Despite the ethnic diversity and presence of Amerindian communities in all Brazilian states, the indigenous population suffers from a long process of invisibility and stereotyping. Aiming to increase interethnic associations, together with Mbya-Guarani leaders we promoted interventions in which indigenous and non-indigenous children shared free playtime. We hypothesised that free play activity would stimulate group cohesiveness, mitigating ethnic group avoidance in children's playgroups. Twenty-one Mbya-Guarani and 61 non-indigenous children participated in two “Encounters for Play.” We recorded children's social interactions during the free playtimes. We selected the first and last 10 minutes of each encounter and performed scans every 30s registering spatial proximity (children who were up to 1 m of each other) and play. Then, we applied Social Network Analysis to explore the children's association pattern at the beginning and end of playtime in each encounter. Our results show free play activity was effective in stimulating group cohesiveness. Children' proximity association pattern and playgroup configuration changed between clips, and there was a significant correlation between both categories' associations. We conclude that the encounters have potential applicability as an intervention to mitigate ethnic group avoidance in children.

中文翻译：

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儿童自由游戏活动中的群体凝聚力：社交网络分析

尽管巴西所有州都存在种族多样性和美洲印第安人社区，但土著居民长期遭受隐形和刻板印象的折磨。为了增加种族间的联系，我们与 Mbya-Guarani 领导人一起促进了土著和非土著儿童共享免费游戏时间的干预措施。我们假设自由游戏活动会刺激群体凝聚力，减轻儿童游戏群体中的种族回避。21 名 Mbya-Guarani 和 61 名非土著儿童参加了两次“玩耍的邂逅”。我们记录了孩子们在免费游戏时间的社交互动。我们选择了每次相遇的前 10 分钟和最后 10 分钟，并每 30 秒进行一次扫描，记录空间接近度（儿童彼此相距达 1 m）和玩耍。然后，我们应用社交网络分析来探索儿童在每次遭遇游戏时间开始和结束时的联想模式。我们的结果表明，自由游戏活动在激发团队凝聚力方面是有效的。儿童的邻近关联模式和游戏组配置在剪辑之间发生变化，并且两个类别的关联之间存在显着相关性。我们得出的结论是，这些遭遇具有潜在的适用性，可作为一种干预措施，以减轻儿童的种族回避问题。并且两个类别的关联之间存在显着相关性。我们得出的结论是，这些遭遇具有潜在的适用性，可作为一种干预措施，以减轻儿童的种族回避问题。并且两个类别的关联之间存在显着相关性。我们得出的结论是，这些遭遇具有潜在的适用性，可作为一种干预措施，以减轻儿童的种族回避问题。