The role of anxiety and cognitive factors in children's play behavior.

Theories of play put forward by Piaget and by psychoanalytic theorists suggest that when a child is anxious he will prefer to play with toys on the basis of their relevance to the source of his anxiety, whereas when a child is not anxious he will prefer to play with toys on the basis of their novelty. This prediction was tested by three studies; one study was observational in design, two studies were experimental. Taken as a whole, the results of these studies indicate that: (I) novelty does not interact appreciably with a child's anxious state to produce changes in toy preferences; and (2) anxiety is an important variable affecting a child's preferences for toys having relevance to the source of this anxiety, but the effect can be an increased or decreased preference, depending on as yet unspecified additional factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]