Engaged in play: Seven-year-olds’ engagement with the play frame when playing with toy figures and their engagement with the fictional world of a video game

Hashmi, Salim, Paine, Amy L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9025-3719, Johansen, Mark K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6429-1976, Robinson, Charlotte and Hay, Dale F. 2022. Engaged in play: Seven-year-olds’ engagement with the play frame when playing with toy figures and their engagement with the fictional world of a video game. Cognitive Development 63 , 101230. 10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101230

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Abstract

Children’s engagement in fictional worlds created when playing with toys and video games has received little research attention. We explored whether children’s engagement with the play frame when playing with toy figures was associated with their engagement with the virtual world in a video game in a community sample of 251 seven-year-olds (M = 6.95 years, SD = 0.38, 44 % girls). Using observational coding, we found that children’s engagement with the play frame by enacting roles ‘within’ the fictional world was positively associated with engaging with the virtual world in the video game. We also found that child characteristics, particularly children’s sex and their propensity to talk during play, were associated with their engagement in the two forms of play, and explained the associations in engagement between play contexts. These findings are discussed in terms of the features of the two contexts of play and how they promote children’s engagement with the fictional worlds.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Start Date: 2022-08-04
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0885-2014
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	19 August 2022
Date of Acceptance:	2 August 2022
Last Modified:	09 May 2023 17:41
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/152055

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