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

Abstract

Despite the emerging literature supporting the\ud central role of pretend play for children’s cognitive, affective\ud and social development, there is a paucity of standardized\ud and validated measures devoted to assess it,\ud especially for preschoolers. In addition, most of the existing\ud tools failed in their attempt to assess the interplay\ud among the different developmental domains which are involved\ud in playing activities. The Affect in Play Scale-\ud Preschool version is a semi-structured measure to assess\ud cognitive and affective pretend play processes in children\ud aged 4–5 using a 5-min standardized play task. This study\ud was aimed to evaluate the construct and external validity of\ud the scale in a sample of Italian preschoolers. A multi-group\ud factor analysis confirmed the adequacy of the two-factor\ud model with cognitive and affective factor for both 4- and\ud 5-year-old children. No differences were found between\ud boys and girls whereas older children reported higher play\ud abilities. Correlations between pretend play, divergent\ud thinking, teacher’s measures of temperament and prosocial\ud behavior were carried out. Results supported the use of\ud APS-P as a valid tool for assessing the interplay of cognitive\ud and affective abilities in Italian children

How Do You Play? A Comparison among Children Aged 4–10

“…However, pretend play assumes a very important role also in elementary school-age years. Pretend play in preschool and school years children was related to divergent thinking (Russ and Schafer, 2006; Delvecchio et al, 2016b), coping ability (Christiano and Russ, 1996), problem solving and adjustment (Russ, 2004, 2006), perspective taking and emotional understanding (Seja and Russ, 1999; Fehr and Russ, 2014), empathy (Delvecchio et al, 2016a), and self-rated emotional experience (Russ and Grossman-McKee, 1990; Hoffmann and Russ, 2012; Russ, 2014) and growing capacity of self-regulation (Berk et al, 2006). Thus, having valid and reliable measures to assess pretend play abilities in children it's necessary (Bergen, 2002; Pellegrini, 2010).…”

“…Previous studies highlighted the paucity of standardized tools for pretend play and stressed that most of the existing ones are not able to assess child's development in a broad manner, paying attention to both cognitive and affective aspects (Delvecchio et al, 2016b). To date the Affect in Play Scale (APS; Russ, 1993, 2004) and its Preschool version (APS-P; Kaugars and Russ, 2009) are two of the few valid and empirically-based pretend play measures that assess both cognitive and affective processes involved in play.…”

“…To date the Affect in Play Scale (APS; Russ, 1993, 2004) and its Preschool version (APS-P; Kaugars and Russ, 2009) are two of the few valid and empirically-based pretend play measures that assess both cognitive and affective processes involved in play. An increasing number of research studies have supported the adequacy of their psychometric characteristics in both the United States and in Italy (Russ, 2004; Mazzeschi et al, 2008; Delvecchio et al, 2016b). However, the different stimuli of APS (puppets) and APS-P (toys) and the different age-group involved (i.e., 4–5 years old for APS-P and 6–10 for APS) emphasize the difficulties in having a valid instrument able to compare preschool and school-aged children's pretend play abilities.…”

“…Recently, to overcome this issue, Delvecchio et al (2016a) adapted the APS-P (APS-P Extended Version) for primary school children, motivating this extension as the following: (1) school-aged children often play in a more joyful way with toys than puppets (Mazzeschi et al, 2008); (2) having a tool able to compare children throughout a wider age-span would be a useful improvement for both clinical (e.g., for children with developmental delay) and research settings. The first Italian research on psychometric properties of APS-P and APS-P Extended Version evidences promising results (Delvecchio et al, 2016a,b). More specifically, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed the adequacy of the APS-P original model (Russ, 2004) which includes two correlated factors: one cognitive (organization, elaboration, imagination, and comfort) and one affective factor (frequency and variety of affects) for both the preschool and its extended versions.…”

“…More specifically, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed the adequacy of the APS-P original model (Russ, 2004) which includes two correlated factors: one cognitive (organization, elaboration, imagination, and comfort) and one affective factor (frequency and variety of affects) for both the preschool and its extended versions. External validity was proved correlating the play task with measures of divergent thinking, children's temperament, prosocial behavior, school coping, and empathy (Delvecchio et al, 2016a,b). The APS-P and the APS-P Extended Version share the same stimuli and scoring system and they attempt to fill the gap of “discontinuity” between the age-span.…”