The use of the Child Initiated Pretend Play Assessment - ChIPPA: a scoping review

Abstract

Introduction: Playing is an important child occupation, and its assessment should be part of the therapeutic process to analyze the child's occupational performance and plan interventions based on this occupation. The Child-Initiated Play Make-A-Play Assessment (ChIPPA) has already been translated, cross-culturally adapted, and validated for the Brazilian population. Objective: To review the scope of ChIPPA and identify how it has been described and addressed in national and international literature. Method: Between January and June 2021, articles were searched in the PubMed, Scopus, BVS, ERIC, CINAHL, Web of Science, and PsycInfo databases, using search strategies with different syntaxes according to the method of each. basis: Chippa OR "Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment", ChIPPA OR "Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment" OR "Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment" OR "Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment", Chippa OR "Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment" AND Publication Type: Journal. Results: 25 articles were found, between 2000 and 2021, 971 children between 3 and 12 years of age, with typical and atypical development, developed in analytical observational (cross-sectional and cohort) and experimental studies; methodological (validation of the instrument and cultural adaptation of the instrument); and descriptive. Conclusion: The ChiPPA has been described in the literature as an assessment that allows correlating pretend to play with preschoolers' verbal, social, academic, and sensory processing skills. It is a practical, valid, and reliable outcome measure, allowing the assessment of typical and atypical children in different contexts and countries, including Brazil.

A plausible role of imagination in pretend play, counterfactual reasoning, and executive functions

“…The first notable finding is that from the respective measured dimensions of PP and CFR single unitary latent constructs were extracted. This is interesting because both PP and CFR are multi-dimensional (Stagnitti, 2007). The measured dimensions compare with the first two stages of Thompson and Goldstein (2019) proposal of how PP develops -object substitutions, attribution of pretend properties, social interactions within pretend, role enactment and pretence-related metacommunication and should be measured in developmental research.…”

“…We predict that the measurement model will show that the different behavioural traits or measurement dimensions of PP and CFR will cohere as latent constructs. Specifically, behavioural traits of PP are identified from children's ability to engage in object substitution and elaborate pretend play which includes making reference to absent objects as present, verbally attributing properties to objects, and logically sequenced elaborate imaginary actions (Stagnitti, 2007). These measures are assessed in conventional play and symbolic play conditions and capture the variability in children's playful engagements.…”

“…CHIPPA is a standardized assessment of PP. It was selected because it assesses a child's ability to self-initiate PP and elicits a range of imaginary pretence thinking skills (Stagnitti, 2007). CHIPPA has two play conditions: conventional-imaginative play (CV play) and symbolic play (SY play).…”

“…The coding scheme records the child's percentage of elaborate play to total actions (PEPA), the number of object substitutions the child performs (NOS), and if the child imitated any actions modelled by the examiner -number of imitated actions (NIA). PEPA, NOS and NIA were scored for both play conditions such as conventional play (CV play) and symbolic play (SY play; Stagnitti, 2007). A low score for imitated action suggests that the child did not rely on modelled actions for play ideas, whereas a high score for imitated actions might be indicative of developmental delay and or an inability to self-initiate play ideas.…”