Visuo‐spatial play experience: forerunner of visuo‐spatial achievement in preadolescent and adolescent boys and girls?

This cross‐sectional study explored whether participation, from early childhood, in play involving different cognitive abilities predicts visuo‐spatial achievement at ages 9, 12, and 15. Based on parental assessment, prior and present practice of spatial manipulation play was found to be consistently more frequent in boys than in girls; the reverse held true for verbal expression play. Whereas boys did not significantly outperform girls in three visuo‐spatial tasks, girls were superior on a contrastive vocabulary task. In general, with IQ statistically controlled, regression analyses showed that estimated past and present spatial manipulation play predicted both genders' proficiency in the water‐level task and Embedded Figures Test, as did mothers' socioeconomic status for Block Design performance. Contrastingly, a negative relation was established between spatial manipulation play and vocabulary scores. Similar to the activity‐ability association often identified among adults, the relation established here between spatial play experience and visuo‐spatial ability was only modest. Further research should aim at more definitive conclusions through augmenting both diversity in the visuo‐spatial skills measured and sophistication in play behaviour appraisal. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Where science starts: spontaneous experiments in preschoolers' exploratory play

Probabilistic models of expected information gain require integrating prior knowledge about causal hypotheses with knowledge about possible actions that might generate data relevant to those hypotheses. Here we looked at whether preschoolers (mean: 54 months) recognize “action possibilities” (affordances) in the environment that allow them to isolate variables when there is information to be gained. By manipulating the physical properties of the stimuli, we were able to affect the degree to which candidate variables could be isolated; by manipulating the base rate of candidate causes, we were able to affect the potential for information gain. Children’s exploratory play was sensitive to both manipulations: given unambiguous evidence children played indiscriminately and rarely tried to isolate candidate causes; given ambiguous evidence, children both selected (Experiment 1) and designed (Experiment 2) informative interventions.     

Behavioral intervention to treat selective mutism across multiple social situations and community settings

We evaluated a behavioral intervention for a 9-year-old girl with selective mutism. The intervention consisted of role play and video self-modeling. The frequency of spoken initiations, responses to questions, and communication breakdowns was measured during three social situations (i.e., ordering in a restaurant, meeting new adults, and playing with new children) and in three community settings. Results demonstrated increases in spoken initiations and responses and decreases in communication breakdowns across all situations and settings.     

学前儿童合作认知及合作行为的培养研究

选取幼儿园大、中、小12个自然班,共317名幼儿为被试,进行为期四周的观点采择合作认知故事及游戏形式的合作行为训练。结果表明：①合作认知故事及游戏形式的合作行为训练,对提高学前儿童合作认知及合作行为水平影响显著,两者结合的训练方式最有效。②合作认知故事的培养训练对不同年龄儿童合作认知水平的提高影响显著;合作游戏训练对中班儿童合作水平的提高影响显著。③合作认知及合作行为训练的性别差异不显著。     

The Mother Relationship and Artistic Inhibition in the Lives of Leonardo da Vinci and Erik H. Erikson

In four earlier articles, I focused on the theme of the relationship of melancholia and the mother, and suggested that the melancholic self may experience humor (Capps, 2007a), play (Capps, 2008a), dreams (Capps, 2007c), and art (Capps, 2008b) as restorative resources. I argued that Erik H. Erikson found these resources to be valuable remedies for his own melancholic condition, which had its origins in the fact that he was illegitimate and was raised solely by his mother until he was three years old, when she remarried. In this article, I focus on two themes in Freud’s Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood (1964): Leonardo’s relationship with his mother in early childhood and his inhibitions as an artist. I relate these two themes to Erikson’s own early childhood and his failure to achieve his goal as an aspiring artist in his early twenties. The article concludes with a discussion of Erikson’s frustrated aspirations to become an artist and his emphasis, in his psychoanalytic work, on children’s play. Donald Capps is Professor of Pastoral Psychology at Princeton Theological Seminary. His books include Men, Religion, and Melancholia (1997), Freud and Freudians on Religion (2001), and Men and Their Religion: Honor, Hope, and Humor     

Adult modelling facilitates young children's generation of novel pretend acts

The present work investigated the effect of modelling on children's pretend play behaviour. Thirty‐seven children aged between 27 and 41 months were given 4 min of free play with a dollhouse and associated toy props (pre‐modelling phase). Using dolls, an experimenter then acted out a series of vignettes involving object substitutions, imaginary play and attribution of properties. Children were subsequently provided with an additional 4 min free play (post‐modelling phase). Consistent with past research, more pretence was exhibited after modelling than before. Furthermore, in the post‐modelling phase, children were as likely to generate their own novel pretence as they were to copy the actions demonstrated by the experimenter. They also increased the number of novel symbolic acts involving imaginary play from the pre‐ to the post‐modelling phase. This study highlights how young children will not only imitate a model's demonstration of pretend acts but also use this demonstration to catalyze the creation of their own pretence. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of a Dependent Group-Oriented Contingency on Middle School Physical Education Students’ Fair Play Behaviors

This study investigated the effects of a dependent group-oriented contingency on the supportive and non-supportive fair play behaviors of 6th grade students engaged in volleyball games as part of their physical education instruction. Six students, one male and one female per class, from three classes, identified as demonstrating low incidences of supportive behaviors during volleyball games, were participants in this study. A multiple baseline across classes design was used to examine the data. During baseline few incidences of non-supportive behaviors occurred among all six students. However, the participants seldom displayed supportive behaviors during games (i.e., encouraged each other). Following the introduction of the dependent group contingency, supportive behaviors for all participants increased. Follow-up data, collected in an alternative setting, indicated variable maintenance. The results are discussed in the context of group contingencies and social behaviors in sports.     

The role of pre‐oedipal and oedipal factors in psychic life1

The Oedipus complex, a basic concept in Freudian theory, is an essential factor in the constitution of the human subject. It plays a key role in the structuring of the personality and in the orientation of desire. It is the oedipal triangular structure that precedes the pre‐oedipal situation (in a logical, not chronological, order), and not vice versa. The oedipal structure exists before the infant's biological birth. It is present in the parents' desires and identifi cations, which inexorably fall upon each subject. That is why the author believes that it is necessary to leave behind a solipsistic reading of the nuclear complex of neuroses‐a reading that is based solely on Oedipus's drive nucleus‐and take a joint and comprehensive view of Laius's and Jocasta's histories and traumatic experiences, which were invested in their son. Among these three vertices, a dynamic set of forces emerges whereby a basic, original unconscious fi eld phantasy is created that bears a unique narrative and an invisible and hermetic web made of passions and beliefs, scandals and secrets. This phantasy gives shape to an unrepeatable oedipal structure in each subject, a structure that articulates with the effects of the narcissistic and fraternal dynamic and may determine the subject's fate. This paper develops the following issues: 1) Oedipus, victimizer or victim? 2) the generational confrontation as dynamic fi eld; and 3) neuroses with a preponderance of dualistic relationships.     

'The healing power of love': The literary/analytic bond of marriage in Freud's essay on Gradiva

Freud 's declared position regarding the management of 'transference love' advocated 'abstinence', objectivity and even 'emotional coldness in the analyst'. However, his essay on Jensen's Gradiva reveals an identification with an involved and responsive 'maternal' analytic position associated with theorists such as Ferenczi, Balint and Winnicott. These theorists attribute the origins of transference love to the pre-oedipal stage, shaping their analytic model on the basis of the early relationship with the mother. Freud generally had difficulty identifying with such a position, since it entailed addressing his own inner feminine aspects. Yet a literary analysis of his 'Gradiva' reveals this stance in his textual performance, i.e. in the ways in which he reads and retells Jensen's story. Freud 's narration not only expresses identification with Zoe, the female protagonist, but also idealizes her 'therapeutic' conduct, which is closer in spirit to that of object-relations theorists. His subtext even implies, however unintended, that an ideal treatment of transference love culminates in a psychical 'marriage' bond between the analytic couple, a metaphor used by Winnicott to describe the essence of the mother–baby (analyst/patient) bond. Freud 's reading process is itself analogous to Zoe's 'therapeutic' conduct, in that both perform a creative and involved interaction with the text/patient.     

Murdered father; dead father: Revisiting the Oedipus complex1

This paper recovers the notion of the sacrifice of sexuality as the central, tragic, element of the oedipal structure. This notion has been largely abandoned in the psychoanalytic literature that has tended to reduce the oedipal structure to processes of exclusion. The paper traces the development of the theoretical and clinical transformations of Freud ’s ideas on the role of the father and suggests that they allow us to more fully comprehend the Oedipus complex proposed by Freud. A paradox is explored: the killing of the father is, in Freud ’s view, the requirement for the creation of the social order which, from then on, prohibits all killings. The father, however, has to be killed metaphorically only, as the actual exclusion of the father lies at the origin of so many psychopathologies from violence to the psychoses and perversions. The paper analyses the fundamental asymmetry that is present in the Oedipal structure and suggests that the three elements of the oedipal triangle constitute the law (of the dead father, that institutes the sacrifice of sexuality), desire (for the lost object) and identification (with both father and mother). Two clinical examples are discussed. In the first, one can identify a perverse structure in which the father has been murdered; in the second, there is a progressive construction of the dead (symbolic) father in the analytic process.