Prosocial and creative play: Effects of a programme on the verbal and nonverbal intelligence of children aged 10–11 years

The objective of this research was to design a prosocial and creative play programme, in order to assess its effects on intellectual development. The study used a pretest–intervention–posttest design with control group. The sample was made up of 86 participants aged 10–11 years from two schools in the Basque Country, northern Spain. From the complete sample, 54 participants were assigned at random to the experimental condition, while 32 were assigned to the control condition. With the aim of assessing the effect of the programme, before and after its implementation, in the pretest phase and the posttest phase, two assessment instruments were administered to measure the dependent variables, that is, verbal intelligence, nonverbal intelligence, and verbal associative thinking related to verbal creativity. Subsequently, the experimental participants took part in the psychological intervention programme, which consisted of a weekly 2-hour play session throughout the academic year. The session was structured with a sequence of two or three recreational activities and their subsequent debates. The games included in the programme stimulate communication, cohesion, confidence, and the development of creativity; underlying all of them is the idea of acceptance, cooperation, and sharing, while playing and inventing together. The games constituting this programme have five structural characteristics: participation, communication, cooperation, fiction-creation, and fun. Results of the analysis of variance suggest significant impact of the programme on verbal intelligence, on the ability to form concepts or define words, and on the capacity for verbal associative thinking. Also confirmed was a greater effect of the intervention on participants who showed low intelligence levels in the pretest, but no differences were found according to sex. The results indicate a positive effect of interventions that stimulate prosocial play and behaviour on intellectual factors.