Development of an assessment to identify play behaviours that discriminate between the play of typical preschoolers and preschoolers with pre-academic problems

Abstract

Occupational therapists regard play as the primary occupation of childhood. However, many authors of play assessments have viewed play either as a functional outcome of other skills or as an indication of the child's developmental level. While such views of play are valid, these approaches to play are broad and do not fully consider the cognitive value of play. A study was undertaken with 82 preschoolers to see if a new play assessment which considers cognitive play skills, called the Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment, (ChIPPA), possessed acceptable inter-rater reliability, and could discriminate between the play of typically developing preschoolers and preschoolers with pre-academic problems. This assessment evaluates preschoolers’ elaborate imaginative actions, number of imitative actions, and number of object substitutions. The ChIPPA was found to have excellent inter-rater reliability and did discriminate between children who were typically developing and children who experienced pre-academic problems. In particular, the elaborateness of a child's play actions and the child's ability to substitute objects were strong discriminators of preschoolers with and without pre-academic problems. Three play profiles which emerged from the research are discussed.

Theory of mind predominantly associated with the quality, not quantity, of pretend play in children with autism spectrum disorder

“…The psychometric properties of the ChIPPA have been well established, including the test-retest reliability [42], inter-rater reliability [36,43], content validity and construct validity [41], discriminative validity [44], and sensitivity and specificity [44].…”

“…The quality, elaborateness, complexity, and organization of the pretend play were not considered. This is important because pretend play can be divided into both conventional imaginative play and symbolic play [36]. Conventional imaginative play, or preliminary pretend play, refers to the use of conventional toys (real or small copies of things) in a functionally proper way outside of the typical context [36,37], such as feeding a doll with a toy spoon.…”

“…Conventional imaginative play, or preliminary pretend play, refers to the use of conventional toys (real or small copies of things) in a functionally proper way outside of the typical context [36,37], such as feeding a doll with a toy spoon. Symbolic play, or sophisticated pretend play, refers to using objects as something else, attributing properties, or pretending an absent object is present [36,37], such as using a banana as a telephone, pretending a piece of cloth is wet, or making an imagined cup with one's hands and pretending to drink. Therefore, refined assessment of pretend play is necessary to the investigation of children's pretend play to avoid ceiling effects and provide careful observation of ToM and pretend play.…”

Assessment of Pretend Play in Preschool-Aged Children: Validation and Factor Analysis of the Affect in Play Scale–Preschool Version

“…For example, the Test of Pretend Play (ToPP; Lewis, Boucher, & Astell, 1992) assesses imagination and organization, whereas the ChildInitiated Pretend Play Assessment (ChIPP; Stagnitti, Unsworth, & Rodger, 2000) measures symbolic transformations, the elaborateness and organization of the play, and the proportion of child-initiated as opposed to examiner-initiated play segments. Other play assessment measures for the preschool age range might assess social competence (as opposed to play ability per se) by observing the child's play with peers (e.g., Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale [PIPPS]; Fantuzzo et al, 1995).…”

Pretend Play in Italian Children: Validation of the Affect in Play Scale-Preschool Version

“…In addition, most of the existing tools failed in their attempt to assess the interplay among the different developmental domains which are involved in playing activities (Russ 2012;Russ and Niec 2012). For instance, the Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment (ChIPPA; Stagnitti et al 2000), even if considered as a well validated measure of pretend play in preschool years, measures only cognitive processes such as child's capacity to spontaneously self-initiate pretend play (Fehr and Russ 2014). To date, the Affect in Play Scale Preschool (APS-P; Kaugars and Russ 2009;Russ 2004) is the only standardized measure that assesses simultaneously cognitive and affective themes in pretend play, leading to a better understanding of how these aspects interact in the domain of child development (see Kaugars 2011, for a thorough review of assessment of pretend play).…”