Mastery Behaviors During Social and Object Play in Toddlers with Physical Impairments
Mandy L. Linke, M.S., CFY-SLP
Cynthia J. Cress, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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Poster presentation at the
Society for Research in Child Development Conference,
April, 20, 2001, Minneapolis, Minnesota
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Abstract
The present study assessed mastery motivation behaviors in non-speaking toddlers with physical impairment during object-based and social play interaction with their parents. Poor mastery motivation in object play of children with physical impairments has been attributed to difficulty in independently structuring tasks, limited experience with play effectiveness, and increased failure with tasks. Samples of free play between 25 parents and non-speaking toddlers were analyzed to compare mastery behaviors during social and object play, and the relationship of these mastery behaviors to other developmental skills. Social interchange, referencing, and displays of affect were more frequent during social play. Both cognitive and receptive language scores were positively correlated with exploration and persistence. However, children's motor skills were positively correlated with exploration and persistence, which suggests that persistence as a metric of mastery motivation is less representative of mastery motivation potential for children with more severe physical impairments. |
Definitions of Mastery Motivation
· Dichter-Blancher, Busch-Rossnagel, & Knauf-Jensen (1997): "The inherent drive which leads young children to explore the environment and master tasks that are at least somewhat challenging for them."
· Object Play Mastery: Ducker & Choudhury (1999): Children's strategy attempts and adaptations during play.
· Social Play Mastery: Lynch, Hayden, Seifer, Dickstein, Schiller, Matzko, & Sameroff (1996): Mastery is a subjective concept of accomplishment, associated with social competence in typically developing children.
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Mastery Development
· Beyond 4 months of age, measures of mastery, habituation, and novelty preference are reported to be stable, reliable predictors of IQ (Messer, 1993).
· Prior to 9 months, mastery motivation can be evaluated by observing the child's exploration and curiosity, with minimal cognitive and fine motor challenge (Brockman, Morgan, & Harmon, 1988).
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Mastery in Children with Disabilities
· Hupp & Abbeduto (1991) distinguished perseverative behavior vs. persistence in children with cognitive delay.
· Quality of play in children with Down Syndrome was not as impaired as task engagement and length of time on task (Ruskin, Mundy, Kasari, Sigman, 1994).
· Hauser-Cram (1996): Mutual parent/child influence--more vital to mastery development than cognitive level.
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Mastery in Children with Physical Impairment
· Children with physical disabilities have difficulty structuring their own tasks in free play (Jennings, Connor, Stegman, Sankaranarayan, Mendelsohn, 1985).
· Children with physical impairment have less experience with contingency, less feedback from their environment, and more failure with tasks (Jennings & MacTurk, 1995).
· Adult support was needed for children with spina bifida to engage in goal-directed action sequences (Landry, Copeland, Lee, & Robinson, 1990).
· Early maternal involvement supported spontaneous mastery behaviors in children with cerebral palsy when customized to the child's needs in play (Blasco, Hrncir, & Blasco, 1990).
· Older children with physical impairment at 3 years showed equivalent curiosity but less persistence than preschool peers, but by 4 years began to consistently choose easier and less novel tasks (Jennings et al, 1988). Children who were relatively less motivated at 3 years tended to show low motivation at 4 years, regardless of severity, suggesting that mastery patterns even in children with PI are individually stable.
· However, Hauser-Cram (1996) found that children with PI, ages 1-2 did not differ in persistence, goal orientation, positive affect or competence in play from developmental peers without disabilities.
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Issues in Mastery Motivation & Physical Impairments
· In object play alone, children with physical disabilities may show less independent mastery than other tasks.
· Most play tasks for children with physical disabilities are jointly constructed with parents, and there are often definite social routines in object play with parents.
· Parental input that supports the child's apparent intent in either social or object play tends to support mastery development in children with physical disabilities.
· We need better evidence of how mastery skills are demonstrated in children with PI, to facilitate these skills in social and object play, and predict impact of these personality traits on development.
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Research Questions
· Do children with physical impairments (PI) show more mastery-oriented behaviors in social play than they do in object-related free play contexts?
· Are children with more severe disabilities (lower cognitive and/or physical skills) less persistent and/or goal-oriented than children with higher skill levels?
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| Methods |
Subjects
· 25 non-speaking children with physical impairments
· Mean chronological age of 17.7 months, corrected for prematurity (range 12-26 months)
· Mean developmental age of 9.0 months (range 2-19 months)
· 23% were from racial minority groups and a range of parental education and occupation was represented.
· Children had sufficient hearing and vision to respond to visual and auditory play tasks
· Children had primary diagnoses of physical impairments and demonstrated at least two characteristics of risk for vocal expressive development (McDonald, 1980).
-Prematurity, birth anoxia, other prenatal risk factors
-Feeding difficulties or persistent oral/motor control problems
-Delayed onset of vocalizations/speech
-Neuromotor deficits related to speech
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| Procedures |
Data Collection
The data reported in this paper are part of a 5-year longitudinal study of communicative development in young children with physical impairments.
· Children began participation at 12-26 months (corrected age) and ended at 30-44 months.
· Behavior samples and scores for this paper were taken from the first data collection visit only.
· Standardized measures* relevant for present study:
-Battelle Developmental Inventory (BDI) (Newborg, Stock, Wnek, Guidibaldi, & Svinicki, 1984)
-Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scale (CSBS) (Wetherby & Prizant, 1992)
-Uzgiris-Hunt Ordinal Scales of Psychological Development (UH)
*Acceptable modifications for standardized measures included accepting expressive language skills demonstrated through sign language or augmentative communication (AAC).
· Free play samples between parents and children were collected at naturally occurring opportunities during each two-hour visit.
· Parents and children were encouraged to explore and play with a large bag of toys as the experimenter arranged materials.
· If parents and children spontaneously began a social or play activity, experimental tasks were paused until they completed this period of play.
· Families were asked about children's favorite toys and routines, and were encouraged to demonstrate, during naturally occurring pauses.
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Data Coding & Analysis
· Coding scheme adapted from Seifer's (1996) Mastery Motivation Tasks Scoring Manual
-Video clips of free play coded in 30-second increments.
-4- to 5-point scales rating the following features:
· Persistence
· Anticipatory Affect
· Social Reference to Adult
· Attention to Task
· Positive Affect
· Extent & Variety of Exploration
· Negative Affect
· Social Interchange with Adult
· Degree of Involvement
· Each segment was also judged as social play, object play, or mixed play activities.
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Results
· Children were more persistent and attended to task better during object play than social play. Social Interchanges, Social Referencing, and Positive Affect were more frequent in social play.
· Motor Age was correlated with Extent and Variety of Exploration, and Persistence. Less impaired children have more exploring behaviors in their repertoire and more varied skills at task completion.
· Cognitive Age was correlated with Extent and Variety of Exploration, Degree of Involvement, and Persistence. Only Involvement was independent of mastery skills influenced by motor impairment.
· Receptive Language was correlated with Extent and Variety of Exploration, Persistence, Positive Affect, & Social Interchange. Only the latter two skills were independent of motor or cognitive skills.
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Discussion
· Attention and persistence ratings tended to be higher during object play segments.
-Children may be more driven to focus on, explore, and figure out complex toys or other objects for extended periods of time, even with physical limitations.
· Interaction and referencing were more frequent within social play.
-Emotion and interaction are inherent in these activities, thus promoting interactive and referencing behavior.
· Relationships between mastery skills and motor, cognitive, and language ages may be related to the characteristics measured in these assessments.
-The abilities to explore and sustain activity require motor manipulation skills, endurance, and supportive positioning, which may be variable with physical impairment.
-Cognitive skills like curiosity, flexibility of thought, and object permanence are associated with a child's desiring to explore and being able to volitionally initiate exploration.
-Receptive language skill dictates how able a child is to take in environmental feedback during interactions and activities as reinforcement to remain engaged in the activity.
· Children demonstrate some of the qualities of mastery (e.g. referencing, frequency of initiation) more effectively during social play than object play. Mastery showed considerable individual variation in children with PI, but Degree of Involvement was not significantly affected by motor age.
· Because persistence in object play tends to be used as an estimate of all mastery skills, this may explain others' findings of impaired mastery skills in children with PI with poor object play skills.
· Persistence or attention alone can be inappropriately high in some children with repetitive behaviors (Hupp & Abbeduto, 1991) and social mastery can help disambiguate these behaviors.
· Ways in which children with PI show mastery skills may differ from typically developing children. For instance, Attention to Task in Seifer (1996) was changed to Attention to Task/Adult because children with PI spent considerable time in play without specific objects or tasks to which they could attend.
· For many children with severe impairments, adults may be the preferred play "object" that is easiest to control, most responsive, and elicits greatest persistence and flexibility in task-oriented mastery behaviors.
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Clinical Implications
· When measuring mastery skills, both social and task-related mastery variables are necessary to interpret how functional or appropriate a child's mastery behaviors are in interactions.
· Children must experience perceivable success within educational and treatment activities in order to maintain participation and advance skill development.
· For children with PI, some of those controllable activities may be social, or socially-mediated object play
· Practitioners, parents must be aware of the abilities and challenge areas related to a child's disability in order to facilitate success appropriately in intervention activities. |
References
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Acknowledgements
Research was supported in part by grant #K08 DC00102-01A1 from the National Institute on Deafness and other Communicative Disorders, National Institutes of Health (NIH), awarded to the second author. |
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