LUNCHTIME SUPERVISORS ATTITUDES TOWARDS PLAYFUL FIGHTING, AND ABILITYTO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN PLAYFUL AND AGGRESSIVE FIGHTING - AN INTERVENTION STUDY

Study 1 provided data about lunchtime supervisors' (N=72) attitudes to wards playful fighting, since this group had not figured in previous r esearch. Participants expressed generally positive attitudes, although those individuals with the longest service tended to hold the least f avourable views. It was argued that the opinions of this section of sc hool staff should be considered when policy about playful fighting on the playground is developed. Study 2 investigated the ability of parti cipants to discriminate between playful and aggressive fighting. They were shown a videotape of children involved in ten separate episodes o f the two types of encounter, and asked to say whether the children we re playing or really fighting. The nature of these episodes was assess ed by asking the children involved and by ratings by an experienced re searcher. Participants' responses that indicated errors in perceiving play to be aggression, and, separately, aggression to be play, were ta llied. On average, errors were made on more than one in four of the ep isodes, and there were more errors of the latter type than of the form er type. A short intervention was implemented that highlighted how it is possible to discriminate between playful and aggressive fighting. P articipants were then shown another series of ten episodes and the num ber of errors made were again tallied. Statistical analysis showed tha t the intervention was followed by a significant reduction in errors o f mistakenly viewing episodes of aggressive fighting as play. It is ar gued that these results point to the need for training of lunchtime su pervisors in this aspect on non-verbal decoding skill, and that such t raining might take a form similar to that implemented in this study.