The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of occurrences of sociodramatic play behavior during the dramatic play of black male and female children three and four years of age using the six elements of sociodramatic play identified by Smilansky (1968). This study attempted to determine whether there was relationship between sociodramatic play and age among black children and whether the same relationship between age and sociodramatic play was the same for black males as for black females.Sociodramatic play is a combination of all of the elements of dramatic play which include: imitative role play, make believe in regard to objects, make believe in regard to actions and situations, persistence, interaction, and verbal communication. In order to be termed sociodramatic play all of the six elements must be present. Most children engage in some form of dramatic play, but interaction and verbal communication are the two elements that make the dramatic play sociodramatic.Forty-eight black children who were three and four years of age were selected on a convenience basis from three day care centers located in mideastern Indiana. All of the children lived in cities having an excess population of 70,000 people.The children were observed individually as a member of a group of four, in a structured play setting. Two observers made narrative records of the play behavior of the same child systematically every thirty seconds for five minutes, in order to have a total of 20 observations, 10 from each observer, per child, per day for each of six consecutive days. The child's actions were recorded on the specimen portion of the instrument and, after analysis, were later transferred to the checklist portion of the instrument.The C.W.S. (Chirstman, Werton, Schurrr) Observation Instrument was an adaptation and refinement of the instruments used by Smilansky and the Ohio State University Research Group (1970). The two observers who participated in the study were trained in the use of the C.W.S. Observation Instrument. The application of the Pearson Product Moment Correlation technique produced an interrator reliability on scoring of the play behavior of .94 for the six days of observation.A univariate analysis of variance has been applied to the collected data. Sex and age of the child constituted the independent variables. Each of the six elements of sociodramatic play have been treated as a dependent variable.Testing the hypotheses on the variables of sex and age produced no significant differences at the .05 level of significance although several of the dependent variables approached the level of significance.Eleven of twenty-four three-year-old black children did not engage in all six elements of sociodramatic play. Five of twenty-four four-year-old black children did not engage in all six of the elements of sociodramatic play. The remaining thirty-two of the forty-eight black children in this study did engage in all six of the elements of sociodramatic play.Consistent differences appeared in both the age of the black child in regard to the six elements of sociodramatic play and sex of the child, but these differences did not prove to be statistically significant.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/181859 |
| Date | January 1975 |
| Creators | Werton, Pamela Cynthia |
| Contributors | Lane, Conrad C. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | vii, 92 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds