Sequences in the development of competent play with peers: Social and social pretend play.

In Study 1,48 children participated in a longitudinal study of peer play development, from infancy through preschool. Children developed play forms in the expected sequence and at the expected ages. Children showed stability in both proportion and emergence of complex play. Children's pattern of play form emergence and proportion of time in more complex play forms related to subsequent indexes of social competence. In Study 2, we assessed the peer play of children ages 10 to 59 months. One sample (n = 259) attended minimally adequate child-care centers. The other sample (n = 48) attended a model child-care center. Children in the model center showed complex play form emergence at earlier ages and engaged in greater proportions of complex play than children in the minimally adequate centers. Beginning with the early work of Partens(l 932), developmental theorists have attempted to order their observations of chil