Using multilevel modelling to investigate the links between play behaviour and children's emotional development

Lead Research Organisation: University of Cambridge
Department Name: Faculty of Education

Abstract

My fellowship involves a variety of activities that aim to advance the understanding of children's play behaviour and its links to their emotional development. Based on my PhD research findings, I will disseminate new evidence on children's engagement in social pretend play with friends during middle childhood and evidence on the relations between social pretend play behaviour and children's emotional experience, expression and regulation. For example, findings from my research indicate that pretend play could promote positive emotional expression among children, and may serve as a vehicle for children to regulate their emotions in social contexts.

Apart from publishing journal papers and attending international conferences to disseminate my PhD research findings, I will also undertake limited new research on parent-child play interaction during my fellowship. In collaboration with colleagues at the PEDAL Centre (Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning) at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, I will use advanced quantitative methods to analyse existing data on parent-child play interaction from a large-scale project. This work has the potential to provide new evidence on the links between parents' and children's emotional well-being and their play interaction, and on using early psychological intervention to prevent emotional and behavioural problems.

During my fellowship, I also plan to communicate my research with a wide range of non-academic audiences. For example, I will write articles for PEDAL Hub, a website run by the PEDAL Centre that aims to make play research across the world accessible to researchers, teachers, parents/carers and policy makers. A further plan is to write summaries of my research for non-academic audiences and talk about my research to newspapers. I also plan to give talks to parents and teachers to promote understanding of factors influencing children's emotional development and the potential to use play to facilitate children's emotional expression and regulation.

To broaden my network with internationally renowned scholars, I plan to visit the Harvard Graduate School of Education during my fellowship. I plan to discuss my research with Professor Paul Harris (an influential psychologist on emotional development, pretend play and imagination) and other researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I hope this visit will provide me with an excellent opportunity to learn about cutting-edge educational and psychological research at Harvard University and the opportunity to develop research ideas and future collaboration.
 
Description The first set of key findings from this funded project are the associations between mother-child play, maternal mental health, and later child behavioural problems. Compared to mothers with lower anxiety lowers, mothers with higher anxiety levels were less likely to engage in pretend play with their toddlers. Additionally, children of mothers with higher anxiety levels or higher depression levels were less likely to engage in pretend play, compared to children of mothers with lower anxiety or depression levels. Furthermore, compared to children whose mothers engaged in less pretend play with them at baseline, children of mothers who engaged in more pretend play with them at baseline were less likely to have behavioural problems two years later. These findings suggest that maternal anxiety and depression are associated with less pretend play during mother-child interaction. Mother's pretend play may help reduce child behavioural problems risks, suggesting that play may be one mechanism by which maternal mental health influences children's development.

These findings have been reported in a journal paper entitled "Maternal Anxiety and Depression and their Associations with Mother-Child Pretend Play: A Longitudinal Observational Study", which has been deposited as a preprint and is under peer review. Additionally, a paper reporting these findings has been accepted for an oral presentation at the World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH) 2021 Congress.

The second set of key findings from this funded project are the dyadic associations between peer pretend play and children's experience and expression of positive and negative emotions. For example, regarding anger expression, it was found that compared to children playing with less easily angered partners, children playing with more easily angered partners were found more likely to engage in pretend play with aggressive themes. This finding has been published as a paper entitled "Dyadic association between aggressive pretend play and children's anger expression" on British journal of developmental psychology.

Regarding positive emotions, it was found that compared to children whose playmates pretended less, children whose playmates pretended more were more likely to display positive emotions. Additionally, pretending with emotional themes increased the chance of both a child and their playmate showing positive emotions. These findings have been reported in a paper entitled "You Pretend, I Laugh: Associations between Dyadic Pretend Play and Children's Display of Positive Emotions", which is under peer review.

Regarding emotional expression, it was found that compared to children who reported more willingness to show emotions in real-life situations, children who reported less willingness to show emotions in real-life situations were more likely to engage in pretend play. These findings have been presented at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) 2021 Virtual Biennial Meetings. A journal paper reporting these findings is being written up for submission.
Exploitation Route For academic users, findings from this funded project have contributed to a better understanding of how play is related to emotion and mental health problems within important social contexts (e.g., between parents and their children, or between peers). These can be taken forward and used by researchers in the fields of mental health, child development, and education. For example, our findings highlight the importance of examining play, emotion, and mental health in social contexts in future research. Additionally, our findings suggest the adoption of new perspectives (e.g., interpersonal perspective) and advanced statistical approaches (e.g., the dyadic approach) to further investigate how play behaviour is related to mental health.

For non-academic users, outcome from this project can inform parents, carers, teachers, paediatricians and health professionals, and policy makers on the importance of play in children's development and emotional wellbeing. For instance, schools and communities can provide opportunities for children to engage in pretend play with peers to support their emotional development. Paediatricians and health professionals may develop intervention programmes to support parents with anxiety or depression to play with their children and promote positive parent-child relationships.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Healthcare
 
Description Findings from this funded project has achieved considerable impact beyond academia. For example, a news story reporting the findings on the associations between children's anger expression and their aggressive pretend play was published on the University of Cambridge news page in 2020. This news story was picked up by the Press Association and reported on more than 100 news websites in the UK and internationally (e.g., translated into Spanish and Chinese). It was also covered by various specialist outlets, including Science Codex, Science Daily and Medical Express. According to Altmetric, our journal article reporting these findings is one of the highest-scoring outputs from British Journal of Developmental Psychology (#2 of 522). Compared to 16,775,501 research outputs across all sources, our article "has done particularly well" and "is in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric". In addition, I have published an article entitled "Pretend play: Promoting positive emotions in children" on PEDAL Hub. PEDAL Hub is a website run by PEDAL (the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning) at the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge which aims to make play research, policy, and practice from across the world accessible to teachers, non-governmental organisations, parents/carers, researchers, policy makers and play advocates. My article is published in two languages (English and Chinese) and has been read more than 500 times by readers in UK and internationally (e.g., US, China, and Australia).
First Year Of Impact 2019
Sector Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Healthcare
Impact Types Cultural,Societal,Economic,Policy & public services
 
Description Blog 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact I have contributed an article entitled "Pretend play: Promoting positive emotions in children" on PEDAL Hub. PEDAL Hub is a website run by PEDAL (the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning) at the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge which aims to make play research, policy, and practice from across the world accessible to teachers, non-governmental organisations, parents/carers, researchers, policy makers and play advocates. My article is published in two languages (English and Chinese) and has been read more than 500 times by readers in UK, US, Australia, and China.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.pedalhub.org.uk/play-piece/p-pretend-play-promoting-positive-emotions-children
 
Description Media coverage 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact A media release reporting the findings on the associations between children's anger expression and their aggressive pretend play was published on the University of Cambridge news page in 2020. This media release was picked up by the Press Association and reported on more than 100 news websites in the UK and internationally (e.g., translated into Spanish and Chinese). It was also covered by various specialist outlets, including Science Codex, Science Daily and Medical Express.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020