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PSYC21021/ Topics in Developmental Psychology > Lecture 7 > Flashcards

Lecture 7 Flashcards

The importance of play

1
Q

core features of play

A
  • flexibility
  • positive affect
  • non-literality
  • intrinsic motivation
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2
Q

flexibility

A

different forms and length
e.g. on own, with children, hours, minutes

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3
Q

positive affect

A

play is about having fun

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4
Q

non-literality

A

paradoxical literacy - not the child’s intention to learn but they do

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5
Q

intrinsic motivation

A

voluntary (not done for anything specific)

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6
Q

types of play - Piaget 1932

A
  • functional
  • construction
  • pretend/symbolic
  • games with rules
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7
Q

function play

A

when a child repeats motor actions on objects
e.g. pressing button for music

important for causal relationship

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8
Q

construction play

A

when a child builds things
e.g. building things

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9
Q

pretend or symbolic play

A

when a child substitutes an imagined word for reality
e.g. pretending bottle is a phone

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10
Q

study of play - Belsky & Most 1981

A
  • descriptive study in 7-21 month olds
  • infants initially play with all objects in the same way
  • play becomes more specialized through the second year
  • undifferentiated play (just throwing objects) decreases with age
  • differentiated play (pretend) increases with age
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11
Q

functional play: functions of objects

A
  • playing to resolve uncertainty
  • playing to explore unexpected
  • influence of adult pedagogy: playing to discover the unseen
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12
Q

playing to resolve uncertainty: functional play

A

children like to play with new things (novelty preference)

  • maybe something they play with leaves them uncertain, children may be more motivated to ‘figure it out’
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13
Q

function play study: playing to resolve uncertainty

A
  • Schulz & Bonawitz 2007
  • when children understood functionality of old toy, they spend more time with a novel toy
  • when children fail to understand old toy, they spend more time ‘figuring out’ old toy compared to playing with new toy
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14
Q

playing to explore the unexpected: functional play

A

toddlers’ play can look unpredictable
- but they have expectations about the world e.g. toys won’t float because of gravity
- but if a toy/world surprises them, do toddlers know what to do to figure out why?

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15
Q

playing to explore unexpected: study on functional play

A
  • Stahl & Feigenson 2015
  • when there was a knowledge violation for solidity, children would bang the toy against barrier
  • when there was knowledge violation for support, children would drop the toy
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16
Q

playing to discover & pedagogy

A
  • children are naturally curious to discover new things
  • but also pay attention to others (adults) who might indicate whether there is something interesting to be discovered
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17
Q

Pedagogical signals and exploration: functional play

A
  • Butler & Markman 2012/2014
  • 3 & 4 year olds
  • children learn that a weird object a ‘blicket’ is a magnet in 2 conditions:
  • accidental condition ‘Ooops!’ when clips become a magnet
  • pedagogical condition: ‘look watch this!’ showing children
  • children were given 10 inert blickets and some paperclips and asked to play
  • explored number of attempts to get children to attach paperclips to blicket
  • children had more attempts in padegogical condition
  • as something was shared for their benefit / learning from adults
18
Q

playing to discover the unseen: functional play

A
  • pedagogy as a doble-edge sword
  • (previous) study provides evidence about causal relationships
    …..
    but what about relationships that do not exist
19
Q

playing to discover the unseen: functional play study

A
  • Bonawitz et al 2011
  • accidental and pedagogical conditions
  • those in pedagogical condition demonstrated a specific function of the toy (with many functions) children did not explore the toy as much
  • those in accidental conditions discovered more things
  • in pedagogical condition children assume adult has showed them everything and explore less
20
Q

functional play key points

A

adults role is important but should be enough to facilitate exploration without hindering creativity and exploration

21
Q

pretend (symbolic) play

A
  • ‘as if’ stance (water bottle as if it were a phone)
  • pretense is complex:
  • pretender intentionally projects an alternative on the present situation (counterfactual)
  • allows children to practice met-representative and linguistic skills
22
Q

when does pretend play emerge

A

12-15 months and peak around 3-5 years

23
Q

key aspect of early pretend play

A

decontextualization and imagination

24
Q

decontextualisation and imagination

A
  • use of realistic objects
  • over time children become more skilled at decontextualization: using non-realistic objects in pretend play
  • by age 3 children display more imaginative behaviour: less reliance on props
25
Q

development of pretend play

A
  • 18 month olds begin to perform individually ‘pretend’ acts such as pretending to eat/ drink
  • by age 2-3 children start engaging in joint pretense with play partners: cooperative
  • by age 3 children can coordinate fictional scenarios with others
26
Q

three views on the emergence and development of pretend play

A

all focus on the relationship between pretense and mental state attribution

  1. rich account
  2. lean account
  3. we-intentionality account
27
Q

rich account

A

Alan Leslie 1987
- being able to keep reality apart from fiction is a complex ability
- children are not ego-centric and around 18-24 mo they respond to others pretend-acts
- children have adult like meta-representations

28
Q

lean account

A

Angeline Lillard 1993/8
- children are behaving-as-if, without really understanding the difference between fiction and reality

29
Q

Lillard study- Lean account

A
  • stories about Moe, a character from another planet, Moe hopped like a rabbit

study 1: Moe’s behaviour lacked cognitive prerequisite, he didn’t know about rabbits
study 2: lacked intentional prerequisite, he did not want to hop like a rabit at all

  • all children though Moe was pretending to be a rabbit
  • children may not understand that the pretender is pretending
30
Q

lean account limitations on the pretend play study

A
  • verbally demanding
  • questions not clear: what does ‘to hop like rabbit without wanting to’ mean
31
Q

how children understand pretending study

A

Rakoczy et al 2004
- action based methodology to understand the intentional prerequisite

  • adult pretending to pour water into a cup
    condition 1: playful, making water noise
    condition 2: surprise and frustration as if trying to really pour water
  • children in condition 1 also pretended/imitated
  • children in condition 2 tried and said ‘I can’t do it either’
  • using actions instead of asking, children can display competence of differentiating between pretend and reality
32
Q

‘we-intentionality’ of pretend play

A
  • joint pretending is acting in accordance with shared intentionality
  • both need to pretend X is Y
  • 2+3 yr olds protested (a puppet) when it performed the wrong action with the pretend object
33
Q

how crucial is pretend play - Lillard et al 2013 review of work in the past 40 years - LIMITATIONS

A
  • inconsistent results and methodological issues
  • most are correlational / not causation
  • nonrandom assignment of children / we can only observe those who pretend play more and compare
  • experimenter unmasked (not blind) / know these children who engage more tend to be smarter
34
Q

how crucial is pretend play - areas of development from children who engage in pretend play

A
  • non social aptitude: creativity, intelligence, reasoning
  • social aptitude: theory of mind
  • symbolic understanding : language development
  • self-regulation: emotion regulation
35
Q

non-social aptitudes: intelligence

A

IQ tests

  • correlational studies: more intelligent children engage in pretend play more often
  • direction of effects uncertain - no causation
  • training studies: any training boosts IQ scores, not just pretend play (e.g. music training intervention)
  • any stimulation can increase IQ
36
Q

non-social aptitudes: reasoning

A
  • pretend play might help children to reason about false premises, since they are definitional to pretend play (e.g. dog lives in a tree - not real life)
  • one acts as if something false were true
37
Q

social aptitudes: theory of mind

A
  • false belief understanding requires the same architecture as pretending X is Y
  • through role play children put themselves in someone else’s shoes: multi-party pretense: pay attention tot the roles of others
  • children who engage in pretend play perform better in false-belief tasks sooner (correlation)
38
Q

symbolic understanding: language development

A
  • like language, pretend play is symbolic
  • children more advanced in pretend play at 1 display better language skills at 2
  • evidence that play-based interventions affect later language development
39
Q

Summary of Lillard et al 2013

A

play is very important and it is correlated with many important aptitudes in various areas of development (both social and non-social)

  • correlational studies as evidence
  • training studies: pretend play as a stimulation has similar effects as other interventions such as music
40
Q

cross-cultural differences for attitudes towards play

A

Mayan culture (Gaskins and Goncu 1992):
- children do not have time to play, early on engaged with chores
- children do not spend much time with same-age peers, mostly with family members who are older/adults
- adults do not value play

…. Lillard 2017 found pretend play seems to show same developmental trajectory across cultures, but attitude is different

41
Q

summary of play

A
  • provides important context to learn and practice various socio-cognitive skills
  • children explore and investigate various ‘hypotheses’ in functional play: double-edge sword of pedagogy
  • pretend play: children become skillful pretenders around 2/3/. It’s a sophisticated socio-cognitive act of fiction vs. reality. Requires understanding of ‘we-intentionality’

PSYC21021/ Topics in Developmental Psychology (9 decks)

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