Category: Communication & Language Development

Play: A window into children’s social worlds
11 September 2017
This was a keynote lecture from world renowned Professor of Educational Psychology, Professor Anthony Pellegrini titled Object Use & Play in Childhood: Development and Possible Social Functions. Professor Pellegrini discussed the potential evolutionary significance of play and the challenges and rewards of getting scientists out of the lab and onto the playground! Professor Anthony Pellegrini […]

Shaping Social Play Behaviour in Interactive Playgrounds
11 September 2017
The introduction of sensing technology in traditional play spaces such as playgrounds has given rise to the possibility of analysing children’s behaviour during actual play. Not only can this help to better understand what is going on during games but when combined with feedback and actuation technology, such as projections or robots, it can be […]

Harnessing New Technology to Better Understand the Family Language Environment
11 September 2017
In this PEDAL presentation, Dr Elian Fink talks about the collaborative project Baby Talk, where they used a light-weight wearable pedometer to record infant-caregiver interactions. Play interactions between infant and caregiver have been studied in developmental psychology under many guises, including attachment behaviours, parental sensitivity and scaffolding. Baby Talk aimed to explore the association between […]

PEDAL Seminar: Self-regulation – Foundation skills for children’s healthy development
31 August 2017
Part of the PEDAL Seminar series, in this seminar PEDAL and the Psychology & Education research group at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge come together to discuss the importance of children’s self-regulation skills. This seminar is introduced by Dr David Whitebread, and is presented by Dr Megan McClelland (Hallie Ford Center for Healthy […]

Symbolic play and autistic children’s structural language development
27 July 2022
Yiran Vicky Zhao, Jenny Gibson

Finding out more about our work in the PEDAL Centre…
6 July 2019
By 2019, PEDAL had been running for four years. This journal article draws together several of our projects which focus on 'measuring play'.