The relationship between young children’s language abilities, creativity, play, and storytelling

ABSTRACT

This study examined the connection between young children’s social play, creativity, storytelling, and language abilities. Participants were 56 primarily European American preschool children. First, to assess creativity we asked children to draw several pictures. Children created stories about their pictures during the creative process. Second, children created an original story with access to multiple ethnic family doll sets to use as props. We analysed all storytelling episodes for mean length of utterance and parts of speech. Third, we observed children’s social play behaviours over 10-minute intervals recording behaviour at 1-minute intervals. Finally, we administered the Test of Early Language Development 3 to assess children’s receptive and expressive language skills. Our findings revealed positive relationships between storytelling abilities and language abilities, relationships between type of play, storytelling, and language abilities, and connections between play and creativity and language and creativity. Our findings provide avenues for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Social play
• creativity
• storytelling
• expressive language
• receptive language
• preschoolers

Acknowledgements

The authors extend their warmest thanks to the directors, teachers, caregivers, and most especially the children for their participation in this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Robyn M. Holmes is a Professor of Psychology at Monmouth University. Her teaching and research interests have an interdisciplinary and cultural focus. She is author of several books and numerous articles and chapters on play, sport, and development.

Brianna Gardner received her Bachelor's degree in Psychology at Monmouth University. She is currently a Mental Health Associate and plans to pursue her graduate studies in school psychology.

Kristen Kohm received her Masters in Anthropology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Learning Sciences in the Contemporary Learning and Interdisciplinary Research programme at Fordham University. She has several publications on young children's play.

Christine Bant received her Bachelor's degree in Child-Family Studies/ECE at Syracuse University and Master's degree in ECE/Special Education at Arcadia University. She has 25 years of experience in early childhood settings including Headstart, corporate childcare, and as director of a franchised early childhood centre for the past 20 years.

Anjelica Ciminello received her Bachelor's degree in Psychology at Monmouth University. She is a graduate student pursuing a degree in Mental Health Counseling and Drama Therapy.

Kelly Moedt is an undergraduate student at Monmouth University majoring in psychology.

Lynn Romeo is Professor Emerita of Education and the past Dean of the School of Education at Monmouth University. She has numerous publications in play and literacy.