A study of children's acts and interactions during play with different play materials

SUMMARY The problem of this study first and foremost was to test the fruitfulness of a very detailed characterisation of the individual acts, including speech acts, performed during play episodes (settings) by children aged 4, 6 and 8 years. The theoretical basis is Austin's speech act theory which, in previous studies, has been utilised as the point of departure for analyses of children's speech acts, or utterance functions, especially in episodes of role play and construction play. The method consists of observation and analysis of 69 video-taped episodes using a series of categorisations. The units of observation are the individual acts, and the episodes allowed for comparisons as to age, sex, type of play, and number of children playing together. In addition, a number of children, parents and teachers were interviewed. The major findings were 1) that this method of analysis is fruitful, 2) that the acts and interactions of 6 year old children show significantly greater variations according to type of play material than those of 4 years old children, 3) that differences between play behaviour of boys and girls are smaller than expected, and 4) that a collection of LEGO materials implies the same amount of interaction and communication as a collection of play things that are ready-made miniature models of real phenomena (persons, animals, cars, furniture, etc.). The implications for practice of such ‘basic’ studies are mostly of an indirect nature such as making practitioners aware of new aspects of children's behaviour and perceptions, which is, in general, the main role of developmental psychology in the area of early childhood education. However, the study also throws some light on the problems of play acting and the role of play in education.