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Effects of modeling action sequences on the play of twelve-, fifteen, and nineteen-month-old children.

3 studies examined the relation between the spontaneous occurrence in play of simple 2-part action sequences and the frequency of these sequences and their components following modeling at 12, 15, and 19 months of age. Play following modeling was typically more advanced than play preceding modeling. Moreover, imitation was tied to developmental level. Children at 19 months of age were generally able to imitate complete sequences, though only a few 19-month-olds performed such actions spontaneously. Children at 15 months of age typically did not imitate complete sequences except under simplified experimental conditions, and, even then, their ability to perform sequences was attenuated relative to the 19-month-olds. However, 15-month-olds did imitate many single components of the 2-part combinations and, to a lesser extent, exhibited these components spontaneously. A smaller number of 12-month-olds imitated components, which were rarely displayed spontaneously at this age. The results suggested that a general combinatorial capacity in play emerges between 15 and 19 months of age.

Child Development↗

Does play equipment conform to the Canadian standard?

In the summer of 1991, play equipment in 254 playgrounds located on the island of Montreal were inspected, using a checklist made up of items drawn from the Canadian standard for the safety of children's playspaces and equipment. The results of the study, covering 605 climbers, 522 swings and 181 slides, made it possible to identify the most and least respected aspect of safety. For example, one out of two pieces of play equipment was installed on a protective surface that did not conform to the Canadian standard; seven out of ten swings had seats made of non-impact-absorbing materials; and six out of ten pieces of equipment had head entrapment openings. Knowing the physical shortcomings of play equipment is an important step in reducing injuries sustained on it. However, to be effective, the prevention of injuries related to play equipment requires a concerted effort on the part of several partners.

Child↗

Androgen and the development of human sex-typical behavior: rough-and-tumble play and sex of preferred playmates in children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH).

We hypothesized that girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who experience higher than normal levels of androgens prenatally, would show masculinization of behaviors that show sex differences. Therefore, we examined rough-and-tumble play and sex of preferred playmates in 3-8-year-old children with CAH and in unaffected 3-8-year-old male and female relatives. The hypothesized sex differences in rough-and-tumble play were seen, with unaffected boys showing more rough-and-tumble play than unaffected girls. However, CAH girls were similar to unaffected girls. Additionally, CAH boys showed reduced rough-and-tumble play. In contrast, sex of preferred playmates showed the hypothesized pattern of results. There were sex differences, with unaffected boys preferring boys and unaffected girls preferring girls. In addition, the preferences of girls with CAH were masculinized compared to those of unaffected girls. Results are discussed in terms of possible influences of social, hormonal, and illness factors.

Adrenal Hyperplasia, Congenital↗

Incorporating play interventions into nursing care.

Play, as a nursing intervention, has often taken a back seat to all the technical skills performed by nurses. Nurses can and should contribute to implementing and designing play interventions. A review of the play literature forms the basis of a case illustration presented to assist the nurse to plan and implement play in the busy hospital setting.

Child↗

The effect of cage size on play and aggression between dogs in purpose-bred beagles.

One intent of the proposed changes to USDA 9, CFR Part 3 was to give kennel dogs an opportunity for exercise and play (socialization). Increasing cage size was proposed as a means to encourage exercise and play, thus enhancing the well-being of kennel dogs. Eleven-month-old, female, purpose-bred Beagles, housed four to a cage, were videotaped for 15 hours on 10 different dates, resulting in five videotapes recorded for a smaller cage size and five videotapes recorded for a larger cage size. A total of 40 dogs were videotaped. For each videotape, aggression, play, and distance between dogs were recorded and analyzed. There were no differences in aggression or play, but the dogs did put significantly more distance between themselves in the larger cage.

Aggression↗

A day in the life of a hospital play specialist.

During the last eighteen months I have worked as a Hospital Play Specialist on the day surgery ward at Alder Hey Children's Hospital. I am the first Play Specialist to be appointed at Alder Hey. My role is to work as a member of the paediatric team and to attend to the emotional needs of hospitalised children from the ages of 0-16 years. My aim is to make hospitalization a positive experience by providing therapeutic play programmes and preparing children, pre-operatively, for surgery. My day begins at 8:30am when the children have been admitted to the ward. I have devised a programme to meet each child's individual needs, explaining about their operation through play and so reducing stress and anxiety. A relaxed child often creates a relaxed parent.

Child↗

Visual habituation, sensorimotor development, and tempo of play in one-year-old infants.

The pattern of relationships between rate of visual habituation, sensorimotor development, play tempo, and motor activity was examined in 168 1-year-old infants. Subjects were exposed to 3 consecutive series of a repeated visual stimulus and the rate of habituation determined for each series. The measures of sensorimotor development included both standard psychometric and Piagetian scales. Measures of play tempo and motor activity were obtained from observations of free play. Longer fixation time to the initial stimulus presentation and faster habituation on the original series were associated with advanced sensorimotor development for girls. Longer initial fixation time in boys was associated with a slower tempo of play. The magnitude of these relationships, however, was found to be dependent on whether the subject completed the entire experimental session or was terminated early due to irritability or drowsiness. The results suggest that both the sex and state of the infant are important moderators of the relationship between measure of visual attention and other individual difference variables.

Child Development↗

Play: the arena for acquisition of rules for competent behavior.

Play is acknowledged as a critical, complex arena of learning. In play, individuals process information about their location in space, time, and personal relationships. One mechanism for organizing this information is the rule. This paper defines the rule as a symbol and its relationship to skilled action. With this perspective of rules, preliminary questions about play are posed. The occupational therapist can organize the observation of play based on the yield from these questions.

Adult↗

Maternal education and maternal responsiveness as predictors of play competence in low birth weight, premature infants: a preliminary report.

Videotaped play interactions of 182 low birth weight, premature toddlers and their mothers were used to investigate whether a model including maternal responsiveness together with level of maternal education was a better predictor of play maturity scores of the children than a model consisting of education level alone. The videotapes were coded using the responsiveness subscale of the Maternal Behavior Rating Scale. Regression analyses revealed that maternal education alone significantly predicted play scores, accounting for 9% of the variance. However, the model that included both maternal responsiveness and maternal education together also significantly predicted play scores and accounted for 20% of the variance. Including responsiveness together with maternal education significantly increased the proportion of variance accounted for by maternal education alone. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Child Behavior↗

Effects of prenatal exposure to opioids on focused attention in toddlers during free play.

The goals of this study were: (1) to determine if 24-month-old children exposed to opioids show decreased focused attention during free play compared with children of the same age who were not prenatally exposed; (2) to identify medical and social risk factors other than drug exposure that are related to focused attention; and (3) to determine if mothers' teaching ability had an effect on attention. Focused attention was rated during a 3-minute free play session for 30 toddlers who were methadone-exposed and for 44 comparison toddlers. The mother teaching the child to use a toy was also rated separately from the free play session. There was no difference in focused attention of 24 month olds during free play based only on prenatal exposure. Despite group differences in medical and social risk factors, only maternal IQ was significantly related to focused attention. Maternal instruction was strongly related to focused attention and mediated the effects of maternal IQ on attention.

Attention↗

Metaphor, symbolic play, and logical thought in early childhood.

Development of the ability to understand diverse types of metaphor was examined in terms of play context (symbolic vs. constructive-object play), Piagetian operational level (preoperational vs. concrete-operational), and medium of presentation (pictures vs. words). Forty 4-year-olds and 80 6-year-olds (40 preoperational, 40 concrete-operational) were presented with six different types of metaphorical relationships (color, shape, physiognomic, cross-modal, psychological-physical, and taxonomic matches) in both pictures and words in a match-to-sample design. Results indicated that (a) constructive-object play, rather than symbolic play, facilitated the understanding of perceptual and taxonomic metaphor, suggesting differences in early styles of metaphoric usage; (b) despite previous findings, the study failed to replicate a relationship between operativity and metaphoric understanding; and (c) younger children did significantly better in the pictorial medium, suggesting a picture-superiority effect for more perceptible metaphorical relations (perceptual and physiognomic), whereas older children showed a word-superiority effect for more conceptual metaphors (psychological-physical and taxonomic).

Age Factors↗

The Children's Play Therapy Instrument (CPTI). Description, development, and reliability studies.

The Children's Play Therapy Instrument (CPTI), its development, and reliability studies are described. The CPTI is a new instrument to examine a child's play activity in individual psychotherapy. Three independent raters used the CPTI to rate eight videotaped play therapy vignettes. Results were compared with the authors' consensual scores from a preliminary study. Generally good to excellent levels of interrater reliability were obtained for the independent raters on intraclass correlation coefficients for ordinal categories of the CPTI. Likewise, kappa levels were acceptable to excellent for nominal categories of the scale. The CPTI holds promise to become a reliable measure of play activity in child psychotherapy. Further research is needed to assess discriminant validity of the CPTI for use as a diagnostic tool and as a measure of process and outcome.

Affect↗

Children's exposure to magnetic fields produced by U.S. television sets used for viewing programs and playing video games.

Two epidemiologic studies have reported increased risk of childhood leukemia associated with the length of time children watched television (TV) programs or played video games connected to TV sets. To evaluate magnetic field exposures resulting from these activities, the static, ELF, and VLF magnetic fields produced by 72 TV sets used by children to watch TV programs and 34 TV sets used to play video games were characterized in a field study conducted in Washington DC and its Maryland suburbs. The resulting TV-specific magnetic field data were combined with information collected through questionnaires to estimate the magnetic field exposure levels associated with TV watching and video game playing. The geometric means of the ELF and VLF exposure levels so calculated were 0.0091 and 0.0016 microT, respectively, for children watching TV programs and 0.023 and 0.0038 microT, respectively, for children playing video games. Geometric means of ambient ELF and VLF levels with TV sets turned off were 0.10 and 0.0027 microT, respectively. Summed over the ELF frequency range (6-3066 Hz), the exposure levels were small compared to ambient levels. However, in restricted ELF frequency ranges (120 Hz and 606-3066 Hz) and in the VLF band, TV exposure levels were comparable to or larger than normal ambient levels. Even so, the strengths of the 120 Hz or 606-3066 Hz components of TV fields were small relative to the overall ambient levels. Consequently, our results provide little support for a linkage between childhood leukemia and exposure to the ELF magnetic fields produced by TV sets. Our results do suggest that any future research on possible health effects of magnetic fields from television sets might focus on the VLF electric and magnetic fields produced by TV sets because of their enhanced ability relative to ELF fields to induce electric currents.

Adolescent↗

Histidine residues 102 and 117 of MelC1 play different roles in the chaperone function for Streptomyces apotyrosinase.

MelC1 regulates the copper incorporation and secretion of Streptomyces apotyrosinase (MelC2) via a transient, competent complex formation. His-102 and His-117 of the chaperone-like MelC1 are known to play important roles in this trans-activation activity of MelC1. In this study, we studied the side chain requirement at these two residues for MelC1 function. Substitution of His-117 with polar, charged, or hydrophobic amino acid resulted in complete abolishment of the tyrosinase activity but no effect on its secretion. When similar amino acid substitutions were introduced at His-102, both the secretion and the enzymatic activity of tyrosinase were blocked to different extents. Furthermore, the tyrosinase activity of the His-117 mutants but not the His-102 mutants could be partially reactivated by in vitro copper reconstitution. Notably, the defects in the MelC1 mutant protein did not impair the formation of the MelC1-MelC2 binary complex, but rather produced an incompetent complex. In summary, our results reveal that His-102 and His-117 of MelC1 play different roles in MelC1 functions. In particular, His-117 of MelC1 plays a pivotal role in regulation of the copper incorporation but not the secretion of apotyrosinase, while His-102 plays a dual role in both the secretion and the activation of apotyrosinase.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

Scopolamine blocks play fighting behavior in juvenile rats.

Play fighting, social investigation, and locomotor activity of prepubescent male laboratory rats were observed 20 min following administration of scopolamine hydrobromide. Play fighting was inhibited by an intraperitoneal dosage of 0.3 mg/kg and was effectively blocked at all dosages greater than 0.5 mg/kg; activity and social investigatory behavior were increased by scopolamine. Play fighting inhibition following a threshold dosage of 0.3 mg/kg scopolamine was effective at 30 min; after 120 min, drug- and saline-treated groups failed to differ reliably. Behavioral tolerance to scopolamine was observed after five days of daily treatment with 0.5 mg/kg scopolamine; play fighting, following a 0.5 mg/kg dosage of scopolamine, did not differ from that of saline-treated controls. The results are discussed in terms of central and peripheral effects of scopolamine and the competing response hypothesis.

Aggression↗

Sex differences in the play fighting activity of golden hamster infants.

Play fighting of homosexual and heterosexual dyads in golden hamsters was studied. The behaviors of male-male (MM), female-female (FF), and female-male (FM) dyads were recorded from the 25th to the 31st day of age. Play fighting activity of heterosexual dyads was depressed since MF and FM dyads exhibited a significantly high physical contact time and engaged in less play fighting, with a significantly lower time spent on such activity. Alternation ratio in the pinning posture was very high and subjects did not differ in the mean number of active (top) and passive pinning (under) in each dyad, showing an inexistence of sex dominance. In most cases, differences in the performances of MM and FF dyads were not significant. We have concluded that play fighting in golden hamsters may be predominantly modulated by environmental stimuli (sex of the partner) rather than by endogenous stimuli (androgen level).

Aggression↗

Cholinergic agonists suppress play fighting in juvenile rats.

Previous research has suggested that acetylcholine might activate play fighting in juvenile rats through its actions on central muscarinic receptors. To test this hypothesis we evaluated the effects on play fighting by the muscarinic agonists pilocarpine and arecoline given alone or in combination with the muscarinic antagonists scopolamine or methylscopolamine. Scopolamine, but not methylscopolamine which penetrates the brain poorly, suppressed play as indexed by frequency of pinning. Pilocarpine and arecoline also suppressed pinning at higher doses. Concurrent treatment with various agonist-antagonist dose combinations produced additive rather than counteractive effects. These data do not support the supposition that central muscarinic circuits are involved in the activation of play fighting.

Aggression↗

Low level lead exposure during lactation increases rough and tumble play fighting of juvenile rats.

Lactating rats were given distilled water or distilled water containing 0.067% lead chloride (500 ppm lead) as their sole source of drinking fluid from Days 1-21 of lactation. Activity, social investigation and rough and tumble play fighting behaviors of the offspring were observed on Day 26 and activity and play solicitation behaviors on Day 36. Although lead treatment reduced the mothers' fluid intake, there were no effects on pup growth and activity or on maternal behaviors. When paired with a group-housed stimulus animal on Day 26, lead-treated subjects had increases in the two measures of play fighting (crossover and pinning), and in social investigation, relative to controls. When tested with a scopolamine-treated, non-playful stimulus on Day 36, increased crossover frequencies were observed in lead-treated subjects when compared with controls. Two-min activity levels on Days 26 and 35 were unaffected by lead exposure. These results indicate that social interactive behaviors of juvenile rats are effective tools in the assessment of exposure to toxic substances early in development.

Aggression↗