Self-regulation during pretend play in children with intellectual disability and in normally developing children

This study investigated the symbolic behavior and the self-regulation in dyads of children with intellectual disability and of normally developing children. Specifically, these processes were studied in link with the children's characteristics (mental age, linguistic level, individual pretend play level). The sample included 80 participants, 40 children with intellectual disability and 40 normally developing children, matched according to their mental age, ranged from 3 to 6 years old. First, a developmental assessment was performed (about cognitive, language and pretend play dimensions); then, in peers dyads, the children were elicited to pretend play by means of four kinds of material referring to four types of scripts (tea party, doctor, transportation, substitute objects eliciting creativity). The average symbolic behavior in individual and dyadic play contexts did not differ in both groups, but the average self-regulation in the group with intellectual disability was lower than in the normally developing group. Some positive partial correlations were obtained between mental age, language abilities, individual pretend play, dyadic pretend play and several self-regulatory strategies in both groups although they varied in importance between groups. Clusters analyses showed that individual and dyadic pretend play explained self-regulation in children of both groups. Specifically, in both groups, the higher was symbolic behavior in creativity context, the higher was self-regulation.