Play and Symbolic Development

Question 1

What is Play?

Answer 1

• Play is a spontaneous and voluntary activity
• Done for its own sake
• Enjoyable
• Hallmark of infancy and childhood, but also lifelong
• An indicator of healthy development(like autism)
• An opportunity to learn
  -About the world
  -About social interaction
  -About the self
• Many social animals play as juveniles
  -Essential for learning how to get along with others
  -Foundation for adult behaviors
  -Has an impact on neural development
• Can you give some examples of infant and toddler play?

Question 2

Kinds of Play: Object Exploration

Answer 2

Changes with motor development

• Can engage full senses
• Contingent interactions with caregivers → longer and more sophisticated object exploration
• In Western societies, amount and complexity of object exploration predicts other aspects of development(ex atetion,labbeling,perceptional development
• Labeling at moments of shared attention support word learning and learning of object properties
• Cross-cultural differences in how parents interact around play(black and domanic mothers were more verbal, mexican mothers used more gestures)
• seeting indepedently explore more objects then in their bellies or back

Question 3

Kinds of Play:
Functional Play by 8-9 mos

Answer 3

• Object exploration moves from a focus on a single object, to exploring more than one object at a time and how those objects relate to each other
• Helps develop understanding of the
  function of everyday objects
• Provides the foundations for relating
  objects to each other in new ways –
  problem solving
• Provides a basis for understanding that objects can be used as tools – tool use

ex:object construction,fitting objects into openings

allows to learn novel uses of object

Question 4

Kinds of Play:
Symbolic Play

Answer 4

• Using objects, actions, and people to stand for something else(referent) (a particular kind of symbolic play called object substitution)
• Start with familiar objects that share properties; later unfamiliar ones
• Start with single object: advance to multiple objects and scenarios
• Pretend play starts emerging around 18 mos (not putting banana to ear, but pretending to call someone)
• Still cannot recognize when others are pretending, but will engage in pretend play with others if invited to do so
• Children later diagnosed as having autism engage in less pretend play
• Emergence of symbolic play, language, & baby sign. like symbolic play where a thing represents something else- sounds represents something else ( meanings). symbolic play predicts languague development.
• Differences across cultures in how much parents engage in Symbolic vs Exploratory play with their children(aregentinas symbolic,american exploration indicating indepedence priorties or interpersonal ones)
• In Western cultures, amount & complexity of symbolic play related to later language. as in play mothers also use more communication - child as well

Question 5

Classical Theories:
Dev of Symbolic Understanding: Vygotsky

Answer 5

• Child first learns in interaction
• Symbolic understanding comes from
  internalizing “tools” like spoken
  language, writing and numbers
• By using these tools, words and
  numbers become internalized symbolic thought
• Zone of proximal development
• because of symbolic play children can do mental representation

Question 6

Classical Theories:
Dev of Symbolic Understanding: Piaget (Review)

Answer 6

* piaget belive that because children achive mental representation they can them do symbolic play

• The child is active – a
  constructivist theory
• Nature and nurture
  interact
• A stage theory:
  development is
  discontinuous
• 4 main stages

Question 7

Sensorimotor Substages:

Question 8

sybstage 1

Answer 8

Reflexive schemes: Infants begin
to modify inborn reflexes to make
them more adaptive.

Question 9

sub 2

Answer 9

Primary circular reactions: begins to produce organized actions
such as reaching & grasping;
repeat them for the sensory effect

Question 10

sub 3

Answer 10

Secondary Circular Reactions: Infants begins to focus on the effect of their actions on the outside world, & repeat those actions are associate w/an effect.

Beginning to separate own actions from the objects - the foundation of what is self & what is other/object.

Question 11

sub 4

Answer 11

Combining Circular Reactions: Combine two actions (reach & grasp) in the service of a goal.

Object permanence emerging,
but incomplete.

A-Not-B error: not fully
separating actions from object

Question 12

Piaget’s A-Not-B Task

Answer 12

can pass in sub 4 but not 3 (when with one cloth)

but if in 4 and have two cloth they will serch in the one they surch before even when they see u puting under the other cloth

in 5 they pass but not in series of hiddings(they are still sensituive to this error)

Question 13

sub 5

Answer 13

Tertiary Circular Reactions:

Begin to understand that objects have
properties, and that their actions
have effects.

Actively use trial and error in actions to explore objects

Question 14

sub 6

Answer 14

Mental Representations:

Hold object & its properties in mind –
separate from action: Object
Permanence & Deferred
imitation.

Supports learning from
others.

Question 15

Substage 6

Answer 15

• Achievement of representational thought
• Understands that objects not only continue to exist, but have stable properties even when cant act on them
• Can represent the properties of objects
• Can plan actions on world in head
• Can use symbols to stand for absent objects
• Enables the acquisition of language
• Deferred imitation in place

Question 16

object permanace and paiget

Answer 16

stage 1 and 2 : infants make no serch for hidden objects

• stage 3: infants serch for partially hidden but not fully hidden object
• stage 4: infants surch for hidden objects but make the A and B error
• stage 5: infants dont do a na b error but are unable to follow invisible displacement
• stage 6 infants can find objects even with invisible displacement

A and B error: looking for the object in the last place they found it,not where they seen hidden

Question 17

billargion experiment

Answer 17

children looked longer in the non-expected one because the outcome was unexpected because they remenber the box was in the other side (they would only remenber if they knew the object still existed)

impossible/unexpected: the screen didnt stop in the box. it went throught it

by 4 months children looked longer in the unexpected condition - showing object permanence

Question 18

But wait – don’t
infants have core
knowledge of
objects?

Answer 18

Including the three
C’s – contiguous,
cohesive, & require
contact

Question 19

Representation of Objects and Events: Why Do Infants Look So
Smart and Toddlers Look So Dumb?

Answer 19

• Child sees where the barrier is inserted, watches the
  ball be released (top left), but until age 3, most randomly open doors
• Even with plexiglass between the doors so you can track
  the object’s movement, less than half of 2 ½ year olds succeeded
• And those were the ones who tracked the movement
• Even w/tracking, 2 year olds failed
• If changed to a looking task - open door for possible vs impossible event (ball in front or on downhill side of
  barrier) – DID look longer to impossible
• Thus, have the knowledge, but the difficulty lies in implementing (using) that object knowledge!
• That requires “conceptual change” from initial core
  object representation to a working representation
• And rests on experience, including object exploration in play

Question 20

A mystery resolved!

Answer 20

• Piaget’s findings are robust – but so are Spelke’s!
• The kinds of experiences and representational change Piaget laid out are consistent with the data from the experiments he did
• But he failed to adequately explain the initial foundations
• It is a ‘constrained’ developmental journey the child takes – giving
  conceptual redescription to their initial Core knowledge to make it useable
• (he had explained the journey by logic, but it is actually predetermined by the ‘initial state’)
• The infant (and looking time toddler) studies show that the representation
  of stable objects is there from the get go
• But that experience is required to take it to the next level, to begin to be
  useable – and it is that next level Piaget had captured

Question 21

Preoperational period

2-7years old

Answer 21

• Toddler has symbolic
  understanding/representations,
  but not operations yet
• So according to Piaget has
  trouble distinguishing real from
  pretend
  -The toy foods in the text
  -Flavell’s sponge/rock
  -Fear at Halloween
• And makes the classic errors in
  operations

Question 22

Other challenges for preoperational thinkers

Answer 22

• Have the capacity for symbolic representations, but…
• Difficult to hold multiple representations in mind at once
• Or, to update a mental representation if they don’t see the change in front of them
• This causes challenges to Theory of Mind (as we’ll cover later)
• And to many other situations – see next experiment
• challange with dual represenation(one thing being/represents two things at the same time

Question 23

Ganae Experiment: Three phases

Answer 23

• Familiarization Phase w/3 animals, 2 frogs 1 piggy:
• Target “Lucy”; Non-Target “Lucy’s friend”; Distractor “Piggy”
• Played w/them; peek-a-boo; ensured the child knew Lucy’s name
• Then told the child the animals were tired, so put them in a basket, and child & experimenter left the room, & started reading a book in an adjoining room
• Attribution of new information
• Assistant comes into the room carrying a bucket of water & says she is going to wash the table in the original room
• Assistant goes into room with toy animals, and they hear her say, “Oh no, I spilled the water on Lucy”
• Experimenter tells child, “Lucy got all wet! Shall we go find Lucy?”

* Test Phase
* Two animals wet, one of the frogs and Piggy
* Experiment asks the child which one is Lucy?
* Critical question: Will the child update her knowledge of Lucy with info given only verbally?

Question 24

results

Answer 24

• All but 2 of the children selected a
  frog, but big age difference
• ** 19 month olds at chance**
• 22 month olds chose the wet frog
• Only by 22 months were the children able to update their representation
  on the basis of information
  presented only verbally

Question 25

Understanding of Dual Representations

Answer 25

• Requires symbolic understanding
• But also dual – that something can be both an entity in itself and a symbol for something else
• May be be more difficult for objects and settings than for nonmeaningful forms such as letters and numbers

Question 26

Understanding Dual Representations

Answer 26

• The Credible Shrinking Room by Judy Deloache(they had a shring identical room and hid somethin in it)
• A dual representation – simultaneously understanding the
  object/situation itself and that it can stand for another
• At 3 years, but not 2 ½ a child can understand and use a scale model to stand for a real room to find a toy
• Manipulations that can accelerate that understanding

*** Shrinking the room

• Looking through a glass as if on a TV**
• Why these manipulations work

Question 27

Learning from Symbolic Media

Answer 27

• Understanding the nature of pictures
• At 7-9 months infants prefer real objects to pictures of those objects, w/the strongest preferences from infants who do more object exploration
• So they can tell the difference
• But if shown a book where each page had a picture of a single object,** 9-month** olds will try to pick up the object
• Also, try to grasp realistic looking objects more than cartoon type images
• And try to grasp pictures of only graspable objects (not sand)
• By 19-months point to the picture when given the label (and may label it) - at this age they wont try to pick up the object anymore.
• Unless growing up in a culture without pictures and picture books, then even a 19-month plus, will try to pick it up

Question 28

Learning from Symbolic Media

Answer 28

• Can start learning labels of objects in picture books by 12 months
• Able to transfer that knowledge to pointing out a real object with the same label (so learn words), but better if the picture is realistic and not a cartoon
• By 18-30 months can start learning a series of actions that can be
  performed on a real object, by seeing pictures and hearing about it in
  picture book reading with an adult
• One of the many reasons American and Canadian Pediatric Association
  recommend reading regularly to young children
• Again, requires experience as children growing up in cultures without picture books cannot learn such new information, and apply it to the real world, just from pictures and words

Question 29

However . . . .

Answer 29

• The most effective learning in infancy occurs in live, contingent, interactions with a familiar and caring adult
• And most learning from reading through the late infancy, toddler and
  preschool years, occurs in dialogic reading
• Both behavioral, reading scores, and fNIRS data
• Dialogic reading with older children includes asking questions – a
  dialogue
• With infants pointing things out, waiting for joint attention, and
  letting infant lead

Question 30

Learning from TV & Screens

Answer 30

• infants also try to pick up objects in the screen before 19months
• In some cases yes, but all the literature (reviewed in your text) shows
  infants and young toddlers learn best in live interactions with parent
  teaching the word without a screen of any kind
• But by age 3-4 can learn from watching educational TV like Sesame Street or Behind the Lions, and is especially helpful for under privileged children
• Helps in word learning and phoneme awareness
• Appears that as young as 2-3 can learn emotional understanding and
  emotional skills from TV (e.g. Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood)

Question 31

learning through screen

Answer 31

kids also reproduce bahvaiour seen on the screen

but

video deficit affect they lern lass than they would learn from real life experience

• this deficit does not always show usually 12 and 24 months are more suspectable to it

Question 32

study

Answer 32

the kids learned the words better with no video and with parents teaching them

even better then parents and video

Question 33

Screen Use

Answer 33

• Definition: Screen time is the time spent with any screen, including
  television, computers, and gaming or mobile devices (smartphones,
  tablets).
• Use has increased significantly
• Nearly all Canadian children are exposed to screens by age 2
• In the U.S. most children aged 2 use a digital device every day
• And 90% are exposed to screens by their first birthday
• Only 15% of Canadian children aged 3-4 meet the Canadian recommendations of < 1 hour/day
• These are all increases from before the Pandemic

Question 34

Mitigating, Minimizing, Mindfully Using, Modeling

Answer 34

From The Canadian Pediatric Association Guidelines

• Connecting what is being viewed with real life, encouraging interaction, and
  building cognitive skills such as attention, memory, and thinking
• Shared screen time also avoids the disadvantages of solitary viewing, which include exposure to violent or age-inappropriate content .
• Prioritizing educational content or apps, avoiding mainstream or commercial programs, and using a media classification rating (e.g., the Canadian Home Video Rating System) to guide viewing choices. CBC Kids in Canada and Common Sense Media in the U.S. are further resources.
• Combining touch screen use with creative or active play , such as singing,
  dancing, or language repetition.
• No evidence for beneficial effects of screens in infancy EXCEPT – in on-line
  interactions with a caring adult for maintaining relationships

Question 35

Effects of screens on infants and toddlers

Answer 35

* No evidence for beneficial effects of screens in infancy EXCEPT – in on-line interactions with a caring adult for maintaining relationships

• For example, by 15-18 months infants can enjoy book reading and learn words from a caring, interactive, contingent adult in video chats (Hasinger-Dash, et al.,Annual Review of Psychology, 2020).
• Once they are ~ 24 months, perhaps also in contingently interactive devices and educational programs – some work, most do not
• If too much going on, like flashing or attention getting sounds, at moment of presentation of object, can interfere with, rather than support learning
• Even though infants can likely not learn up to at least age 2 from simply
  watching, watching with a caring adult can still help the relationship and the
  attitude toward learning, and small snippets might be learned
• And both can support the development of attention, and increasingly as the child gets older, learning and the attitude toward learning

infants dont do much screen learning but older children do

Question 36

Infants can learn through picture books ?

Answer 36

• they can learn vocabulary

-they can also learn actions (before age of 2

Study where infants observed ( in picture books) adults doing something with the objects that was non-obvious later was recreated by infants

But this also relies if the culture uses picture books ( America does use a lot)

In Tanzania it took until 27 months for infants to learn how to label objects by using picture books