A study of the play behavior of retarded children.
Piaget, Almy and Peller have pointed to the necessity of play for cognitive development. Earlier, Lehman and Witty, Boyton and Ford, Horne and Philleo. Tilton, Ottinger and Weiner conducted studies on play in cognitively disturbed children. Hetzer and Inhelder show that the retarded child annot utilize his play area because of poor imagination and lack of expressive skills. Many play activities have a perseverating character. They cannot make sufficient use of the possibilities inherent in the toys presented to them. Uncontrolled drives inhibit creative and constructive play. Often, a plan d'attaque for play is lacking. Following on the heels of earlier studies, systematic play observations of 38 retarded children were made using ten observation categories. In Table II the results are shown of the way in which the child uses a toy. The play behavior of the retarded child is predominated by a great need to explore, experiment and move. He hardly has a chance to use toys in a creative way resulting in a play endproduct. The choice of toys is given in Table III. Boys had a particular interest in vehicles and environmental material, girls in dolls. According to expectation, the level of play behavior (Table IV) and the scores on an intelligence test (HAWIK) appeared to positively correlate with each other. This was also true for the correlations between the subtest scores and play behavior, with the exception of similarities and block design. Also, the variation in the exhibited play behavior correlated positively with the measured IQ's. In view of the correlations found, there are indications that imitation play is important for emotional and social behavior. Older study results, which showed a connection between an identification score and imitation play seem to be confirmed in retarded children, too. For the practical situation in child-rearing and education, the study results point to the necessity of bringing the retarded child into contact with as many different toys as possible.
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002755:Choice Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology*; D007360:Intelligence; D008297:Male; D010988:Play and Playthings; D012917:Social Adjustment