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Gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration

Over the last years, the omnipresent standardization of playgrounds—the distances between, for example, jumping stones tend to be equal—has been criticized by both scientists and architects. First, it has been argued that standardization fails to do justice to the variability in the children’s actio...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Sporrel, Karlijn, Caljouw, Simone R., Withagen, Rob
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5414936/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28467459
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176165
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author Sporrel, Karlijn
Caljouw, Simone R.
Withagen, Rob
author_facet Sporrel, Karlijn
Caljouw, Simone R.
Withagen, Rob
author_sort Sporrel, Karlijn
collection PubMed
description Over the last years, the omnipresent standardization of playgrounds—the distances between, for example, jumping stones tend to be equal—has been criticized by both scientists and architects. First, it has been argued that standardization fails to do justice to the variability in the children’s action capabilities. Second, it might simplify play in that children repetitively cross over the same distance and, thus, do not have to worry about their movements anymore. In the present study we examined the gap-crossing behavior of children in both a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration. Children, between 5 and 10 years of age, were to play in each configuration for two minutes. No significant differences between the configurations were found in the number of gaps the children crossed and the percentage of jumps (ps>0.05). However, more children crossed a gap that they perceived as challenging (i.e. gap width close to their estimated maximum jumping distance) in the nonstandardized configuration than in the standardized one. Interestingly, significant differences were found in variables reflecting the children’s action preparation—the variation in both the time on a jumping stone and the numbers of steps on it was bigger in the nonstandardized playground than in the standardized one (ps<0.05). The implications of these findings are discussed for both the design of playgrounds and the academic discussions about them.
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spelling pubmed-54149362017-05-14 Gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration Sporrel, Karlijn Caljouw, Simone R. Withagen, Rob PLoS One Research Article Over the last years, the omnipresent standardization of playgrounds—the distances between, for example, jumping stones tend to be equal—has been criticized by both scientists and architects. First, it has been argued that standardization fails to do justice to the variability in the children’s action capabilities. Second, it might simplify play in that children repetitively cross over the same distance and, thus, do not have to worry about their movements anymore. In the present study we examined the gap-crossing behavior of children in both a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration. Children, between 5 and 10 years of age, were to play in each configuration for two minutes. No significant differences between the configurations were found in the number of gaps the children crossed and the percentage of jumps (ps>0.05). However, more children crossed a gap that they perceived as challenging (i.e. gap width close to their estimated maximum jumping distance) in the nonstandardized configuration than in the standardized one. Interestingly, significant differences were found in variables reflecting the children’s action preparation—the variation in both the time on a jumping stone and the numbers of steps on it was bigger in the nonstandardized playground than in the standardized one (ps<0.05). The implications of these findings are discussed for both the design of playgrounds and the academic discussions about them. Public Library of Science 2017-05-03 /pmc/articles/PMC5414936/ /pubmed/28467459 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176165 Text en © 2017 Sporrel et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sporrel, Karlijn
Caljouw, Simone R.
Withagen, Rob
Gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration
title Gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration
title_full Gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration
title_fullStr Gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration
title_full_unstemmed Gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration
title_short Gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration
title_sort gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5414936/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28467459
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176165
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