Development psychology

1) Physical play

2) Play with objects

3) Fantasy play

4) Language play

   - Garvey, 1991; Smith, Cowie & Blade, 2003

Locomotor/physical play

Often doon outdoors or in the playground with older children without objects

Important in helping children develop muscle strength and balance

Friendly intent displayed/play signals - important for physical play e.g. smiling, laughing

3 developmental phases of physical play:

- Rhythmical stereotypes - infants/babies. Refers to gross motor movement e.g. kicking legs and waving arms in a playful way. The tend to do this on their own.

- Exercise play - running, jumping, climbing. Can be done alone or with others. Toddlerhood/4-5 years. A behaviour seen in animal species too.

- Rough and tumble play - more common later in childhood, around school ages. Includes wrestling, chasing each other etc. Done with others. Evidence to suggest that children are more likely to engage in this play after being in a classroom for a long time. They can become more actively engaged in this play during school, but can passively be involved at a younger age. Include play fighting - cross-cultural.

- Boys engage in it more than girls do (Pellegrini & Smith, 1998) - with exception of rhythmical stereotypes. Evidence suggest boys and more active than girls. Boys do more play fighting whereas girls fo more play chasing.

Benefits

- Rhythmical stereotypes: improves control of motor patterns - these behaviours have to modify synapses in the infants brain and help with motor control.

- Exercise play: improve strength and endurance; uses surplus energy - muscle and bone develop rapidly in children and this play helps this growth. Enhance our skills and movement and the economy of our movement. Increase in coordination and social benefits. Helps prevent overweight and improves fitness.

- Rough and tumblr play: understanding emotions - understand and decode emotions, and when they've gone too far. Children who engage in more of this play were much better at interpreting emotional states. Practice fighting.

 Begins between 6-12 months

Objects link person and environment

Counter-factual thinking

Channel for social interaction (Garvey, 1991)

Facilitates problem solving

Very few gender differences particularly in younger life. However, there is a difference in the types of toys that children engage with. Boys, for example, are more likely to play with transportation toys such as trucks and cars. Girls are more likely to play with dolly type toys.

Lowe (1975) - gave them a toy cup, saucer, spoon, truck, trailer and a doll and observed them play with it.

- 9 months - child grasps nearest object/brings to mouth; uses few action patterns - assimilation and accommodation.

- 12 months - investigate objects (look at, turn, touch) before doing anything else with it. Exploration play.

- 15 months - inspecting and investigating objects precede all other behaviour; conventional uses of items (e.g. cup & 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.

Certain abilities must be present for fantasy play (e.g. object permanence) - early fantasy play is often very object related.

Pretend play emerges gradually

Around 3 years old, agreeing on a theme for play with others. Research suggested that children  who engaged in this were found to be more popular in school and had higher ratings of social skills by their teachers.

Any form of social pretend play rare under 2 years old (Holves, 1985)

Boys vs girls - no sex differences in the amount of fantasy play. Boys - rough and tumblr fantasy play e.g. superheroes. Girls - domestic fantasy play.

Child develops ability to represent experience symbolically.

Children carry out actions, take on roles, transform objects, express feelings about social world (Garvey, 1984)

Socio-dramatic play: take on roles or identities in play (e.g. family, stereotypically)

By age 4 or 5, children's ideas about social world initiate most pretend play.

Functions: e.g. social skills, imagination, creativity.

Good for helping children develop their narrative skills and good for children to understand other people's perspectives.

4 steps in the development of agent use:

1) Self as agent - infant puts head on pillow to pretend to sleep.

2) Passive other agent - Doll on pillow, pretend doll sleeps.

3) Passive substitute agent - block on pillow, pretend block sleeps.

4) Active other agent - doll places block on pillow, doll 'putting block to bed'.

Three 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 (play with conversation)

Doesn't tend to arise in pretend or goal-orientated episodes (Garvey, 1991) - there's no real purpose to this play.

Sound of words important rather than grammatical shape. Makes language more playful and fun and purely for enjoyment rather than a specific purpose.

- e.g. boy and girl playing (age 5)

- Boy: teddy bears mine

- Girl: the fishy fishy is mine

- Boy: No the snakey snakey is yours

Nonsense verse and 'topsy turvey' meanings appeal to children.

Assignment of funny names is just to object displays awareness of correct forms.

- E.g. "I'm a whale, this is my tail."

- Children learns rules of conservation as learns language and as engages in play.

- Can manipulate language conventions in play.

- Influence of familya and culture on p;ay (Garvey, 1991)

- Bedouin children contrasted with 'western' children in Kibbutz. (Ariel & Sever, 1980): play is determined by culture.

- Gender roles and socialisation.

- Differences in play behaviour between boys and girls (Archer & Lloyd, 1986)

- Segregation; Differentiation; Asymmetry (Maccoby, 1998)

- Select same sex playmates (Martin et al, 2013)