The social participation of 40 nursery-school children was analyzed. The spontaneous play groups occurring during the free-play hour were observed by a one-minute sampling and the social behavior of each child was recorded. Social participation was classified under: unoccupied; solitary play; onlooker; parallel group activity; associative group play; and cooperative group play. Unoccupied behavior was observed in only five children, while all children engaged in solitary play. All but two children were observed in onlooker situations, and all but one in associative play groups. Parallel activity occurred more often than any other; two-thirds of the children played in this manner over 33% of the time. Cooperative play occupied from 1 to 57% of the observations. Correlation of social participation was made with several other factors:(1) social participation is dependent to a large extent upon the age of children,(2) there is a slight relationship between intelligence quotients and the degree of social participation of individuals (. 26),(3) nursery-school experience correlated with social participation scores. 12.(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)