Title: Supporting Shy Preschool Children in Joining Social Play
for goal-oriented behavior, are critical for children's school outcomes and often lacking when children arrive in elementary school. One of the most promising interventions to address this gap is Tools of the Mind (ToM), a Vygotskyan approach to early childhood education with a strong emphasis on sociodramatic play. One challenge in implementing this kind of play is supporting children in joining play with their peers. In this paper we present a content analysis of an eight-week evaluation comparing implementing ToM-style play with and without technology supports. We found that one specific aspect of the technology supports, a voice agent, played a crucial role in integrating shy children into sociodramatic play. more »« less
Currin, Flannery Hope; Diederich, Kyle; Blasi, Kaitlyn; Peterman, Kerry; Hourcade, Juan Pablo
(, CHI PLAY '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play)
null
(Ed.)
High-quality sociodramatic play helps children develop executive function skills which bolster their performance in school. Technology supports can scaffold social play for children who struggle to engage otherwise. This case study examines the impact of a specific system, StoryCarnival, on one 3-year-old child's engagement in sociodramatic play with his peers.comparing this child's participation in sessions using either StoryCarnival or a traditional intervention over eight weeks, StoryCarnival appeared to lower barriers to this child's physical and verbal engagement in social play. Future research could identify whether this pattern may hold for other children who have trouble entering social play with peers.
McElwain, Nancy L.; Ravindran, Niyantri; Emery, Helen T.; Swartz, Rebecca
(, Social Development)
Abstract Children's relationships with parents and peers have been examined as predictors and outcomes, respectively, of theory of mind (ToM). Yet, these two lines of inquiry have remained largely distinct. The current study bridges this gap. Mother–child coordinated interaction and attachment security (continuous rating) were assessed at 2.8 years (N = 128 dyads), ToM was assessed at 3.3, 4.8, and 5.4 years, and child–friend interaction was observed at 4.8 and 5.4 years. Controlling for child expressive language ability at 2.8 years, mother–child coordinated interaction predicted more complex child–friend play and less child–friend conflict via more advanced ToM. No indirect effects from attachment security to friendship quality via ToM emerged. Attachment group status (secure vs. insecure), however, moderated ToM‐friendship associations, such that (a) more advanced ToM predicted more socially complex play with friends, and (b) more conflict with friends predicted more advanced ToM, but only for children classified as secure.
Superti Pantoja, Luiza; Diederich, Kyle; Crawford, Liam; Corbett, Megan; Klemm, Samantha; Peterman, Kerry; Currin, Flannery; Hourcade, Juan Pablo
(, Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)
There has been a dramatic growth in interactive technology use by children under the age of 5 during the past decade. Despite this growth, children under the age of 5 typically participate only as users or testers in the design process in the overwhelming majority of projects targeting this population presented in key child-computer interaction venues. In this paper we introduce play-based design, an age-appropriate design method to give 3-4-year-old children a voice in the design process. More specifically, we contribute a thorough analysis of the use of existing methods to design technologies for children under the age of 5, a summary of the process that resulted in the development of play-based design, a detailed description of play-based design, a qualitative analysis of our experience implementing play-based design with two groups of children, and a discussion of play-based design's place among other methods, its advantages, and limitations.
Hourcade, Juan Pablo; Bakala, Ewelina; Gerosa, Anaclara; Currin, Flannery Hope
(, IDC '23: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference)
In a post-lockdown context with significant concerns about children’s social skills, it is important for technologies to play a positive role in supporting children across cultures, settings, and backgrounds. The research presented in this work-in-progress is about StoryCarnival, a technology designed to promote creative, social role play among preschool children. We conducted StoryCarnival play sessions for three weeks with a group of 3-4-year-old children in Montevideo, Uruguay, a very different setting from the one where StoryCarnival was designed. We present preliminary results suggesting the activities resulted in a significant increase in children’s social play. We also discuss the impact of cultural differences and describe experiences with some features of StoryCarnival that had not previously been used in the field.
Bass, Ilona; Colantonio, Joseph; Aboody, Rosie; Wong, Michelle; Ullman, Tomer; Bonawitz, Elizabeth
(, Frontiers in Developmental Psychology)
Pedagogy is a powerful way to learn about the world, and young children are adept at both learning from teaching and teaching others themselves. Theoretical accounts of pedagogical reasoning suggest that an important aspect of being an effective teacher is considering what learners need to know, as misconceptions about learners' beliefs, needs, or goals can result in less helpful teaching. One underexplored way in which teachers may fail to represent what learners know is by simply “going through the motions” of teaching, without actively engaging with the learner's beliefs, needs, and goals at all. In the current paper, we replicate ongoing work that suggests children are sensitive to when others are relying on automatic scripts in the context of teaching. We then look at the potential link to two related measures. First, we hypothesize that sensitivity to a teacher's perceived automaticity will be linked to classic measures of pedagogical sensitivity and learning—specifically, how children explore and learn about novel toys following pedagogical vs. non-pedagogical demonstrations. Second, we hypothesize that the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) (and age differences more broadly) relate to these pedagogical sensitivities. Our online adaptation of the novel toy exploration task did not invoke pedagogical reasoning as expected, and so we do not find robust links between these tasks. We do find that ToM predicts children's ability to detect automaticity in teaching when controlling for age. This work thus highlights the connections between sensitivity to teaching and reasoning about others' knowledge, with implications for the factors that support children's ability to teach others.
Currin, Flannery Hope, Diederich, Kyle, Blasi, Kaitlyn, Schmidt, Allyson Dale, David, Holly, Peterman, Kerry, and Hourcade, Juan Pablo. Supporting Shy Preschool Children in Joining Social Play. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10273603. IDC '21: Interaction Design and Children . Web. doi:10.1145/3459990.3460729.
Currin, Flannery Hope, Diederich, Kyle, Blasi, Kaitlyn, Schmidt, Allyson Dale, David, Holly, Peterman, Kerry, and Hourcade, Juan Pablo.
"Supporting Shy Preschool Children in Joining Social Play". IDC '21: Interaction Design and Children (). Country unknown/Code not available. https://doi.org/10.1145/3459990.3460729.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10273603.
@article{osti_10273603,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Supporting Shy Preschool Children in Joining Social Play},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10273603},
DOI = {10.1145/3459990.3460729},
abstractNote = {for goal-oriented behavior, are critical for children's school outcomes and often lacking when children arrive in elementary school. One of the most promising interventions to address this gap is Tools of the Mind (ToM), a Vygotskyan approach to early childhood education with a strong emphasis on sociodramatic play. One challenge in implementing this kind of play is supporting children in joining play with their peers. In this paper we present a content analysis of an eight-week evaluation comparing implementing ToM-style play with and without technology supports. We found that one specific aspect of the technology supports, a voice agent, played a crucial role in integrating shy children into sociodramatic play.},
journal = {IDC '21: Interaction Design and Children},
author = {Currin, Flannery Hope and Diederich, Kyle and Blasi, Kaitlyn and Schmidt, Allyson Dale and David, Holly and Peterman, Kerry and Hourcade, Juan Pablo},
editor = {null}
}
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