The effect of classroom provision on object-related social play in an ability-integrated pre-school classroom

The study examined the effect on social and object-related interactions of the introduction of play material into an ability integrated pre-school classroom. Four children, two non-handicapped and two with Down's syndrome (one girl and one boy in each dyad) participated. The study entailed a naturalistic experiment with four phases over a period of six months. In phases A1 and A2 children were observed during free-play in the classroom and their social interactions when physically proximal to each other and object-related play recorded using a coding system developed by Vandell et al. (1980). In phases B1 and B2, following, respectively, A1 and A2, specially designed play material was introduced into the classroom. The introduction of the play material led to a consistently greater proportion of interactions between children centred on objects. Initially (B1) this was correlated with a marked increase in negative social acts though the second (B2) introduction did not affect the occurrence of positive social acts that had developed during A2 in the absence of the material.

It is argued that while specific effects of changing the environment by introducing the play material on social and object-centred play can be observed, wider influence arising from the socialising process going on during the six months of the study are also making themselves felt and cannot readily be captured in a simple reversal design of the kind employed. Though no generalisation to the wider populations is attempted, it was observed that there were no differences in the pattern of change that could be related specifically to the non-handicapped vs Down's syndrome contrast nor to developmental level per se. The implication of this finding for arguments regarding the extent to which children with Down's syndrome can be successfully integrated into pre-school settings is considered.