engleski

Social interaction among children in play activities

Contemporary cognition from developmental psychology leads to the conclusion that along with competence arising from the child-parent relationship, social adjustment is the result of a child's experience in peer interactions (Hartup, 2011). Social behavior of preschool children is developed from onlooker behavior across parallel– conscious play into social peer interaction. Parallel play has a two-way influence between independent activity and social activity (Howes, & Matheson, 1992). The aim of this research was to establish whether children of different preschool age differ with regard to mutual social interactions and whether gender differences exist. It is assumed that there are differences in social interaction of preschool children with regard to their age and directed toward a growing cooperation with age. Gender differences are also expected with regard to some forms of social behavior as, for example, rough play which leads us to the results acquired in other researches. The goal of this research was to establish the possible differences in social behavior of preschool children during their daily activities in kindergarten. 91 children aged from 4 to 7 participated in the research. There were 52 boys and 39 girls. Teachers have evaluated the usual behavior of each child in its own group during their leisure activities – play. The observed behaviors are defined in the Preschool Play Behavior Scale during preschool children play (PPBS, Coplan, & Rubin, 1998). Results: The variance analysis results point to the conclusion of gender differences in children’s solitary passive behavior. Boys participate more often than girls in solitary passive play. Age differences have not been recorded, which means that children, regardless of age, use solitary passive activities. The variance analysis results of solitary active behavior show that age and gender differences do not exist in such a form of social behavior which means that boys and girls equally use solitary active behavior and that in such behavior changes do not take place with age. Gender differences were recorded in rough behavior in the direction of rough play in the boys’ behavior repertoire. Results clearly show that gender and age differences exist in the cooperative play of children from the age of 4 to 6. The difference was recorded between four-year-old and six-year-old boys directed towards an increase in social behavior with older boys. The result of this research indicates the changes with age in different aspects of social behavior during early childhood. However, the results also indicate particularities regarding the aspect of social behavior.

social behavior, play activities, preschool children

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