Social competence at the playground: Preschoolers during recess

Social interactions at the playground have been represented as a rich learning opportunity to hone and master social skills at pre- school years. Specifically, all forms of social play (fantasy, role, ex- ercise or rough-and-tumble) have been related to children’s social competence. The main goal of this study was to examine whether it is a certain kind of social play which facilitates the development of social competence, or if it is just the opportunity for interacting during recess that provides children with an optimal environment for social learning. A total of 73 preschoolers (4–6 years old) were videotaped at the school’s playground. Teachers provided assess- ments of children’s social competence. Children’s interactions at the playground were assessed through an innovative measuring method, based on radio-frequency identification devices. The results showed a positive association between exercise play and children’s social competence. In contrast with the literature, both forms of pretend play, fantasy and role play were unrelated to children’s social competence. Smaller peer groups and longer interactions also demonstrated a positive association with these preschoolers’ social competence. The study shows the importance of outdoor physical play for preschoolers’ social success. More- over, the study suggests that the environment in which children play has an important effect on the adaptive nature of their play.

Social competence at the playground: Preschoolers during recess

Social interactions at the playground have been represented as a rich learning opportunity to hone and master social skills at preschool years. Specifically, all forms of social play (fantasy, role, exercise or rough-and-tumble) have been related to children’s social competence. The main goal of this study was to examine whether it is a certain kind of social play which facilitates the development of social competence, or if it is just the opportunity for interacting during recess that provides children with an optimal environment for social learning. A total of 73 preschoolers (4–6 years old) were videotaped at the school’s playground. Teachers provided assessments of children’s social competence. Children’s interactions at the playground were assessed through an innovative measuring method, based on radio-frequency identification devices. The results showed a positive association between exercise play and children’s social competence. In contrast with the literature, both forms of pretend play, fantasy and role play were unrelated to children’s social competence. Smaller peer groups and longer interactions also demonstrated a positive association with these preschoolers’ social competence. The study shows the importance of outdoor physical play for preschoolers’ social success. Moreover, the study suggests that the environment in which children play has an important effect on the adaptive nature of their play.

Identification with the neighborhood: Discrimination and neighborhood size

This paper analyzes the impact of a geographical social grouping (neighborhood) and its relative perceived size in the spontaneous group’s identiication level and place satisfaction, as well as the intensity of and motives for discrimination against inhabitants of other places. Two studies are presented: an experimental one using the minimal group categorization paradigm and an onsite investigation of a city neighborhood. Consistent with the predictions, the results showed that smaller neighborhoods reported higher identiication and satisfaction with the place of residence, as well as higher discrimination of other neighborhoods. In line with the optimal distinctiveness theory (ODT), the indings showed that the motivation for discrimination varies as a function of the in-group size. Thus, the members of larger groups discriminate by increasing the diferentiation between the in-group and the out-group, whereas the members of smaller groups increased the value of the in-group. Furthermore, the results were consistent with a social identity theory and ODT explanation of diverse research that shows the non-trivial nature of geographical bounded social grouping and its importance in a diverse set of contexts and its impact in inter-neighborhood relationships.

Age and Gender Identification using Stacking for Classification⋆ Notebook for PAN at CLEF 2016

This paper presents our approach of identifying the profile of an unknown user based on the activities of known users. The aim of author profiling task of PAN@CLEF 2016 is cross-genre identification of the gender and age of an unknown user. This means training the system using the behavior of different users from one social media platform and identifying the profile of other user on some different platform. Instead of using single classifier to build the system we used a combination of different classifiers, also known as stacking. This approach allowed us explore the strength of all the classifiers and minimize the bias or error enforced by a single classifier.