Children's Play Behaviors in the Republic of China

Author: Hui-Ling Pan(Department of Education, National Taiwan Normal University )

Abstract：

The present study attempted to explore Chinese children's play behaviors in Taiwan and to investigate the relationships of children's age, sex, intelligence, social class, role-taking ability and school type to play behaviors.
The time-sampling observational method was employed to understand children's play behaviors. Children's intelligence and role-taking abilities were assessed using the interview method. The questionnaire survey was used to investigate children's social class. Sixty-two kindergarten children participated in the study.
The results revealed that constructive and parallel play were the most common play forms in kindergarten children. When investigating the relationship between school type and play behaviors, it was found that children displayed more interac-tive-functional play with peers of different ages, however, displayed more solitary-constructive play with peers of the same age. In addition, children were more like-ly to conduct mature play forms, such as parallel-constructive play and interactive games with rules, when increasing in chronological and mental ages. Solitary-functional and solitary-constructive play were found to be less mature play behaviors, which were negatively related to children's chronological and mental ages.

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