Lecture 6 - Play 2 Flashcards
What are the 4 different types of play behaviours?
- Physical play – exercise, rough and tumble
- Play with objects – general to specific objects
- Fantasy play – socio-dramatic play, role play etc.
- Language play – words or speech for fun
Detail physical play
Often occurs outside and with objects
Learn dominance hierarchy and their place within them (e.g. strongest to weakest)
Benefits:
• Muscle strength
• Balance
• Coordination
What are the developmental phases of physical play?
- Rhythmical stereotypes – gross-motor movements, e.g. waving arms around, knocking things over. Often done alone and spontaneously
- Exercise play – e.g. running, jumping, climbing. Can be done alone or with others. Peaks around school years, as mature less often
- Rough and tumble play – e.g. wrestling, tumbling, chasing. Mostly done with others. Common after 4 or 5 and beyond, more passive earlier in life. Play fighting behaviours can occur after 3 and is cross-cultural
What are the functions of physical play?
Boys engage in it more than girls do (Pellegrini & Smith, 1998) except rhythmical stereotypes where equal amounts are seen. Boys tend to be more physically active than girls (more exercise play) and exhibit more play fighting behaviour (more rough and tumble play). Girls tend to do more chasing than boys. Dads tend to do more rough and tumble play with boys rather than girls.
- Rhythmical stereotypes – improve control of motor patterns, helps to modify or eliminate early formations of synapses helping to identify what movements are useful and important to perfect and which are less useful in everyday life
- Exercise play – improves strength and endurance coinciding with growth of bones and muscle development. Become more efficient in their movements. Useful for burning surplus energy, improving fitness and preventing obesity. Helps body temperature regulation
- Rough and tumble play – understanding, interpreting and decoding emotions of others, safe practice for real fighting behaviours
Detail play with objects
Object play tends to begin around 6-12 months old, about making use of object properties to produce pleasure. Objects link the child to their environment, the play is dependent upon their environment and culture they’re in. Garvey (1991) play with objects helps the child to channel for social interaction either verbally or non-verbally. It facilitates problem solving. Very few sex differences in terms of amount or type of object play. Smith and Dalglish (1977) found boys tended to use transportation toys and girls more likely to play with dolls and soft toys
Explain how object play begins (Lowe, 1975)
Observed children of different ages and how they interacted with a range of objects
• 9 months – child grasps nearest object/ brings to mouth, use few action patterns (coincides with limited mobility)
• 12 months – investigate objects (look at, turn and touch) before doing anything else with it
• 15 months – inspecting and investigating objects precede all other behaviour, used objects conventionally (e.g. cup and saucer)
• 21 months – child searches for object to go with things (e.g. bowl and spoon)
• 24 months – realistic enactment and uses objects all together, e.g. brush teddy hair, feed teddy and take teddy on a drive
• 30-36 months – power to act purposefully attributed to object, e.g. teddy drives car
Detail fantasy play
Certain abilities must be present for fantasy play (e.g. object permanence). Any form of social pretend play rarely occurs under 2 years old (Howes, 1985). Pretend play emerges gradually and peaks at around 4 or 5 and decreases thereafter. At around 3 years old children take part in decontextualized play, ability to use similar objects to stand in for another object, e.g. wooden block to represent a phone. They have a strong enough imagination. They are able to share the meaning and framework of their imagination with others in a group context. Connoly and Doyle (1984) found children who engaged in social fantasy play tended to have higher ratings of popularity from their peers and higher rating of social skills by their teachers. There is no difference in the amount of fantasy play observed between boys and girls however there are differences in the type of fantasy play. Boys are more likely to engage in physical fantasy play whereas girls are more likely to engage in domestic fantasy play.
Explain other research into fantasy play
Garvey (1984) described fantasy play as when children carry out actions, take on roles, transform objects, express feelings about social world. A body of research has reported that around 25% of children will have an imaginary friend despite knowing they are imaginary, this play occurs between 3 and 6. Vygotsky believed this play was important for self control, learning about boundaries and frameworks within which they can play and interact with others. He believed we have a ZPD for play behaviour as well.
Explain benefits of fantasy play
By age 4 or 5 children’s ideas about social world initiate most pretend play. Children take on roles or identities in play and use scripts, a synopsis of a behaviour based on real world based on schema.
Benefits: • Social skills • Imagination • Narrative skills • Creativity
Describe agent use in fantasy play
Around 30 months children are able to make an agent (object) perform an action fitting a certain social role. There are 4 steps in the development of agent use:
- Self as an agent Infant puts head on pillow to pretend to sleep
- Passive other agent Doll on pillow, pretend doll sleeps
- Passive substitute agent Block on pillow, pretend doll sleeps
- Active other agent Doll places block on pillow – doll ‘putting block to bed’
What are the 3 types of social play with language?
- Spontaneous rhyming and word play
- Play with fantasy and nonsense
- Play with speech acts and discourse conventions (aka play with conversation)
Detail Spontaneous rhyming and word play
• Doesn’t tend to arise in pretend or goal-oriented episodes of play (Garvey, 1991)
• Sounds of words important rather than grammatical shape
E.g. Boy and girl playing
o Boy: teddy bear’s mine
o Girl: the fishy fishy is mine
o Boy: no the snakey snakey is yours
Detail play with fantasy and nonsense
• Nonsense verse and ‘topsy-turvy’ meanings appeal to children
• Assignment of funny names in jest to objects displays awareness of correct forms of language
E.g.
“I’m a whale, this is my tail. I’m a flamingo, look at my wingo”
“Smelly Ellie”
Detail play with conversation
• Child learns rules of conversation as learns language and as engages in play
• Can manipulate language conventions in play
E.g. conversation sequence norm is to expand on topic…
Example – play with conversation (normal conversation would’ve expanded in answer saying where the hat was found.
“Is that your fire hat?” “yeah” “Did you get it from school?” “Nope” “From here?” “Nope” “Where? In the car?” “Um, no” “From you?” “Nope” “From in the other room?” “No. Yes”
Detail cultural aspects of play
- Influence of family and culture on play (Garvey, 1991)
- Bedouin (traditional community, little interaction and guidance with adults) children contrasted with ‘western’ children in kibbutz(collective community) (Ariel & Sever, 1980) – higher levels of play in kibbutz and so concluded: play is determined by culture
- Gender roles and socialisation
