A NORMATIVE STUDY OF REPRESENTATIONAL PLAY AT THE TRANSITION TO LANGUAGE

A theoretical sequence of cognitive developments is proposed as influencing representational play and language in the second year of life. Scale analysis supported an ordinal sequence of play developments for 102 children (cross-sectional sample, 8 to 24 months of age) and a comparable longitudinal sample of 10 children, despite some inconsistency of temporal placement and overlap of onset time. Structural and temporal links between play and language indicate the influence of developing mental representation, but variation in timing of developments points to the influence of intervening variables. A dynamic systems perspective (E. Thelen, 1989) provides a useful descriptive framework for the transition to language.