Mechanisms of Co-constructing Play Between Preschool-Age Children and Novel Adults

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Interpersonal processes serve important purposes that begin in infancy and contribute to social–emotional development throughout the lifespan (Feldman et al., 2015; Tronick, 1998). Although research in these areas is extensive, it is often limited to the caregiver–child relationship. However, child interactions with less familiar adults are frequent, including in clinical settings such as occupational therapy. Using videos gathered from three independent research studies looking at social–emotional development using different adult–child interactions, we aimed to identify underlying mechanisms operating throughout interactions.

METHOD: We first identified components of co-constructed play interactions between a novel adult and a preschool-age child. We analyzed videos of children interacting with a novel woman during free play occurring in an experimental setting. The videos included 22 children (12 girls, 10 boys) aged 31–59 mo (M = 46.45, SD = 9.40) from diverse racial backgrounds whose primary language was English. Children interacted with five different social experimenters (SEs), who were all female students in occupational therapy or occupational science graduate programs.

The videos were analyzed using grounded theory concepts modified for video observations (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). Aspects of conversation and observational analysis were combined and adapted to code the play interactions for verbal communication and physical actions of both participants. Before grounded theory coding, the researchers watched videos for general feel and activities during play. They then conducted an initial open coding of the videos for actions and conversations between the SE and the child. Mechanisms relevant to the play interaction emerged during this initial coding. Emerging theories of interaction were discussed among collaborators to enhance conceptualization and trustworthiness. A second selective coding was used to confirm mechanisms revealed during the initial coding and generate a process of building play interactions between social partners. Mechanisms involved in the generated process were analyzed with descriptive methods (Sandelowski, 2000).

RESULTS: Grounded theory coding produced a social interaction process of co-creating play between adult–child dyads that includes three major mechanisms: bids for interaction, alignment or misalignment, and threats to alignment. Bids for interaction include initial offers, building offers, and change offers. Alignment was defined as the understanding of a social partner’s intent and taking action toward that intent. Specific types of process mechanisms were identified. Two categories of threats to alignment emerged: exerting control or disrupting the interaction. Within exerting control, mechanisms of limiting engagement of a social partner, imposing structure, refusals, and ignoring were seen. Disruptions included wandering and incongruent bids.

Each dyad enacted these mechanisms in unique, dynamic processes that produced social play. The overall enactment of mechanisms throughout dyads resulted in four categories of synchrony to describe the overall flow of the interaction: asynchronous, discontinuous, continuous, and shared.

CONCLUSION: The results provide a working theory of how social play interactions between novel adults and children develop. The process framework and synchrony categories are useful for occupational therapy practitioners to use in pediatric play-based interventions in order to build positive play interactions and rapport with clients, particularly new clients. Additionally, the framework can be used to evaluate synchrony and threats to success within play interactions between clinicians and clients.

References

Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2011). The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Feldman, R., Bamberger, E., & Kanat-Maymon, Y. (2015). Parent-specific reciprocity from infancy to adolescence shapes children’s social competence and dialogical skills. Attachment and Human Development, 15, 407–423. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2013.782650

Sandelowski, M. (2000). Whatever happened to qualitative description? Research in Nursing and Health, 23, 334–340. https://doi.org/10.1002/1098-240X(200008)23:4<334::AID-NUR9>3.0.CO;2-G

Tronick, E. (1998). Dyadically expanded states of consciousness and the process of therapeutic change. Infant Mental Health Journal, 19, 290–299. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0355(199823)19:3<290::AID-IMHJ4>3.0.CO;2-Q