The purpose of the study was to determine whether a significant correlation existed between group play and performance on a verbal intelligence test. In addition, the study was designed to test group play as a predictor of performance on a verbal intelligence test.The subjects of the study were kindergarten children enrolled at the Burris Laboratory School in Muncie, Indiana. All the children enrolled in either the morning or afternoon kindergarten program were considered to be included in the population sample but two restrictions eliminated some of the candidates. Those students who were non-white or absent for ten or more observations and/or school days were eliminated. A total of sixteen female and sixteen male students with the age range of sixty-two to seventy-seven months were used in this investigation.Two measuring instruments were used to collect data for the study. An observation instrument was developed from the Parent Social Play Scale to collect data that measured the number of group play episodes observed from each subject.A team of three observers were trained to use the observation instrument and a pilot study was conducted to establish the inter-rater reliability. By using Cohen's coefficient Kappa, it was established that the observation team had an interrater reliability of .99 when measuring between the two-part division of group play and non group play and an inter-rater reliability of .81 when measuring between all six types of social play. Twenty, thirty-second observations were made for each subject. Each observation was classified as one of the six social play types and then further categorized as non group play or group play. The final count included all group play observations for each subject.The other instrument used was the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. This instrument provided an estimate of the verbal intelligence of each subject.The group play count, raw score from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, sex, age, and number of siblings in the family of each subject were analyzed to test the following hypothesis at the .05 level of statistical significance: the partial correlation between group play and performance on a verbal intelligence test, partialling out the effects due to sex, age, and number of siblings in the family, is zero.The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (the SPSS) program for multiple regression was used to test the 3 hypothesis. The value of the partial F ratio from the analysis of the data did not permit -the rejection of the hypothesis at an alpha level of .05. The partial correlation did not approach being significant and the proportion of the residual sum of squares that was accounted for by the addition of group play to the regression could not have been considered different from zero.The following conclusions may be drawn from the study: 1) group play explained very little of the variance in the scores on the verbal intelligence test, and 2) group play had little correlation with performance on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test when controlling for number of siblings in the family, age, and sex. Results of the study indicate that use of group play as a predictor or remediator of verbal intelligence is questionable.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/176992 |
| Date | January 1979 |
| Creators | Hyclak, Joanna Paterno |
| Contributors | Wheeler, Margaret S. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | vi, 97 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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