An Arts-based research on group sandplay therapy for children in local children's centers who are overly dependent on internet and smartphones experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic era

The purpose of this study is to find a clue of psychological intervention in group sandplay therapy for children in local children's centers who are overly dependent on internet and smartphones experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic era. Art is a process of expressing imagination, and it is in line with the fact that play is a symbolic and creative activity. Therefore, it can be said that children's imaginary play scenes and imaginary stories appearing in sandplay therapy are a form of art. Sandplay enables non-verbal expression, and the unconscious contents expressed by children are useful in understanding children's emotions. In this process, the researcher understands the client through imagination which is the intersubjective method and experiences an accepting relationship where healing and change occur. However, previous studies have limitations in that they approached children's dependence on the Internet and smartphones based on language. Therefore, these researchers conducted an arts-based study from an analytical psychology perspective to understand the experiences of children in local children's centers who are overly dependent on the Internet and smartphones through the group sandplay therapy process. To this end, co-researchers attending the doctoral program in child counseling and psychotherapy have categorized and discussed four themes: ‘wanting to be loved’, ‘suffering from anxiety’, ‘tolerating being alone/not communicating’, ‘trying to protect oneself’. Finally, it was intended to alleviate the psychological difficulties of children in local children's centers who are overly dependent on internet and smartphones, and to provide an open method for resolving the Internet and smartphone dependence phenomenon.

Effects of Video Modeling on the Acquisition, Maintenance, and Generalization of Playing with Imaginary Objects in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) do not have symbolic play skills. One type of symbolic play involves playing with imaginary objects, in which a child displays play actions without actual objects. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of video modeling on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of playing with imaginary objects in young children with ASD. Three male Chinese children (aged 4–5 years) with ASD participated in this study. A multiple-probe across three behaviors design was used. The results indicated that video modeling was effective in establishing and maintaining target symbolic play behaviors for the three children. Generalization to untaught imaginary play activities occurred in all three children.

Una’s Line

This chapter examines the character of Una in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Una was at the epicenter of The Faerie Queene, and the poem's ideal reader was one naturally impervious to any moralizing pretensions: a child, usually but not always a boy, old enough to read independently but not so grown as to have lost a taste for imaginary play or developed a sensitivity to allegory. Today, when nearly all readers of The Faerie Queene encounter the poem in the confines of a classroom or a footnoted scholarly edition, it is hard to appreciate the influence such actual and imagined young readers once had on its critical and popular reception. Far from requiring or fostering the hyperliteracy with which Spenser is now associated, The Faerie Queene was characterized by both admirers and detractors as quintessential children's fare: an almost too effective engine of readerly enchantment and a rich repository of adventures and images. Although this approach to The Faerie Queene ignored or occluded much of what scholarly readers now consider essential, it attended with useful closeness to parts of the poem that now get short shrift: its richly detailed fictive landscape and the characters who populate it, without necessarily having much to do with its meaning.

Enhancing executive function through imaginary play: A promising new practice principle

This paper presents the findings of a study conducted with preschool teachers trialling an intervention in which executive function activities are embedded in teachers’ daily practices and imaginary play is used to build meaningful problem situations that children solve using executive functions. The participants were 227 preschool children (53% male, M age = 55.5 months, SD = 4.2) in 10 preschool groups from Brisbane, Australia. The intervention consisted of educators and children creating and developing an imaginary situation (playworld) over an extended period (e.g. one school term). Executive function was assessed pre- and post-intervention. A repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated significant differences between Time 1 and Time 2 on all executive function measures. The study found that teachers can develop children’s executive functions when executive function activities are embedded in teachers’ daily practices, and when imaginary play is used to build meaningful problem situations that children solve using executive functions.

Prevalence of imaginary companions among Chinese children aged 4 to 6 years

We investigated the prevalence of Chinese children's imaginary companions (ICs) and the internal variables of IC types (personified object or invisible friend) and child–IC relationship qualities (egalitarian or hierarchical child–IC relationship). Participants were 266 children aged 4 to 6 years. Only in the 5-year-old group was the proportion of children with ICs significantly higher among girls than among boys, implying that the relationship between gender and IC was not consistent across age groups. Children from families in the highest annual income group engaged in more IC play than did children from families in the lowest annual income group, indicating a relationship between family socioeconomic environment and children's imaginary play. IC types were not associated with child–IC relationship qualities in any of the age groups, implying that these qualities may represent different dimensions of IC play as early as 4 years old.

Musical Experience for Young Children and Families

This chapter illustrates how young children learn the violin. A two-year-old boy, Leo, explored the violin, imaginary played the violin, and socially learned from other participants and the perceived musical environment. Four-year-old Moe and Misa were shy and hesitated to play the violin during the official learning opportunity of the author-designed workshop; however, during the free play time after the workshop, they imaginary played the violin. Kiyone, also four years old, learned the violin playing as well as music reading followed by a few months of interaction with the violin. Finally, Vicki, six years old, experienced free play for almost a year and began taking the official lesson. Since she had enough experience of playing just the open strings as a part of her imaginary play, she had very successful music learning to play more than 10 songs in a very short period.