Lecture 7 Flashcards
The importance of play
core features of play
- flexibility
- positive affect
- non-literality
- intrinsic motivation
flexibility
different forms and length
e.g. on own, with children, hours, minutes
positive affect
play is about having fun
non-literality
paradoxical literacy - not the child’s intention to learn but they do
intrinsic motivation
voluntary (not done for anything specific)
types of play - Piaget 1932
- functional
- construction
- pretend/symbolic
- games with rules
function play
when a child repeats motor actions on objects
e.g. pressing button for music
important for causal relationship
construction play
when a child builds things
e.g. building things
pretend or symbolic play
when a child substitutes an imagined word for reality
e.g. pretending bottle is a phone
study of play - Belsky & Most 1981
- 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
functional play: functions of objects
- playing to resolve uncertainty
- playing to explore unexpected
- influence of adult pedagogy: playing to discover the unseen
playing to resolve uncertainty: functional play
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’
function play study: playing to resolve uncertainty
- 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
playing to explore the unexpected: functional play
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?
playing to explore unexpected: study on functional play
- 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
playing to discover & pedagogy
- 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
Pedagogical signals and exploration: functional play
- 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
playing to discover the unseen: functional play
- pedagogy as a doble-edge sword
- (previous) study provides evidence about causal relationships
…..
but what about relationships that do not exist
playing to discover the unseen: functional play study
- 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
functional play key points
adults role is important but should be enough to facilitate exploration without hindering creativity and exploration
pretend (symbolic) play
- ‘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
when does pretend play emerge
12-15 months and peak around 3-5 years
key aspect of early pretend play
decontextualization and imagination
decontextualisation and imagination
- 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
development of pretend play
- 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
three views on the emergence and development of pretend play
all focus on the relationship between pretense and mental state attribution
- rich account
- lean account
- we-intentionality account
rich account
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
lean account
Angeline Lillard 1993/8
- children are behaving-as-if, without really understanding the difference between fiction and reality
Lillard study- Lean account
- 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
lean account limitations on the pretend play study
- verbally demanding
- questions not clear: what does ‘to hop like rabbit without wanting to’ mean
how children understand pretending study
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
‘we-intentionality’ of pretend play
- 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
how crucial is pretend play - Lillard et al 2013 review of work in the past 40 years - LIMITATIONS
- 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
how crucial is pretend play - areas of development from children who engage in pretend play
- non social aptitude: creativity, intelligence, reasoning
- social aptitude: theory of mind
- symbolic understanding : language development
- self-regulation: emotion regulation
non-social aptitudes: intelligence
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
non-social aptitudes: reasoning
- 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
social aptitudes: theory of mind
- 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)
symbolic understanding: language development
- 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
Summary of Lillard et al 2013
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
cross-cultural differences for attitudes towards play
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
summary of play
- 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’
