Standardization of Play-Situations for Research on Parent-Child Interaction and Child Psychotherapy Based on a Novel Modified Categorization Model

There seems to be substantial scientific, clinical, and practical interest in the act of playing and its important role in human development and everyday life - from infancy to adulthood. However, for the purpose of standardizing play situations for (experimental) research on dyadic parent-child interaction or child psychotherapy, there seems to be no appropriate theory-based and/or empirically validated framework, as of yet. The present contribution aims at closing this gap and promoting systematic and reproducible research by proposing a descriptive model to categorize and organize play situations based on their potential for subjective experiences and actions while playing. In its current version, our model entails eight categories to describe a given play situation's potential for individual and dyadic experiences and actions in a standardized way. The proposed categories can be used to either (1) rate an existing play situation (or game) on the proposed dimensions (e.g., on a defined response scale) to transparently and systematically describe its profile of potential experiences and likely actions or (2) to organize and design a future play situation in an at most standardized and reproducible way prior to playing. In conclusion, we argue that our model can be a useful and valid tool to, on the one hand, experimentally control specified play situations in an empirical study, while, on the other hand, allowing an at most authentic and naturalistic play interaction between two individuals.