THE DEVELOPMENT OF STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD OF EXPRESSION: A COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL ANALYSIS OF CHILDREN'S 'SAND WORLDS'

Sandplay (the creation of "worlds" with miniature figures in trays of sand) is an expressive medium particularly suited to an investigation of structure in symbolic play. The central role of play and imagination in the structuring of conscious development--both cognitive and affective--has been well established in the work of Huizinga, Jung, Lowenfeld, and Piaget. More recently the power of play to structure emotional meaning and potentiate new behavior has been explored as an area for structural analysis by Stewart and Stewart and Sutton-Smith. However, most studies on sandplay have focused on content and only a few researchers have investigated the development of structure in sand worlds. Of these, Ruth Bowyer's work is the most extensive and definitive.; Through combining Bowyer's normative data with Piaget's developmental theory a structural methodology was constructed and used to analyze 185 sand worlds created by children ranging in age from 11 months to 18 years. Each sand world was evaluated both as a whole in terms of Piaget's description of thought at each developmental stage and in its parts according to Piaget's developmental principles.; The analysis of data involved the identification of the age-relatedness of the sand world structure (represented in the scale scores and check list items of the measuring instruments) in order to test the hypothesis that there is an intrinsic age-related order to the production of these structures.; The results indicated that structural complexity in the sand worlds did increase according to Piaget's developmental sequence. Coherent patterns of structure were identified at each stage which were comparable with Piaget's definition of thought at these stages. Therefore, these results confirmed Piaget's view of the intimate relationship between the structuring of cognitive thought and expressive play and validate the hypothesis that a structuring process of internal coherence and order that is related to age is involved in the symbolic play of children as it is in their cognitive development.; Moreover, this study demonstrates a cognitive-developmental methodology for the analysis of sandplay and provides new developmental guidelines for its normative structure.