Assessment of Cognitive and Language
Abilities Through Play
Carol E. Westby
Westby
This article presents a symbolic-play language scale which describes l0 stages in the
development of symbolic play abilities and relates the language concepts and structures associated with each developmental play stage. Use of this scale for evaluation
and remediation planning is discussed.
Studies of language development during the 1970's have related certain
cognitive attainments to certain features of language development (Sinclair,
1969; 1973; Macnamara, 1972; Bloom, 1973; Nelson, 1974; Leonard, 1974;
1978; Beilin, 1975; Moerk, 1975; Bates, 1976; Greenfield, 1978; Ingram,
1978). Although no one-to-one mapping of language onto cognition has
been found, some cognitive abilities consistently precede or occur with certain communicative intentions and linguistic structures. Because of this interrelationship between cognition and language, the assessment of a child's
language should include the assessment of cognitive level. Formal psychometric tests yield an estimate of some specific skills, but they do not assess all
of the cognitive, representational, and thinking skills necessary for the use of
language for communicative purposes. T h e majority o f language and
visual-perceptual items on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, the
McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities, and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale
for Children-Revised (WISC-R) might be acquired in stimulus-response
training. A child from a stimulating home environment, a preschool, or special education program has had training on the tasks presented on these
tests, and therefore, when presented with the test items, he/she may have
success. The activities on these tests, however, are based on perception of the
immediate context a n d generally do not require mental imagery or use of
language for reasoning about perception. It is possible for children to obtain
above a two year mental level on the Bayley or McCarthy Scales, yet exhibit
little or no symbolic behavior which normally emerges by 18 months and is
prerequisite for true language.
Carol Westby is a language specialist on the Prograrm"for Children Developmental Dis'abilities Team and
an assistant pr~[essor for the Department of Communicative Dis'orders at the University ~?fNew Mexico,
2600 Marble Northeast, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131.
154
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The major cognitive development during the preoperational period (18
months to 5-7 years) is the development of representational thought. Symbolic play provides a means of assessing children's representational abilities
and a consistent developmental sequence in symbolic skills has been
documented by several investigators (Piaget, 1962; Sinclair, 1970; Fein,
1975; Lowe, 1975; Chappell and Johnson, 1976; Liebergott and Swope,
1976; Garvey, 1977; Nicolich, 1977; Westby, 1977). Although symbolic skills
are not sufficient for language development, they are essential prerequisites
for meaningful communication (Sinclair, 1970). Language and pretend play
both require that a child mentally represent reality. Just as the child must
realize that a doll is only a representation of a live baby, or that a piece of
paper can serve as a doll's blanket, so must he/she also understand that a
word is not the object but only a representation of the object. Language,
however, requires more abstraction than symbolic play because, unlike play,
words do not resemble reality in any clear way, and in play the symbolizers
can be loosely linked together and do not require the structure of the rulegoverned grammatical relationships of spoken language.
Development of the Symbolic Play Scale
The Symbolic Play Scale (Appendix A) evolved from a Piagetian based
language program for severely retarded and trainable retarded children
conducted in special education classes in East Greenbush, New York during
the 1976-1977 school year. At that same time, children at the Seton Day
Care Centers in Troy, New York were observed in order to obtain information on play development in normal children. From June 1978 to May 1979
normal developmental ages were added to the play scale based upon observations of children at the Christian Child Care Center in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. The sequence of play stages was the same for normal and handicapped children.
Five groups of toys, arranged in areas within a large room were available
to the children:
1. The infant stimulation area included pull toys, windup toys, talking toys
(Mattell See 'n Say, talking animals), "busy boxes," musical toys, rattles,
push 'n go cars, and soft stuffed animals.
2. The household area included dolls, doll bed, high chair, doll carriage,
kitchenette with sink, stove, refrigerator, cooking utensils, cleaning tools,
dress-up clothes, small table and chairs, shoeshine kit, doctor's kit, dresser, and telephone.
3. The store area included cash register, vending machine, play money,
shopping cart, miniature food, telephone (intercom connected to telephone in house area).
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4.
5.
The creative play area included sandbox, Tonka toys, rubber animals,
blocks, doll house, puppets, and several Fisher-Price toys (village, garage, airport, barn).
The gross motor area included slide, steps, walking board, riding toys,
bowling set, bean bag toss game.
Children were brought into the playrooms individually or in groups of up
to four children and were permitted to freely explore and play with any o f
the toys. The handicapped children were observed twice a week; the day
care children were observed once a week. The observation form in Appendix B was used to record the children's behavior. As one or two adults interacted with the children in the play situation, two observers completed the
forms. A separate form for each child was completed for every 5-8 minutes
of the play session.
Use of the Play Scale in Cognitive Language Assessment
Administration o f the Bayley Scales of Infant Development or the McCarthy Scales o f Children's Abilities provides an estimated developmental age
and shortens the time necessary to determine the child's play level. If the
children are allowed to choose from all the possible toys, even those children
functioning at a 5 year level are attracted to the infant and mechanical toys
and will spend long periods of time exploring them. If several hours are
available for observation, or if the child can be observed on several occasions,
the child should be allowed to explore freely. When evaluation time is limited, however, an estimate of the child's developmental level enables the examiner to present first toys which would be expected to be appropriate for
that level. Based upon how the child plays with these toys, the examiner can
then present toys for either earlier or later play stages. The session is tape
recorded so that the language sample can be analyzed.
Descriptions of the Symbolic-play Stages
Stage I. The 9-12 month old child is developing object permanence and
will find a toy if it is covered by a scarf. The child displays means-end
abilities by locomoting to an object he/she desires or pulling a string to obtain
the toy at the end of the string. The child is developing different schemas
for different toys and no longer immediately mouths or bangs all toys, but
will use a few objects appropriately. Some children use performative vocalizations at this stage (Greenfield and Smith, 1976). These "words" are not
labels but are part o f the total activity and are uttered only as the activity is
performed. The child vocalizes to request or command (Halliday, 1975).
Stage II. The 13-17 month old child explores toys, quickly locates the part
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of the toy that is responsible for its operation (levers, strings, switches, buttons), and attempts a variety o f motor schemas on it (pushing, pulling, turning, pounding, shaking). If he/she is unable to operate the toy, he/she frequently hands it to an adult and waits for the adult to operate the toy. This
handing a toy to an adult for operation is termed a protoimperative and
indicates that the child understands that adults are agents who can act on
objects (Bates, 1976). Some children use single words at this stage, but these
words are extremely context dependent and unstable (Bloom, 1973). The
child attempts more purposeful communication and uses gestures and vocalizations to request, command, call attention to her/himself, establish interaction, greet, protest, and label (Dore, 1975; Halliday, 1975).
Stage III. By 17-19 months the child exhibits the beginning of representational abilities. The child engages in autosymbolic play. He/she may
pretend to go to sleep, to drink from a cup, or eat from a spoon. The symbolism is involved with the child's own body and the child's playful manner
indicates that he/she is aware that he/she is pretending. The child exhibits all
sensorimotor stage VI behaviors. With respect to object permanence, he/she
finds a toy hidden invisibly (as when it is placed in a box and the box is
emptied under a scarf). He/she exhibits tool-use (attains a toy with a stick),
which is critical for language development because language functions as a
tool in attaining goals (Bates, 1976). At this time true verbal language begins.
A marked growth occurs in the number of words that a child uses (Corrigan,
1978; Ingram, 1978). Among the day care children followed in this project,
those who had not been using words for communication began to do so. The
words have a variety o f functional and semantic roles (Brown, 1973;
Greenfield and Smith, 1976). The child does not refer to absent situations.
Children who exhibit autosymbolic behavior but are not speaking may or
may not be language delayed. Specific language intervention is not warranted, but the child should be re-evaluated in 3-6 months.
Stage IV. By 19-22 months the child extends the symbolism beyond her/
himself to include other actors or receivers of actions. For example, the child
will feed the doll the bottle, brush the doll's hair, and cover the doll with a
blanket; or he/she will brush his/her mother's hair or the hair of another
child as well as his/her own hair and the doll's hair. The child now uses word
combinations having a variety of semantic relations. At times the possessive
relation appears to predominate when children are in a group ("my truck,
my ball, my baby"). No morphological endings occur on words in this stage.
The child has consolidated sensorimotor concepts and possesses internalized
action schemas which enable him/her to make reference to objects and
people not present.
Stage V. By 24 months the child pretends at activities o f others. The child
re-presents (presents again) his daily experiences. The child plays house and
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is the mommy, daddy, or baby. The pretend toys need to be realistic in
appearance and close to life size, not miniatures such as a doll house. True
sequences of events are not present, but the child does engage in some selflimited sequences such as putting food on a plate and then using a spoon to
feed a doll, or putting food in a pan and stirring it. Sand and water play is
limited to filling and dumping containers. Block play is limited to stacking in
order to knock down. The child does not build representational structures
and blocks are not integrated into pretend play. The child is using short
sentences that describe what he/she is doing. Present progressive "ing"
markers appear on verbs and plural and possessive word endings may also
appear. His/her communicative functions expand to include pretend, sharing information, and questioning, although syntactic question forms may not
be used (Halliday, 1975; Ingram, 1978).
Stage VI. By 2½ years the child begins to represent events less frequently
experienced or observed, particularly those which are impressive or traumatic. With most children this is the doctor-sick child relation. Children who
are in school or day care programs may portray teacher-child interactions.
The child still requires realistic props. Roles shift quickly and events are still
short and isolated. At one moment the child is mommy and the next he/she
is in another part of the room playing doctor, without providing much, if
any, cue that he/she is changing roles. Children at this stage can use language selectively to analyze perception (Blank, 1978). This enables children
to give appropriate syntactic and semantic responses to "who, whose, what,
where, what . . . do" questions (Ervin-Tripp, 1970). They are now asking
questions and generally do so by placing the "wh" word at the beginning o f a
sentence, such as, "Where the bear is?" The child is likely to ask "why" questions, particularly in response to negative statements made by an adult
("don't touch that" or "you can't go outside"), but does not necessarily listen
to the response. With the exception of well-known routines ("why is the doctor here?" . . . "baby's sick") the child's answers to "why" questions are inappropriate (Blank, 1975). Parallel play predominates, but associative play appears.
Stage VII. The 3 year old child continues the pretend activities of Stages V
and VI, but now he/she relates several schemas to one another in a sequence.
The child pretends to mix a cake, bake it, serve it, and wash the dishes; or
the doctor checks the patient, calls the ambulance, takes the patient to the
hospital, and operates. T h e sequence evolves; it is not planned. With a sequence of pretend events the child now has the cognitive basis for using past
tense and future aspect, Although the child uses past tense before this time,
the earlier past tense verbs were those which referred to a change of state
and not to a past event, such as, "opened, fell, broke," but not "walked, ate"
(Antinucci and Miller, 1976). The child is still dependent on realistic props.
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The children engage in more associative play with each other, but do not yet
exhibit full cooperative play. The normal children in the day care centers
began to exhibit compensatory play combinations in this stage. That is, they
re-enacted previous events, but with new outcomes--outcomes that appeared to be what the child would have liked to have done in the situation.
For example, the child took the doll to the doctor, but the doll hid from the
doctor under a blanket. Compensatory play was not observed in the handicapped children even at more advanced play stages.
Stage VIII. Shortly after the appearance o f sequence in pretend play, the
child begins to carry out play with less realistic toys such as doll houses,
Playmobile characters, and Fisher-Price toys such as the village, barn, and
airport (3-3V2 years), Blocks are now used for building enclosures to serve as
houses, barns, or fences. The child will use one object to represent another
(a row of chairs becomes a bus). A marked growth in descriptive vocabulary
now occurs as the child becomes aware of perceptual attributes. Ability to
play with less realistic toys requires that the child recognize the similarities
and differences in the real and pretend objects. In order to determine what
can be substituted for the real object, the child must be able to abstract the
essential attributes of an object. The child must be able to take context into
account when considering the attributes; for example, items are big or little
only with respect to the context. Children under the age of three do not use
qualitative and size terms in a relative comparative sense, but rather only
with respect to themselves (Carey and Considine, 1973). For example, one
child picked up a foot long wooden truck and repeatedly attempted to make
it fit on the ramp of the Fisher-Price garage which was designed for cars no
larger than 2" by 3". He did not appear to recognize that the truck was "too
big." Without this cognitive realization, there is no basis for comprehension
or meaningful use of size terms in a comparative sense. Associated with the
child's ability to play with less realistic toys is the child's ability to take
another person's perspective and the metalinguistic ability to think about
language and comment on it (Gleitman, Gleitman, and Shapley, 1972).
Thus, the child is able to give dialogue to the toys, such as, "The firemen are
going to tell the lady to jump. 'Jump lady.' " The frequency of mother-baby
play decreases and the child plays with the doll as he/she would a real friend.
The doll is given a personality and participates in the play.
Stage IX. Up to this stage the child's play has involved representations of
events that he/she has experienced or observed. At approximately 4 years of
age the child is able to hypothesize about future events and problem-solve
events he/she has not experienced. Such hypothesizing requires reference to
two future events as in "what would h a p p e n / f . . . ?" For example, a child
had built an enclosure for circus animals and wanted a roof for his/her building. In the process of looking for a suitable roof, he/she rejected items which
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were too large, too small, too flimsy, or too heavy without engaging in a trial
and error approach o f trying pieces on the structure. Another child reached
to pull o f f a blanket that was covering a piano. He/she grabbed the blanket,
then looked up to the top o f the piano where several objects were holding it
in place. The child's expression suggested that he/she realized that pulling
on the blanket would cause the objects to fall on him/her. The child dropped
the corner o f the blanket, climbed to the top o f the piano, handed the objects down to another child, and then proceeded to pull the blanket off. Such
behavior appears to indicate that the children were conceptualizing ideas
that could best be verbalized as "this c o u l d . . , this w o u l d . . , this w o n ' t . . , if
I do t h i s , t h e n . . , this is big enough, but it's too heavy." The child begins to
verbalize such intentions, future events, and hypotheses by using modals
such as "can, may, might, could, would, will," and conjunctions such as "and,
but, if, so, because." This is in accord with reports that children begin to
reason about perception and use hypothetical statements at four years of age
(Blank, 1978; Cromer, 1974). This is only the beginning use o f such modals
and conjunctions and does not indicate that the child has full competence
with these linguistic concepts. Full competence will not be achieved until
10-12 years of age, or at the beginning o f the formal operational period
(Beilin, 1975). The child now builds elaborate three-dimensional block structures and centers his/her pretend play around the structures. Doll and puppet play becomes more elaborate as the child uses the dolls and puppets to
act out entire scenes o f "what would happen if."
Stage X. The ability to hypothesize future events enables the child to plan
out pretend situations in advance. At age five he/she can organize what
he/she will require---other children as well as objects. He/she is also able to
coordinate more than one event occurring at a time. Thus, the child can
plan his/her role and what other children in the play situation will be doing
at the same time. For example, a child announces that she will be the mother
and while she is cooking dinner, the children will set the table, and the
daddy will go to the store. The child is no longer dependent on realistic
props and is able to rely on his/her imagination to set the scenes. Full
cooperative play occurs at this stage. The ability to plan coordinated sequences of pretend events forms a cognitive basis for use of relative and
subordinate clauses to relate two or more propositions to each other. The
child makes use of time relational terms such as "then, when, first, while,
next, before, after." As with the modals and conjunctions o f Stage IX, the
child will be almost 12 years old before she/he develops full competence with
such terms (Beilin, 1975). Children can be almost nonverbal and yet exhibit
play behavior through Stage IX. Stage X play behavior, however, requires
language (either sign or spoken) for the child to effectively organize the
situation.
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Interpretation of the Symbolic-play Assessment
The symbolic play assessment serves two purposes: (1) determining if a
child should be given priority for receiving language remediation, and (2) if
language remediation is indicated, determining what communicative functions, semantic concepts, and syntactic structures should be taught.
A cognitively based orientation to language acquisition implies that language training can never do more than assist the child in expressing what
she/he already understands (Leonard, 1978). It is uncertain if it is possible to
influence what the child understands. Procedures for training sensorimotor
prerequisites for language and using play experiences as a way o f developing
general symbolic skills have been reported (Bricker and Bricker, 1974;
Morehead, 1972).
If the symbolic play assessment indicates that a child's language level is
commensurate with her/his cognitive level, or if her/his cognitive level is at
Stage II or below, the speech-language clinician has two options. (1) She/he
can choose not to see the child and assume that the child's present environment is providing language stimulation that is appropriate and sufficient for the child's cognitive level. It is unlikely that speech-language remediation would result in significant changes in the child's communication
abilities. (2) If the pathologist does choose to work with the child, remediation should provide experiences to facilitate development o f the cognitive
sensorimotor or preoperational symbolic abilities rather than emphasizing
language skills.
If, however, a child's cognitive play level is in advance o f her/his language
level, additional speech-language remediation is warranted. The pathologist
should begin at the child's language level, and, following a developmental
sequence, use both structured remediation sessions and play sessions to develop the necessary language skills. Even with truly language delayed children, however, structured language lessons should not be the primary focus
of remediation. Directive adult-led teaching has been shown actually to retard, rather than facilitate, progress (Nelson, 1973). Instead of first teaching
semantic concepts and syntactic structures to criterion levels in formal remediation sessions, the pathologist should observe the child in an interactive
play setting and model the structures that the child needs for communicating, and then give formal training on those concepts and structures that the
child has shown she/he needs.
In no evaluation has a child's meaningful use of language been above
his/her cognitive play level. A few autistic and hydrocephalic children have
exhibited syntactic structures which were above what would be expected considering their play level, but much of their language was echolalic or used in
stereotyped, inappropriate ways.
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Summary
Decisions regarding linguistic concepts and structures taught to language
delayed children are sometimes based on a developmental sequence, and at
other times upon what the teacher believes would be most useful for the
child to learn. Although semantic concepts and syntactic structures can be
trained in a stimulus-response program, unless the child possesses the cognitive prerequisites for the linguistic structures she/he is learning, she/he will
not use them in actual interpersonal situations. Assessment of a child's language skills with respect to her/his symbolic play skills provides a basis for
determining the language skills that should be taught.
Acknowledgment
The original project was made possible by a Title VI mini-grant. The author wishes to thank
the teachers at Red Mill School, Seton Day Care Centers, and Christian Child Care Center and
the many graduate students who have assisted in the project.
References
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A p p e n d i x
A
Symbolic Play Scale Check List
Language
Play
Stage I - 9 to 12 m o n t h s
Awareness that objects exist w h e n not
seen: finds toy h i d d e n u n d e r scarf
Means-end behavior - crawls or walks to
get what he wants; pulls string toys
Does not m o u t h or b a n g all toys - some
used appropriately
i
__
No true language; may have p e r f o r m a tive words, (words that are associated
with actions o r the total situation)
Exhibits following communicative functions:
_ _
Request (instrumental)
C o m m a n d (regulatory)
Stage II - 13 to 17 m o n t h s
Context d e p e n d e n t sir~gle words, for
example, child may use the word "car"
when riding in a car, but not when he
sees a car; words tend to come and go in
child's vocabulary
Purposeful exploration o f toys; discovers
operation o f toys t h r o u g h trial and error:
uses variety o f motoric schemas
Hands toy to adult if unable to operate
Exhibits following communicative functions:
_
Request
_ _ Protesting
__ Command
_ _ Label
_ _
Interactional
_ _ Response
_ _
Personal
Greeting
_
Stage III - 17 to 19 m o n t h s
__Autosymbolic
play, for example, child
p r e t e n d s to go to sleep or pretends to
drink from cup or eat from spoon
_ _ Uses most c o m m o n objects a n d toys appropriately
_ _ Tool-use (uses stick to reach toy)
Finds toys invisibly h i d d e n (when placed
in box and box e m p t i e d u n d e r scarf)
Beginning o f true verbal communication.
Words have following functional and semantic
relations:
__
__
__
Recurrence
Existence
Nonexistence
Rejection
Denial
__
Refers to objects a n d persons not present
_
_
__
__
__
Agent
Object
Action or state
Location
Object or person
associated with
object or location
Stage IV - 19 to 22 m o n t h s
Symbolic play extends beyond the child's self:
Plays with dolls; brushes doll's hair,
feeds doll a bottle, o r covers doll with
blanket
Child p e r f o r m s p r e t e n d activities on
m o r e than one person or object; for
example, feeds self, a doll, mother,
and a n o t h e r child
Combines two toys in p r e t e n d play, for
example, puts spoon in pan o r pours
from pot into cup
164
Beginning o f word combinations with following semantic relations
_ _ Agent-action
Action-locative
Action-object
Object-locative
_ _ Agent-object
Possessive
_ _
Attributive
_ _
Dative
Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
XI
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July 1980
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A p p e n d i x
A
(cont)
Symbolic Play Scale Check List
Language
Play
Stage V - 24 m o n t h s
Represents daily experiences; plays
house - is the m o m m y , daddy, or baby;
objects used are realistic and close to life
size
__Events
short and isolated; no true sequences; some self-limiting sequences puts food in pan, stirs, and eats
__Block
play consists o f stacking and
knocking down
_ _
Sand a n d water play consist o f filling,
pouring, and d u m p i n g
Uses earlier pragmatic functions and
semantic relations in phrases and short
sentences
T h e following morphological markers appear:
_ _
Present progressive (ing) o n verbs
_ _ Plurals
_ _
Possessives
Stage VI - 2Y2 years
Represents events less frequently experienced
o r observed, particularly impressive or traumatic events
__
Doctor-nurse-sick child
Teacher-child
Store-shopping
Events still short and isolated• Realistic p r o p s
still required• Roles shift quickly.
R e s p o n d s appropriately to the following W H
questions in context:
What
__ Who
_ _ Whose
__ Where
_ _ W h a t . . .
do
Asks W H questions - generally puts W H
at b e g i n n i n g o f sentence
Responses to why questions inappropriate except for well-known routines, such
as, "Why is the doctor here?" . . . "Baby
sick."
_ _ Asks why, but often inappropriate and
does not attend to answer
Stage VII - 3 years
_ _
Continues p r e t e n d activities o f Stages V
a n d VI, but now the play has a sequence•
Events are not isolated, for example,
child mixes cake, bakes it, serves it,
washes the dishes; or doctor checks patient; calls ambulance, takes patient to
hospital and operates. Sequence evolves
• . . not planned.
C o m p e n s a t o r y toy . . . re-enactment o f
e x p e r i e n c e d events with new outcomes
Associative play
_ _
_ _
Uses past tense, such as, "I ate the cake
. . . I walked."
Uses future aspect (particularly "gonna")
forms, such as, " I ' m g o n n a wash dishes."
WESTBY: Language Abilities Through Play 165
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Appendix
A
(cont)
Symbolic Play Scale Check List
Play
Language
_ _ C a r r i e s out play activities of previous
stages with a doll house and Fisher-Price
toys (barn, garage, airport, village).
_ _ Uses blocks and sandbox for imaginative
play. Blocks used primarily as enclosures
(fences and houses) for animals and dolls
Play not totally stimulus bound, Child
uses one object to represent another.
Uses doll or puppet as participant in play
Descriptive vocabulary expands as child becomes more aware of perceptual attributes.
Uses terms for the following concepts (not always correctly):
shapes
sizes
Stage V I I I
- 3 to 3½
Colors
__
texture
spatial relationships
Gives dialogue to puppets and dolls
Metalinguistic language use, such as, "He
said . . . "
Uses indirect requests, such as, "Mommy
lets me have cookies for breakfast."
Changes speech depending on listener
Stage IX - 3½ to 4 years
_ _
_ _
Begins to problem-solve events not experienced. Plans ahead. Hypothesizes
"what would h a p p e n i f . . . "
Uses dolls and puppets to act out scenes
Builds 3-dimensional structures with
blocks which are attempts at reproducing
specific structures child has seen.
Verbalizes
events:
_ _
intentions and
possible future
Uses modals (can, may, might, will,
would, could)
Uses conjunctions (and, but, if, so, because)
Note: Full competence for these modals and conjunctions does not develop
until 10-12 years of age
Begins to respond appropriately to
why and how questions that require
reasoning about perception
Stage X - 5 years
__
Plans a sequence of pretend events. Organizes what he needs - both objects and
other children.
Coordinates more than one event occurring at a time
Highly imaginative. Sets the scene without realistic props,
Full cooperative play
_ _
166 Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
Uses relational terms (then, when, first,
next, last, while, before, after)
Note: Full competence does not develop
until 10-12 years of age
XI
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Appendix B
Observation Form
Onlooking
Solitary
Parallel
Associative
Cooperative
09
E
=,
~9
WESTBY:Language Abilities Through Play 167
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Appendix
C
Definition of play behaviorsfor the observationform
Practice
- - T h e child engages in gross motor activities such as running,
Symbolic
Imitauve
riding on bikes or wagons, climbing, throwing balls. Child
works puzzles, strings beads, stacks blocks and knocks them
down, fills and empties containers, operates cause-effect
toys such as music boxes, "busy" boxes, talking toys, etc.
- - T h e child engages in pretend play, but it is initiated and
guided by another child or an adult.
Symbolic
Spontaneous
- - T h e child initiates the pretend activity.
Game
- - T h e child engages in rule-governed game behavior and
exhibits some understanding or appreciation of the rules.
Onlooking
- - T h e child observes, but does not participate.
Solitary
- - T h e child plays without reference to other children.
Parallel
T h e child's play is of a companionable nature with similar
materials, but with no personal interaction.
Associative
- - T h e children's play is loosely organized around a common
activity, shared interests, and materials.
Cooperative
- - T h e play includes different roles, common goals, usually
with one or two leaders, and is of relatively long duration
and complexity.
T h e observers using the forms record a description of the child's behavior within the appropriate box on the form. If a child engages in several different behaviors during a recording time,
the behaviors are sequentially numbered.
168
Language,Speech, and Hearing Servicesin Schools
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154-168 July 1980
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