A naturalistic study of collaborative play transformations of preschoolerswith hearing impairments

Through collaborative play activities, preschoolers create fantasy-type ena ctments by using abstract transformations and verbal metacommunications. Th is naturalistic study examines the classroom collaborative play activities of nine preschoolers who are hearing-impaired, are language-delayed and do not use sign language. Results demonstrate that these children construct co llaborative play episodes which incorporate role, action, and object transf ormations, and use a nonverbal metacommunication system to convey informati on about these transformations to their play partners. The findings suggest that the preschoolers in this study might also be dependent on the play en vironment and the objects available in that environment to plan and coordin ate their pretend play enactments.