Developmental Psychology- Play

What are the 6 main categories of play that Parten (1932) identified?

- unoccupied: weren't engaging in any types of play 1. solitary play: playing alone 2. onlooker play: child watches other children playing but doesn't join in 3. parallel play: common from 18 months-children play in the same way with the same toys, but are not playing together. Involves imitation 4. associated play: able to put imitation into practice, linking play behaviours. Increase with age: requires interaction skills. 5. cooperate play: children playing together-fully engaged and interactive. Increase with age: requires interaction skills. 6. fantasy play: make-believe play

Play theorists: what did Herbert Spencer believe?

-"surplus energy theory"- negative view of play as being for the sake of the immediate gratifications involved-higher animals are able to deal with the immediate necessities of life, and that the nervous system, rather than remaining inactive for long periods of time, stimulates play.

What is Decontextualized play? (fantasy play)

-3 years of age- children able to become stronger in imagination: children use one object to represent another -Early pretend play depends heavily on realistic objects- decontextualization refers to the ability to use less realistic substitute objects (such as a block instead of a mobile phone) -adults can help this process by modelling, or prompting the pretend use. -By 3 decontextualization occurs much more spontaneously in children's play without any real or substitutes needed to be present, and is easier still in middle childhood

When does social pretend play occur, and why is this?

-Any form of social pretend play rare under 2 years old (Howes, 1985)- have to be able to de-centre: take on another's perspective, able to better interpret fantasy play

What are the differences in play behaviour between girls and boys?

-Archer & Lloyd, 1986-boys prefer activities with objects, outdoor play, gross motor activity -Lever: boys play in larger mixed age groups, girls play with smaller groups with children at same age

What did Parten find when children got older?

-As children get older their group size that they are able to play with increases. 1-3 stages associated with younger children, 4 and 5 older children.

What do researchers believe are the effects of war toys and war play?

-Banned in some nurseries and playgroups. -Researchers are divided into its effects: on one hand for most children such activities are natural, separated from real life, and probably do very little harm. -However it is easy to feel uncomfortable when the activity becomes very prominent, and there may be there is a possibility that for children who are already disturbed or have violent tendencies sanctioning, violent play can make matters worse.

What is social pretend play like with mothers and peers at 37-48 months? (adapted from Howes and Matheson, 1992)

Play with Mother: same as in previous stage Play with peers: Children adopt relational roles, are willing to accept identity transformations and generate or accept instruction for appropriate role performance; they negotiate scripts and dominant roles and use metacommunication to establish the play script and clarify role enactment

What is social pretend play like with mothers and peers at 16-20 months? (adapted from Howes and Matheson, 1992)

Play with mother: As with previous stage, children imitates, watches and complies with mother Play with peers: Children engage in similar or identical pretend acts; and attempt to recruit partner to join pretend

What is social pretend play like with mothers and peers at 25-30 months? (adapted from Howes and Matheson, 1992)

Play with mother: Children offers storyline or script. Mother requests creation of new elements and prompts child to a more realistic or detailed enactment Play with peers: Each partner's pretend reflects the same script but their actions show no within-pair integration. Partners inform each other of the scrips by comments on their own pretend and telling the others how to act

What is social pretend play like with mothers and peers at 21-24 months? (adapted from Howes and Matheson, 1992)

Play with mother: Mother becomes an interested spectator who creates a context and provides support for the child's enactments Play with peers: Children engage in similar pretend actions while they simultaneously engage in social exchange; join the pretend of the partner, attempt to recruit the partner to joint play, and organise materials for joint pretend

What is social pretend play like with mothers and peers at 31-36 months? (adapted from Howes and Matheson, 1992)

Play with mother: Mother praises and encourages independence; may pretend with child Play with peers: Joint pretend with enactment of complementary roles. Children discriminate between speech used for enactment and speech about enactment; assign roles, and negotiate pretend themes and plans

What is social pretend play like with mothers and peers at 12-15 months? (adapted from Howes and Matheson, 1992)

Play with mother: Mother structures child's actions by commenting, suggesting, and demonstrating. Child is corrected when their pretend acts violate the real world Play with peers: Isolated pretend acts within social play do not elicit a response; but children watch and imitate the partner's pretend

What are the functions of exercise play? (physical play)

improves strength and endurance; uses surplus energy-helps endurance and strength. Child's strengths and muscles at this time are developing rapidly. Become more efficient in how they move around-eg. speed. Improve efficiency as well as strength and endurance. Prevent development of obesity, regulates body temperature, increase fitness levels-health related benefits.

What does Pelligrini argue is the function of rough and tumble play?

learn about social hierarchies and their place in it, physical development: important for social development

What does play with objects also facilitate?

problem-solving?

-Critic of Piaget: what are the 4 stages that Smilansky (1968) put forward?

suggested 4 stages of play: 1. Functional; 2. Constructive (intermediate stage-building-type play); 3. Dramatic (fantasy play); 4. Games with rules

What are games with rules (Piaget)?

× Assumes play inextricably linked to cognitive development-numerous issues with this theory of cognitive development × Children only do certain types of play at certain ages: restrictive-suggests the older children are engaged predominately in games with rules, but this isn't the case × Limited perspective •Others challenged Piaget's theory • e.g. Garvey (1991): play is inherently social from outset-motivations of play is engaging in social interaction, don't go through the stages as Piaget suggested

What does Garvey, 1984 argue about fantasy play?

• Children carry out actions, take on roles, transform objects, express feelings about social world (Garvey, 1984)- useful for developing language development also

What is sensori-motor play according to Piaget?

• Corresponds with sensori-motor period (approx. 0-2 years) • Concern with bodily sensation and motor development-pleasure in terms of making sounds, and what they can do with their motor development: eg. pushing a ball away from them • In second year: gain awareness of functions of objects in social world •Involves children learning how to manipulate objects to bring pleasurable effects •Need support to structure play: scaffolding •Pleasure from repeating an action •Games like peek-a-boo: important to learning about turn-taking: vital to learn about language

What is spontaneous rhyming and word play? (language play)

• Doesn't tend to arise in pretend or goaloriented episodes of play (Garvey, 1991)- not part of fantasy play, no real purpose to play • Sounds of words important rather than grammatical shape e.g. Boy and girl playing (age 5): • Boy: teddy bear's mine • Girl: the fishy fishy is mine • Boy: no the snakey snakey is yours- just pl;aying out with structure og words to bring amusement to themselves

What are the two definitions of play that Fagan, 1974 came up with?

• Functional: purpose of behaviour -No external goal: playing for fun. Play doesn't have an obvious end in itself, or an external goal. Led to a definition of play, that it has no clear immediate benefits or obvious goal. • Structural: behaviours performed and the way in which they are performed. Attempts to describe the sorts of behaviour that only occur in play, or the way in which behaviours are performed playfully. -These are distinct, non-opposing approaches

What is play with fantasy and nonsense (language play)?

• Nonsense verse and 'topsy-turvy' meanings appeal to children: take a typical language structure, but make it more playable •Assignment of funny names in jest to objects displays awareness of correct forms of language -"I'm a whale, this is my tail -I'm a flamingo. Look at my wingo" From: Smith et al. (2003). -Play around with friends and family's names

When do children begin to play with objects? -What do infants initially use object properties to do?

•6-12 months- initial object play about infant using object properties to make a pleasurable effect- eg. child dropping a toy repeatitively and laughing. Based on the objects in their environment. Child imitate what they see others doing around them-linked to where they are living: strongly linked to environment and what child sees around them. • Objects link person and environment

What are some other functions of play?

•To motivate children to learn: how things work etc. particularly with younger children. Children more likely to learn when playing •To build confidence: often involves interaction with others: helps in social situations, may involve planning, creativity, helps children masters social anxieties • Linked to language learning skills and abilities. Helps with negociation, sorting out conflicts • Learn adult roles: practising adult roles-eg. mopping the floor

What is physical play? -What are the benefits?

•Usually outdoors •Been shown to develop muscle strength, balance and coordination, and how children can manipulate onto the world •Useful in establishing dominance higherarchies: eg. who is the quickest •Can happen without any objects: eg. running, skipping • Locomotor / physical play • Friendly intent displayed / play signals

How many children have an imaginary friend, and what does this result in?

-Quarter to half of children have an imaginary friend, aware they are not real- use them to engage in fantasy play

What did Ariel & Sever, 1980 do and find out? (cultural influences)

-Bedouin children contrasted with 'western' children in kibbutz -found that there was a strong comparison in children's play behaviours between 2 cultures. -Bedouin children raised as part of a very traditional community which can certain views and values which they upheld: had very little interaction with adults on a day-to-day basis, and they didn't have much formal guidance or instruction-these children exhibited very low levels of pretend play. -Contrast to "western children" being raised in kibbutz (a collective community) which emphasised things like play behaviours that used imagination, creativity, storytelling- and so these children had much higher levels of pretend play than the Bedouin children who were being raised in a very different culture - concluded: play is determined by culture and broadly by our environment around us

What is the gender divide of physical play like?

-Boys engage in it more than girls do (Pellegrini & Smith, 1998). Boys do more rough and tumble play, play fighting. Dads do more rough and tumble play with boys.

What did Martin et al., 2013 find out about gender and play?

-Children select same-sex playmates *Segregation-tendency children have to play with children of same sex as themselves; *Differentiation-differences in typical boy and girl behaviours

What is play often confused with?

-Exploration -especially by traditional learning theorists, as neither behaviour is goal-seeking or under the control of reinforcers.

What do Vandenberg, 1984; Wilson, 1975, suggest is the function of play?

-Exploration-play application sequence: in early infancy children tend to explore something before playing with it-difficult to tell what is exploration and play. Therefore play occurs after exploration: have to understand what to do and how to play before playing

What did Sigmund Freud believe?

-Freud himself did not write a great deal about play, but it has come to have an important role within the psychoanalytic movement, especially in play therapy. -Freud though that play provided children with an avenue for wish fulfilment and mastery for traumatic events. -Play provides a safe context for expressing aggressive or sexual impluses which would be too dangerous to express in reality. -In play therapy, firstly play expresses the child's wishes and anxieties. Secondly, play can help overcome such anxieties, by catharsis or by working through them.

What does Ceyne & Rubin, 1983 is the function of play?

-Helps children become skilled at manipulating objects: children learn what they can do- eg. balancing objects, shape sorter: helps children's physical and cognitive development

What do design studies conclude about play? Byers and walker (1995) Leslie (1987) Lillard (1993) and Jarrold at al. Bruner (1972)

-If we look closely at what goes on in playful episodes we may form hypotheses as to what uses the behaviour has-approach that Piaget used. -Byers and walker (1995): play has important training functions in affecting brain growth and in training for physical strength and endurance. -Leslie (1987) argued that pretend play is an indicator of metarepresentational abilities as early as 18 months, and is important in developing these latter abilities for understanding that someone else may represent things differently from yourself -Lillard (1993) and Jarrold at al. (1994) have reviewed evidence on pretend-play skills and theory of the mind, and conclude that the evidence is not strong-much pretend play tends to be largely imitative. -Observations of the flexibility present in play with objects led Bruner (1972) to suggest that its role is in problem-solving and creativity

What did McDonald (1992) find? (cultural aspects of play)

-In higher socio-economic families parents were playing with children, in lower socio-economic families children play more with older siblings-to do with household resources and finances, and the fact that those in lower income families their parents may have been at work. Who child is playing with based on family set up factors.

When is the distinction between exploration and play least defined?

-In the sensori-motor development the distinction between the two is difficult to make, as for young infants, all objects are novel. -However by the pre-school years, the distinction is clearer

Play theorists: what did Friedrich Froebel believe?

-Influential in the start of the kindergarten and nursery school movement. -His view suggests that play exemplifies development from within the child, but can be nurtured by adult guidance and the provision of appropriate materials. -Encouraged a positive evaluation of the educational significance of play, as compared with the rote-learning approach.

What do many Japanese parents encourage?

-Many Japanese parents encourage complex fantasy play behaviours: heavily supported and heavily scaffolded by Japanese parents. -Consequently many Japanese children have very complex pretend play behaviours earlier than we may see in children in the UK and US, where there isn't such an emphasis on this type of behaviour

What is play with conversation? (language play)

-Most common • 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... -A good way of understanding this, is if the child deviates from the norm

What type of play is most child developmental research based on?

-Object and especially pretend play

What is play tutoring and who was it pioneered by?

-Pioneered by Smilansky (1968)-at its least intrusive it involves verbal guidance or suggestions, and a more direct approach may be made by acting as a model for roles and actions, or by giving deliberate training in imaginative activities or fantasy themes. Play tutoring can be made even more effective if children are taken on visits and appropriate toys are provided.

What are the different structural types of play? (Fagen, 1974)

-Play signals: eg. facial expressions that tell us that this is playful behaviour-such as smiling, associated open-mouth play face. Such play signals are especially useful in rough and tumble play, where they can indicate that no aggressive intension is implied in a chase or wrestle. -Repeated / fragmented / exaggerated / re-ordered (Loizos, 1967) -normal behaviour can be playful if they are repeated, fragmented, exaggerated or re-ordered. Eg. running up a slope several times becomes playful behaviour (repetition), running just half way up (fragmentation), taking unusually large steps (exaggeration) or crawling up or down (re-ordering) would be considered playful.

Who conducted an impirical test of Krasnor and Pepler's (1980) model, and what did they do/ find out?

-Smith and Vollstedt (1985) -made a video film of nursery school children playing and designated short, discrete episodes which they asked 70 adults to view. -Analyses showed that the episodes seen as playful by the adults were often seen as nonliteral, flexible and showing positive effect. The more of these present, the higher ratings of playfulness. Means/ends also correlated with play, but did not add anything to the first three criteria. The intrinsic motivation criterion did not correlate with play judgements, despite its common occurrence in definitions of play.

Was is the social learning theory, and how does this link to gender roles and play?

-Social learning theory: Bandura- learn a lot from imitation-if girls exposed to princess costumes and boys police and firefighters costumes, then they are likely to take up these stereotypical roles. Catalogues, TV adverts-impacts expectations about gender roles and the roles children take up in pretend play -Research suggests that girls act out domestic work. Boys tended to imitate characters out of books- dads were often not at home

Who provides best evidence yet for a causal link between pretend play and theory of mind?

-Study by Dockett (1998) -Participants split randomly into 2 groups- play training group significantly increasead in frequency and complexity of group pretence, relative to control group, and improved significantly more on the theory of the mind tests, both at post-test and 3 weeks later.

What is socio-dramatic play?

-Take on roles or identities in play (e.g., family, stereotypical)--tend to follow scripts: summaries of behaviours based on what they have seen in the real world: often carry out behaviour repetitively following these set scripts. -Important in language development, cognitive development, occurs 3-6 years

What did Vandenberg, 1978 suggest?

-That play must have a function

What does Denham, 1986 suggest is the function of play?

-To understand emotions -Found that children who allocated more positive and negative emotions to puppets were better at identifying emotions in adults.

What would we expect from correlational studies?

-We would expect that children who practice a lot of a certain types of play should also be more advanced in other areas of development for which that play is supposed to be beneficial

When can you see the first signs of fantasy play?

-beginnings of fantasy play seen from about 12-15 months. The earliest pretend play tends to involve the child directing actions towards themselves.

What happens to pretend play by the age of 4 or 5?

-children's ideas about social world initiate most pretend play

Play theorists: what did Karl Groos believe?

-critical of Spenser's theory of play. -Argued that a main reason for childhood was so that play could occur: play provides exercise and the collaboration of skills needed for survival. -Called the "exercise" or "practise" theory of play.

What are the 2 main forms that experimental studies on play take?

-deprivation studies and enrichment studies

How are boys friendship groups suggested to be different to girls?

-evidence that boy friendship groups are more cohensive and exclusionary than girls (Maccoby, 1998)- much of this has come from environmental experiences: eg. media advertising

What are the sex differences in object play?

-few sex differences in object play and amount of object play. -Boys however more likely to play in transportation toys, and girls more likely to play with teddy's, dolls, and soft toys.

Correlational studies: what did Hutt and Bhavnani (1972) find?

-found that imaginative players with a novel toy at the age of 4, 4 years later, scored significantly higher on tests designed to measure creativity than children who at 4 had not played much with the novel object. -This suggests that imaginative play fosters creativity, but no more than that. -However there is other reasons for this association: eg. the playfulness of the imaginative child is just a by-product of their creativity, rather than being the cause of it.

What does Susan Isaacs believe?

-founder of the view of play as being essential for both emotional and cognitive growth. -Isaacs combined a belief in the emotional benefits of play with a wider view of its benefits for physical, social and cognitive development generally, echoing the evolutionary perspective that animals that learn more, also play more,

What do Recent theorists believe? -Bruner -Sutton-smith -Kiline

-have tended to argue the benefits of play for cognitive development and creative thinking. -Bruner suggests play in advanced mammals, and particularly humans, serves both the practice for mastery in skills, and as an opportunity for trying out new combinations of behaviour in a safe context. -Sutton-Smith, 1996, has come to argue against what he calls the "idealization of play"- he concludes that many theories about play, and even the way we define play, reflects the needs of adults in organising and controlling children, rather than the actualities of children's behaviour. -Kline 1995, has drawn attention to the "global toy curriculum" which is the worldwide promotion and marketing of particular theme toys and play products, which must be taken account of when considering any benefits of play for children's development

What are the functions of rhythmical stereotypes? (physical play)

-improve control of motor patterns-boys and girls engage in this in more equal levels. -Provides immediate benefits for infants, as they learn to become more precise with their movements. -Help modify or eliminate the formation of synapses, helps the babies identify which movements are important and which are not- go onto develop the most effective way to move their limbs and muscles.

What does Piaget, 1962, suggest is the function of play?

-key function to help consolidate schemas learnt in the sensori-motor stage

Deprivation studies on play -Pellegrini et al. (1995)

-largely been limited to studies of physical activity play. -Pellegrini et al. (1995) studied the effects of keeping children in primary school classrooms for longer. Results showed that greater deprivation led to increased levels of play when opportunities became available. Also, the experience of break-time increased children's attention to school tasks when they returned to the classroom. -Findings were discussed in relation to the cognitive immaturity hypothesis, proposed by Bjorklund and Green (1992): this argues that nonfocused play activities, such as those found in break time, are adaptive in providing a break from more cognitively demanding activities for younger children.

What did Maria Montessori believe?

-like Froebel saw the value of self-initiated activity for young children, under adult guidance. -Put more emphasis on the importance of learning about real life, and on constructive play materials which helped in sensory discrimination and in colour and shape matching. -Did not value pretend or sociodramatic play, seeing pretence as primitive and an escape from reality-largely been abandoned.

Where does rough and tumble play originate?

-may originate in the play that parents engage in with toddlers.

What do researchers believe are the effects of video and computer games?

-mostly engaged in by boys around the ages of 9-15. -Studies point a link to aggressive behaviour. -Some games appear addictive, and parents are concerned that they could lead to isolated (although Goldstein found that whilst parent-child communications may be distrupted, they often involve communication with peers). -Some studies have suggested positive benefits such as relaxation and improvement in reading skills

What are the sex differences in fantasy play?

-no difference in amounts of play, but different in types- boys engage in physical fantasy play, girls engage more in domestic fantasy play.

What is an example of an ability that must be present for fantasy play to occur?

-object permanence-understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight- object and fantasy play blur and combine) -Pretend play emerges gradually

What did Parten (1932) do?

-observed 42 children aged 2 - 4½ in nursery setting: increases in social participation

What does Lillard, 2002 suggest is the function of play?

-play is strongly linked with cognitive development: from 12-30 months this is an important period of playing that map onto cognitive development

How does Lowe (1975) suggest play begins? 9months 12 months 15 months 21 months 24 months 30-36 months

-play starts quite basic and gets more complex. Selection of miniature objects: interested in how children played with these objects. Ages are approximate. • 9 months - child grasps nearest object/brings to mouth; uses few action patterns: limited in what they can do • 12 months - investigate objects (look at, turn, touch) before doing anything else with it • 15 months - inspecting and investigating objects precede all other behaviour; conventional uses of items (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 • 30-36 months - power to act purposefully attributed to object

What did G. Stanley Hall believe?

-play was a means for children to work through primitive atavisms, reflecting our evolutionary past-play is therefore cathartic in nature, and allows the "playing out" of those instincts that characterised earlier human history.

What did Piaget believe?

-saw adaptation as depending on the two processes of accommodation and assimilation-play "manifests the peculiarity of a primacy of assimiliation over accommodation". -Children acted out their already established behaviours, or schemata, in play, and adapted reality to fit these. -Play can consolidate existing skills by repeated execution of known schemas, with minor variations, and can give a sense of ego-continuity: gives child a sense of mastery and confidence, as failure is avoided in fantasy play. -Criticised Goo's approach: linked to Montessori's influence.

What does Lev Vygotsky believe?

-saw the affective drive behind play as being "the imaginary, illusory realization of unrealizable desires"; not with very specific or sexual impulses, but in a much more general sense, to do with the child's confidence and mastery. -Saw play as being "the leading source of development in the pre-school years", because the nature of pretend play meant that the child was liberating itself from the immediate constraints of the situation, and getting into the world of ideas.

What does Vygotsky highlight about pretend play?

-self-control; Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) for play: things we can do alone, but with input from another play can be improved- eg. parents can scaffold play behaviours

What do several studies into enrichment studies show?

-several studies on disadvantaged pre-school children in the USA found that play tutoring, besides increasing children's fantasy play, also had benefits in a variety of areas on cognitive, language and social development. -However such studies were not compared to children who received little or no extra adult intervention: therefore general adult involvement and conversation might have caused the gains, rather than simply being fantasy play. Some play-tutoring studies since then have embodied controls for "verbal stimulation", or more generally adult involvement, and these have found little superiodity in play tutoring conditions- however it doesn't mean that it is of no value.

Design studies: what do observations of rough and tumble play suggest?

-show that coordination with a large number of partners is often involved, and suggest that it may have social functions in terms of making friends, or practising fights or dominance skills.

What does Garvery, 1991 suggest play with objects is a channel for? -What is counter factual thinking?

-social interaction: object play useful for social interaction, and imagination. Counter factual thinking: world of would be and what if- get imagine teapot is heavy before pouring it into cup, and light afterwards.

What are the functions of pretend play?

-social skills, cognitive skills, imagination, creativity, narrative skills (play often has a story line), taking on other people's perspective: de-centering.

Design studies: what do observations of sociodramatic play suggest?

-suggest there is considerable negociation about social roles

What are the different play criteria proposed by Kransnor and Pepler (another approach to identifying play)

-the more criteria that are present, the more agreement that the behaviour is play: continuum. Acknowledge that there is a continuum from non-playful to playful behaviour 1. Intrinsic motivation: play behaviours motivated from within, play done for its own sake, not to satify external goal 2. Positive affect: enjoyment factor-fun-links to structure of play-indexed by signals such as laughter 3. Nonliterality: can be a pretend element to play: not a serious or literal behaviour 4. Flexibility: usually a variation in play behaviours and across different situations-variation inform and content 5. Means/ends: the act of engageing in the play should be more important than the end goal-about the process of play behaviour (added by Smith and Vollstedt (1985))

What are the functions of rough and tumble play (physical play)?

-understanding emotions; practice fighting-helps children understand other people's emotional states: need to be able to interpret another child's emotional expressions, in order to understand that what they are doing is ok. -Children who did rough and tumble play with parents at early age, better able to read expressions. Safe testing ground for real fighting behaviour.

When does decentration occur?

-when children incorporate other participants into pretend activities: eg. parents or soft toys

When do "scripts" appear? (fantasy play)

-word "script" appears from the 25-30 month stage onwards. -Pretend play sequences become more integrated with age. Initially one action is involved; then variations on a single theme. -By the age of 2 multischeme combinations are in evidence. Mini-stories begin to be acted out, following "scripts" such as shopping, or bedtime. -Language plays an increasing role in the play structure. All these developments come together in sociodramatic play prominent in 3-6 year olds: two or more children act out definite roles, such as mummy and daddy

Design studies: what did Slyva, Roy and Painter (1980) do and find out?

-worked with Bruner to do an extensive study of nursery schools in Oxfordshire. -They concluded that activities with some sort of goal, and the means to achieve it, were the most challenging for children-activities such as building, drawing, doing puzzles-called these "high yield" activities. -These may be considered less playful that "medium yield" activities such as pretending, play with small-scale toys, manipulating sand or dough. "Low yield" activities included rough and tumble play, informal and impromptu games, gross motor play and unstructured social playing. This suggests that the unstructured, free play kinds of activities may be less cognitively useful than more structured activities.

What percentage of playfights turn into real fights? -What are the differences between the two?

1% -Play fights tend to be shorter, are not watched by others, and participants are not hit hard. Young children themselves are aware of the differences between play fighting and actual fighting. Forms of play fighting are similar across cultures.

What are 4 different types of play (identified by Garvey (1991); Smith, Cowie and Blades (2003))

1. Physical play: includes exercise and rough and tumble play 2. Play with objects: general and specific objects 3. Fantasy play 4. Language play: using words and speech in playful ways for amusement and fun *Less strongly linked to ages than Piaget's stages, once children's abilities are there they can do any types of play at any ages

What are the 3 types of play that Piaget proposed?

1. Practice/sensori-motor play: begins, but not limited to the sensori-motor stage 2. Symbolic/representational play: fantasy, role play- using symbolic representations to play with 3. Games with rules: eg. football *Linked to stage theory of cognitive development *One of the first to propose different stages of play

What are the 3 developmental stages of physical play? -Pellegrini and Smith (1998)

1. Rhythmical stereotypes-normally done alone, motor movements-which are bodily movements characteristic of babies such as kicking legs, waving arms 2. Exercise play- eg. running, climbing for playful reasons. Can be done alone or with others. Increase in this type of play from toddlerhood, peaks at early school years, and then lowers. Seen in most animals 3. Rough and tumble play-wrestling, tumbling, chasing. Play behaviour: smiles-play signals important. -Mostly done with others, common around 4-5 years, often been shown to occur after children have been sedentary in a classroom. -Can also involve caregivers throwing babies around, but child is much more passive in these early examples. -Play fighting doesn't occur until about 3- sub-category of rough and tumble play, has been seen across cultures-practise for actual fighting behaviours, good for testing boundries.

What are Garvey's (1991) views on play? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

1. is pleasurable: should be positively values by the player, even if it isn't obvious 2. has no extrinsic goals: play done for its own sake, unproductive 3. is spontaneous and voluntary: player should want to be playing 4. involves active engagement on part of player: not passive behaviour-actively signs up and gets involved in 5. has certain systematic relations to what is not play-about contrast: perhaps it's better to eliminate activities that isn't play rather than having a criteria defining play

What are the 3 types of social play with language?

1. spontaneous rhyming and word play 2. play with fantasy and nonsense 3. play with speech acts and discourse conventions (AKA: play with conversation)

What are the 4 steps in the development of agent use in fantasy play?

1.self as agent: eg. infant puts head on pillow to pretend to sleep 2.Passive other agent: eg. doll on pillow, pretend doll sleeps 3.Passive substitute agent: eg. Block on pillow, pretend block sleeps 4.Active other agent: eg.Doll places block on pillow-doll "putting block to bed": by 24 months

What did Hutt's study: exploration and play in children do?

•Aim was to see how a novel object elicted exploratory behaviour in young children, and how this behaviour changed with repeated exposure •30 nursery school children, aged 3-5. Each child had 8 10 minute sessions in a room in the nursery school • The first two sessions were for familiarization, and 5 toys were provided •For the remaining 6 experimental conditions, a novel toy was also available-a red metal box with a lever, whose movements could be registered on counters and could result in a buzzer sounding and a bell ringing •Two IVs: one was the complexity of the novel object, and the other was the exposure to the object, measured over the successive 6 sessions. The object complexity was varied through "no sound or vision", "vision only", "sound only" to "both sound and vision available" •DV taken from counter readings (showing how much lever manipulation had taken place) and observations of the children, especially the amount of time spent exploring (visually or tactually) the novel object

What did Haight et al.: (Universal, developmental, and variable aspects of yoing children's play: A cross-cultural comparison of pretending at home) do

•Aimed to provide an in-depth longitudinal account of pretend play in two different cultural contexts, and thereby suggest not only what were universal trends, but also more culturally specific aspects of this type of play •Two cultural contexts: -Irish-American families in Chicago USA: spacious houses, many toys, extensive contact with other adults and children -Chinese families in Taipei, Taiwan: lived in compact single-family apartments, modest number of toys, few contact with neighbours and other children until formal preschool •Study proceeded in 3 stages: Ethnographic fieldwork: familiarised themselves with community and collected descriptions of home and play areas, also meant children got used to researcher's presence, naturalistic observations: children's behaviour at home, during the day, with mother present at 2.5 years, 3 and 4 years, and formal interviews with parents

What is symbolic/representational play that Piaget suggested?

•Approximate ages: 2-6 years. Language and fantasy play, role play. •Children became capable of reasoning: eg. able to use a building block to represent a phone. Start with using the real object in ernest and then use different objects to represent the real thing. Children adapt to use similar object to represent the original thing. • Children capable of reasoning that one object can symbolise another • e.g. wooden brick for phone • Children learn and take on social roles (and gender roles) •Act out experiences - e.g. via role play by 5. Able to play together in fantasy play, able to negociate who have each role. May take on stereotypical roles, family roles, fictional roles-children as young as 3 able to take on these roles. •Caregiver has a role of scaffolding behaviours, and over time scaffolding is reduced and there is little input of adults. •Start acting out an experience themselves and then act it out with another object such as a teddy: shows an ability to account for another's point of view-helps child de-center

How does fantasy play effect friendships and school?

•Children engage ion social fantasy play more popular in school and teachers saw them as having better social skills

What do correlational studies show? -Johnson et al, 1982: -Connolly and Doyle, 1984 -Taylor and Carlson (1997) -Watson and Peng (1992)

•Johnson et al, 1982: found that constructive play, but not sociodramatic play, was positively and significantly correlated with intelligence scores. •Connolly and Doyle, 1984: found that the amount and complexity of fantasy play significantly correlated with several measures of social competence-this further supports the idea that the benefits of sociodramatic play may be more social than cognitive •Taylor and Carlson (1997) studied 3 and 4 year olds, and correlated various measures of pretend and fantasy play with theory of mind tasks. They found no relationship for 3 year olds, but a significant relationship for 4 year olds. •Watson and Peng (1992)-one of the few to look at effects of war-toy play. Found an association for boys ( but not girls) between a history of toy-gun play (based on parents ratings) and levels of real aggression in the day-care centre.

What do enrichment studies on play do?

•More usual form of experiment on play is in the form of enrichment: the benefits of some form of extra play experience are compared with the benefits of non-play experience. -A number of studies suggest superiodity for the play experience, but subsequent research has not always suggested this to be the case- Smith and Simon (1994) argued that these early studies were methodologically unsound due to the possibility of experimenter effects. •Harris (1999) now argued that it is not the fantasy or pretend component of play, but simply any instruction that prompts an analytic, logical approach that helps with the theory of mind development

What are some of the factors effecting play?

•Parents often encourage play when it starts to appear in their young children •Social class differences have been reported in children's sociodramatic play in nurseries and playgroups: several studies have suggested that children from disadvantaged backgrounds and non-urban socities often show less frequent and less complex fantasy and socio-dramatic play-however McLoyd criticises these studies and claims the general pattern is one of marginal and conflicting findings. •If children do not engage in much fantasy or sociodramatic play, then nursery staff can encourage it by play tutoring. •There are sex differences in the choice of roles in sociodramatic play: girls tend to act out domestic roles, and boys often imitate male roles. •Boys partake far more in rough and tumble play: role of hormones and is socially stereotyped as a male activity.

What did Hutt's study find out?

•Results showed that children looked at the object immediately on entering, and often approached it and asked observer what it was. They would then examine the object visually and manually, holding and manipulating the lever •For the "no sound or vision" and "vision only" conditions, this exploration and manipulation declined rapidly over sessions •However for the "sound only" and "both sound and vision" conditions, manipulation of the lever increased over the first 5 sessions •Although exploratory behaviour declined, more playful or game-like behaviours increased—suggests that exploration could lead onto play, and the two behaviours can be categorised distinctively •Exploration was characterised as relatively serious and focused, essentially asking "what does this object do?" •Play was characterised as relaxed, and by a diversity of activities essentially asking "what can I do with this object?"

How is play seen in animals?

•Something nearly all species of mammal engage in (Power, 2000): not specific to humans-eg. puppies playfight, play with objects: must be an important behaviour for promoting optimal development • "Behaviour in the simulative mode" (Reynolds, 1976)-simulative means to pretend: saw in his observations of rhesus monkeys