Wizard of Oz studies with children

The value of children's Story Magican's Play Time (SMPT) method from parents' perspective Story Magican's Play Time (SMPT) is developed to study children's viewpoints to social interactions and enhance their participation in early intervention serving children with self-regulation difficulties, and their parents. It is also applied to research childcare in 24/7 society from children's perspective. Video-recorded stories produced by children are watched and discussed with each child's parents to evaluate SMPT-method, complement the information collected with SMPT, and shed light on the child's viewpoints. Importance to listen to children's own perspectives about life and increase their participation concerning their life has various grounds (Sinclair, 2004). The societal commitment for children's participation grounds on the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Participatory processes impact also positively on children's learning and deve...

Perceptual and Motor Skills, 2010

Two experiments examined the possible link between magical thinking and creativity in preschool children. In Exp. 1, 4- and 6-yr.-old children were shown a film with either a magical or nonmagical theme. Results indicated that the mean scores of children shown the magical film was significantly higher than that of children watching the nonmagical film on the majority of subsequent creativity tests for both age groups. This trend was also found for 6-yr.-olds' drawings of impossible items. In Exp. 2, Exp. 1 was replicated successfully with 6- and 8-yr.-old children. Exposing children to a film with a magical theme did not affect their beliefs about magic. The results were interpreted to accentuate the role of magical thinking in children's cognitive development. Classroom implications of the results were also discussed.

Television serials had fewer distorted images of the world a decade ago. What has changed, in families or education systems, to make the children believe in fairytale-like sitcoms? Television screens are now full of magic images: do children believe in them. Data is collected from two sample groups, one from a big city and one from a smaller town. We analyse the number of the children watching these serials and the way they are making use of the information in their own lives. Analysis of the discourse of the serials helps understand the material and the way children are represented.

THE USE OF FAIRY TALES IN HYBRID PSYCHOLOGICAL CARE WITH CHILDREN (Atena Editora), 2024

With the Covid-19 pandemic, the limitations imposed by social isolation required immediate adaptation from psychologists when continuing their care, especially with young children accustomed to playing and exploring. This work aims to describe the use of fantasy and adapted play resources as alternatives for rescuing the therapeutic process of 22 children, aged between 5 and 10 years, monitored through care based on individual play therapy. Throughout the hybrid services, it was possible to observe, at each session, an increase in responsiveness to the alternative elements created, as well as a strengthening of the patient-therapist bond. From the beginning of the work, interacting with patients, the therapist creates a narrative from which mystical characters begin to serve as auxiliary egos, supporting children in their uncertainties, anxieties and motivating the sharing of emotions. Over time, the tale is named “The Fairy of Behavior” and strengthened with the structuring of figurative creatures theorized based on Jungian archetypes and typology. To ensure the acceptance and sharing of such emotions also in the family context, a methodology based on these mystical elements was created to be applied in the form of parental mentoring. Significant results were obtained by the families, which reverberated in the school environment and generated the demand presented by the participants, for the publication of the story and expansion of the work to the educational context. After a few months, the work expanded as a method and was extended to more patients and several psychologists under clinical supervision, who began using the material. With the necessary adaptations and inclusion of creative games, the method was applied experimentally in two different school groups composed of 32 children between 5 and 11 years of age.

Knowledge-based systems, 1993

Current approaches to the development of natural language dialogue systems are discussed, and it is claimed that they do not sufficiently consider the unique qualities of man-machine interaction as distinct from general human discourse. It is concluded that ...

Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 1978

Prologue When I first wrote the following essay in 1977, I was greatly angered by what I felt to be the authoritarian tone and fallacious arguments of Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, which is still widely used and acclaimed as a great and perspicacious study of fairy tales. Little did I know at that time -and little did the general public know -that my critique of his work was minor and temperate compared to the critiques of his activities as a psychologist and his published works that followed his death by suicide in 1990. Two excellent biographies, Bettelheim, a Life and a Legacy by Nina Sutton 1 and The Creation of Dr. B.: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim by Richard Pollak, 2 go into great detail about the scandals and the sad and troubled life of this famous man. After reading them, one could easily come to the conclusion that he was a charlatan, forger, liar, bully, and oppressor -which he was. But he was also extraordinarily dedicated to helping disturbed children and experimenting with practices and ideas that would enable them to function "normally" and happily in society. He deeply believed that human beings could be changed through psychotherapy and that they could successfully adapt to their environment if enough proper care and attention were paid to them. The difficulty is that Bettelheim undermined his life's work and good intentions by using dubious methods and experiments that have harmed numerous people and by disseminating ideas about therapy and literature that are misleading. As we now know, Bettelheim was fond of exaggerating the truth and concealing his ignorance by forging stories about himself and intimidating critics and adversaries with phony knowledge and unsubstantiated claims. For instance, he never studied with Freud in Vienna. He spent very little time in a concentration camp to grasp fully the desperate situation and the fortitude of the prisoners. He was fortunately released through the influence of family friends. Later, in the United states, he never did adequate research in studying the effects of concentration camp life on the victims. He lied about his academic credentials and background in psychology when he came to the United States. According to many children and counselors at The Orthogenic School in Chicago, he was abusive, secretive, and authoritarian and never allowed experts to witness the practices and processes that he developed to cure troubled children. In fact, the 85% success rate that he claimed for the School has never been proven or documented. His written English was so poor that all his books had to be doctored. He never read fairy tales to his children or developed a method of using fairy tales with children. His knowledge of children's literature, reading habits, and preferences was abysmally low. As Alan Dundes, one of the foremost scholars of folklore in America, has carefully demonstrated, many of the ideas in his book The Uses of Enchantment were plagiarized from Julius Heuscher's A Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales: Their Origin, Meaning and Usefulness (1963), nor does Bettelheim evince any understanding of folklore. The list of his forgeries and crimes is endless. But does that mean that we must condemn everything that he did and wrote? The simple answer is: of course not. Bettelheim was a cultivated man of doxa, an opinionated man, who represented his opinions as truth. As Sutton and Pollak make amply career, he was deeply disturbed most of his life -traumatized by his father's death due to syphilis and by his experiences in the concentration camp that left him somewhat paranoid and ambivalent about his Jewishness. He was also filled with rage that he "successfully" managed to channel through his work and through living life through fictions, as Pollak has astutely observed. 3 He could be charming, brazen, and pathetic, and he left indelible marks on all those who knew and worked with him. Yet, the extent to which anyone could appreciate the "essential" or "true" Dr. Bettelheim is in doubt. The truth about him and his life may never fully be known, but we can certainly determine what is fictitious and abusive in his writings. In is in this spirit that I am reprinting the following essay with some slight changes. What I intuited in 1977 is, I believe, valid as we enter the twenty-first century.

Developmental Science, 2004

Factors hypothesized to affect beliefs in fantastical beings were examined by introducing children to a novel fantastical entity, the Candy Witch. Results revealed that among older preschoolers, children who were visited by the Candy Witch exhibited stronger beliefs in the Candy Witch than did those who were not. Among children who were visited, older children had stronger beliefs than did younger children. Among children who were not visited, those with a high Fantasy Orientation believed more strongly than did those with a low Fantasy Orientation. Belief remained high one year later. At both time points, the number of other fantastical beings in which a child believed was significantly related to belief in the Candy Witch.

1999

The story of Father Christmas is widespread across Europe and beyond, and for almost six weeks each year dominates children'

Developmental Psychology, 1994

Research and common lore suggest that children subscribe to a rich world of fantasy, including beliefs about magical entities and events. This study explores how children use magic to explain events they witness in the real world. Children 4, 6, and 8 years of age were asked a set of interview questions designed to assess general magical beliefs. They were then presented with physical events and were asked to predict and explain their occurrence and to state whether they believed the events were magical. The extent of children's magical beliefs, as measured by the interview, decreased with age. Regarding explanations of events, the availability of correct physical explanations for the events accounted for a significant portion of the variance in children's claims that the events were magic. Findings suggest that magic is used by children as an explanatory tool when they encounter events that both violate their expectations and elude adequate physical explanation.

Child: Care, Health and Development, 2011

Background Fairy tales have always been an integrated part of children's everyday life. In our days, they still represent important ways of helping the children share their desires and express their agonies and inner conflicts. The present descriptive qualitative study aims to describe parents' opinions and children's preferences regarding storytelling. Methods Four hundred and seventy parents took part in the study and were interviewed following a semi-structured guide with open-ended trigger questions. Data were processed via content analysis methods. Results Three main themes were constructed. The vast majority of interviewees acknowledged their strong belief in the power of fairy tales and stated that their children listen to stories at least once a week. Most of them use storytelling as an instructive tool, in order to soothe their children's anxieties or set examples for them. Concerning children's preferences, the majority of them choose classic fairy tales over modern ones with Little Red Riding Hood taking precedence over other famous stories. All participants acknowledged the fact that their children are amused and positively affected by storytelling, while young readers share their enthusiasm for fairy tales in many ways, mostly by talking about their favourite character. Finally, in relation to the villains, children seem to be satisfied or relieved when they are punished and only a small number of participants stated that the cruel punishment of bad characters creates feelings of fear to their kids. Conclusions The findings of this study emphasize the crucial role that storytelling plays in children's life and normal development.