Young children's play fantasies

The aim of this study (a) to develop quantitative techniques for the study of experimentally induced fantasies of preschool age children, (b) to contribute to the feasibility of predicting actual social behavior from clinical measurements of these fantasies, and (c) to discover some of the variables that seem to be causally related to different types of fantasy responses. The three main methodological criteria permitted the use of children enrolled in the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station's preschool as subjects. A stylized doll house, which represented the preschool building and its contents, was used as play equipment for the experimental sessions. The majority of these analyses involved the combining of the data for the four separated play sessions. A few "progression analyses" have been made when interpretation of the other data has necessitated knowledge of the development of certain responses from session to session. The implication of these findings of sex differences in play fantasies for clinical purposes is obvious: the same amount of thematic aggression, for example, shown by a girl and a boy are probably diagnostic of different degrees of instigation to aggression. For experimental work in projective fantasy (especially play) these results points to the necessity for careful control of the sex factor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)