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Imaginative Play in Language Disordered Children
Author(s) -
MPhil ORLEE UDWIN,
YULE WILLIAM
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
international journal of language and communication disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.101
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1460-6984
pISSN - 1368-2822
DOI - 10.3109/13682828309012242
Subject(s) - psychology , comprehension , developmental psychology , test (biology) , intelligence quotient , linguistics , cognition , paleontology , philosophy , neuroscience , biology
The study involved a comparative investigation of imaginative play behaviour in a clinical group of 15 language disordered preschool boys and a control group of 15 normal speakers, matched for age, sex, socio‐economic status and non‐verbal IQ. When compared with the normal speakers, the clinical group showed serious deficits in imaginative play in free play sessions and on a standardised Symbolic Play Test. Over the total sample, significant correlations were found between imaginative play and expressive and comprehension language abilities, which persisted even after controlling for intelligence, thereby supporting the contention of a generalised symbolic function common to both language and imaginative play. Most of these correlations did not hold up in the case of each group separately, which may have been due to the more limited range of variability in the variables concerned within each group.