According to Vygotsky’s cultural-historical activity theory, pretend play can be an important context for the development of children’s social competence. The aim of this meta-analysis was to synthesize the current evidence about the relation between pretend play and social competence in early childhood (age 3–8 years). A systematic literature search of PsycINFO, ERIC, and Web of Science identified a total of 34 relevant empirical studies. The included studies were systematically coded and categorized for pretend play and social competence. Overall, the findings of this meta-analysis reveal a positive relation between pretend play and social competence, irrespective of how the latter was measured. The relation between pretend play and social competence was slightly negatively impacted by children’s age, suggesting that the relation weakens as children get older. Studies measuring the amount of pretend play found lower correlations between pretend play and social competence than studies measuring the quality of pretend play. Most included studies adopted a cross-sectional design, so claims about causal effects could not be supported. Future research is required to determine the direction of causality and potential mechanisms that may explain the relation between pretend play and social competence.

Language ability plays a major role in children’s future development. In the present study, the effect of three interactive reading approaches on children’s language ability was investigated through a pre-posttest design. Participants were N = 73 children (aged 4–6) from three early childhood education classrooms. Classrooms were assigned to one of three reading approaches: (1) traditional interactive reading, (2) interactive reading with focused attention, and (3) interactive reading using a mindmap. The hypothesis was that the effect of the mindmap approach would be greater than the effect of the other two reading approaches. Children’s productive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, listening comprehension skills, and narrative skills were measured. Results indicated no differences between the effects of the three reading approaches. However, after the intervention period, children’s language ability was significantly improved. This indicates that different interactive reading approaches are beneficial for children’s language ability, even after a short intervention period of four weeks. Future large-scale, longitudinal research should follow-up on the present study in order to indicate whether the use of mindmaps during interactive reading is even more effective than other reading approaches.

Playing in natural environments is a popular activity for young children. In previous years, studies have shown benefits of playing in natural environment for children’s motor development and attention restoration. In this study, we explored the relation between playing in natural environments and children’s language use. A total of N = 18 children (4–7 years) from three Dutch primary schools participated. To measure children’s language use during outdoor play, we recorded their utterances for ten minutes while playing in a non-nature-based playground and a nature-based playground. Audio tapes were transcribed and coded using a coding scheme focusing on communicative functions. Findings indicated that children used more language and more complex language while playing in the nature-based playground. Additionally, four themes were identified: (1) Children used language to refer to their play situation, (2) Children used language to refer to the elements of their physical play environment. (3) Compared to the non-nature-based playground, children talked more about the objects of the nature-based playground, and (4) Children talked more about science and math concepts. Play in the nature-based playground appeared to be a richer conversational setting for language use than the non-nature-based playground, with a potential to scaffold and guide language use.

Being rejected by peers has devastating consequences for a child’s future social-cognitive development. It is therefore important to investigate factors that contribute to childhood peer rejection. In doing so, the present review specifically focused on sociometric status, a concept that refers to a child’s position within the peer group (e.g., liked or disliked). Although previous studies indicated that children’s ability to communicate effectively might partly determine their sociometric status, much was still unclear about this relation. Therefore, in the present review, a total of 25 studies into the relation between children’s (aged 1 to 12 years) level of oral communicative competence and their sociometric status was systematically reviewed. Results generally pointed to a significant relation between the two variables. Specifically, rejected children communicate less responsive compared with popular children. However, several gaps in previous research were identified, resulting in five recommendations for future studies. First, the complexity of the construct of oral communicative competence asks for an approach in which multiple methods are combined (i.e., mixed methods). Second, future studies should be conducted in non-western countries as well to study possible cross-cultural differences. Third, as the majority of researches were small-scale exploratory studies, future research should include larger samples in order to generalize the findings outside the sample. Fourth, future studies should adopt longitudinal and experimental designs to investigate the direction of the relation of interest. And finally, as previous research showed that the interactional context, gender, and age might influence the relation between oral communicative competence and sociometric status, future studies could take these factors into account.

Children’s sociometric status refers to their position within the peer group and plays a major role in their future social development. It is therefore important to investigate factors that are related to it. To date, little attention has been paid to the potential role of oral communicative competence. The present study investigated sociometric group differences in the level of oral communicative competence in a sample of N = 570 children in early childhood education. Sociometric status was measured using a nomination procedure. Based on peer nominations, children were categorized into five sociometric groups: (1) popular (generally well‐liked), (2) rejected (generally disliked), (3) neglected (low visibility and neither liked nor disliked), (4) controversial (high visibility and both liked and disliked), and (5) average (at or about the mean on both likability and visibility). Children’s level of oral communicative competence was assessed with the Nijmegen Test for Pragmatics. Results of multi‐level analyses revealed significant sociometric group differences: children who were rejected or neglected by their peers exhibited lower levels of oral communicative competence than average children. Based on these findings, teachers in early childhood education are encouraged to pay more explicit attention to the promotion of their pupils’ oral communicative competence.