August, 2008. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.