Play and Language Development: Westby Play Scale

Play Language
Stage 1- 9 to 12 months  No true language; may have performantive
 Awareness that objects exist when not seen; words, (words associated with actions or the
finds toy hidden under scarf total situation)
 Means-end behavior-crawls or walks to get  Exhibits the following communicative
what he wants; pulls string toys functions: request and command
 Does not mouth or bang all toys-some used
appropriately
Stage II-15 to 17 months  Context dependent single words, for
 Purposeful exploration of toys; discovers example, child may use the word “car”
operation of toys through trial and error; uses when riding in a car, but not when he sees a
variety of motoric schemas car; words tend to come and go in a child’s
 Hands toy to adult if unable to operate vocabulary
 Exhibits following communicative
functions: request, command, interactional,
personal, protesting, label, response,
greeting
Stage III-17 to 19 months  Beginning of true verbal communication
 Autosymbolic play, for example, child  Words have the following functional and
pretends to go to sleep or pretends to drink semantic relations: recurrence, existence,
from cup or eat from spoon nonexistence, rejection, denial, agent,
 Uses most common objects and toys object, action or state, location, object or
appropriately person associated with object or location
 Tool-use (uses stick to reach toy)
 Finds toys invisibly hidden (when placed in
box and box emptied under scarf)
Stage IV—19-22 months  Refers to objects or persons not present
 Symbolic play extends beyond the child’s self  Beginning of word combinations with the
 Plays with dolls; brushes doll’s hair, feeds doll following semantic relations: agent-action,
a bottle, or covers with blanket action-object, agent-object, attributive,
 Child performs pretend activities on more than dative, action-locative, object-locative,
one person or object; for example, feeds self, a possessive
doll, mother, and another child
 Combines two toys in pretend play, for ex,
puts spoon in pan or pours from pot into cup
Stage V-24 months  Uses earlier pragmatic functions and
 Represents daily experiences; plays house-is semantic relations in phrases and short
the mommy, daddy, or baby; objects used are sentences
realistic and close to life size  The following morphological makers
 Events short and isolated; not true sequences; appear: present progressive on verbs,
some self-limiting sequences-puts food in pan, plurals, possessives
stirs, and eats
 Block play consists of stacking and knocking
down
  Sand and water play consist of filling, pouring,
and dumping
Stage VI- 21/2 years  Responds appropriately to WH questions in
 Represents events less frequently experienced context:
or observed, particularly impressive or  Asks wh questions, generally puts “wh”
traumatic events: doctor/nurse/sick child or at beginning of sentence
teacher/child  Responses to why questions
 Events still short and isolated. Realistic props inappropriate expect for well-know
still required. Roles shift quickly routines, such as, “Why is the doctor
here?.”baby sick”
 Asks why, but often inappropriate and
does not attend to answer
Stages VII-3 years  Uses past tense, such as “I ate the cake..I
 Continues pretend activities of Stages V and walked”
VI, but now the play has sequence. Events are  Uses future aspect (particularly “gonna”)
not isolated, for example, child mixes cake, forms, such as “I’m gonna wash dishes.”
bakes it, serves it, washes dishes
 Sequence evolves, not planned
 Compensatory toy..re-enactment of
experienced events with new outcomes
 Associative play
Stage VIII-3 to 31/2 years  Descriptive vocabulary expands as child
 Carries out play activities of previous stages becomes more aware of perceptual
with a doll house and Fisher Price toys (barn, attributes. Uses terms for the following
garage, airport, village) concepts (not always correctly: shapes,
 Uses blocks and sandbox for imaginative play. sizes, colors, texture, spatial relationships,
Blocks used primarily as enclosures for gives dialogue to puppets and dolls,
animals and dolls metalinguistic language use, uses indirect
 Play not totally stimulus bound. Child uses one requests (Mommy lets me have cookies for
subject to represent another breakfast), changes speech depending on
listener
Stage IX-3/12 to 4 years  Verbalizes intentions and possible future
 Begins to problem-solve events not events:
experienced. Plans ahead. Hypothesizes  Uses modals (can, may, might, will, would,
 Uses dolls and puppets to act out scenes could)
 Builds 3-dimensional structures with blocks  Uses conjunctions (and, but, if, so, because)
which are attempts at reproducing specific (full competence for modals doesn’t
structures child has seen develop until 10-12 years of age)
 Begins to respond appropriately to why and
how questions that require reasoning about
perception
Stage X-5 years  Next, last, while, before, after
 Plans sequence of pretend events (full competence doesn’t develop until 10-12
 Organizes what he needs-both objects and years of age)
other children
 Coordinates more than one event occurring at a
time
 Highly imaginative. Sets the scene without
realistic props.
 Full cooperative play

 Play is correlated with cognitive development up until 3;0-3;6