The Development in Play Behaviour Has Been Described as a Series of Stages. Present the Evidence for This and Evaluate with Reference to the Development of the Notion of the self.
Essay Preview: The Development in Play Behaviour Has Been Described as a Series of Stages. Present the Evidence for This and Evaluate with Reference to the Development of the Notion of the self.
Report this essayIn this essay I am going to discuss the characteristics of play starting from the difficulty of the definition to how it is now commonly described. I will also look at how many theorist believe play develops. Many theorist believe they know what the play types are and at what stage these play type may manifest. I am also going to look at how these theorist manage to talk abot the development of play with at mentioning the development of self and fits in with play. And finally how gender identity affects play and how it is developed.
There have been many attempts to define play. Fagan (1974) made a distinction between two different types of definition a functional and the structural approach. The functionalist approach suggests that play has no external goals so if the end goal is to eat seek comfort etc then this behaviour is not play. How ever if there was no goal at all then children would on play the play because the enjoy it, so the functionalist approach has led to a definition of play where there is no obvious benefit. Many theorists would argue that children get benefits from play but it is still unclear what they are. The structural approach tries to describe behaviour that only occurs during play, or behaviours performed playfully these are play behaviours. The main example would be play signals such as the open mouth play face for monkey and in humans this is laughter which looks a lot like the open mouth play face of monkeys. These signals are seen to be most useful when in rough and tumble play as it signals that there is no aggressive intention in the play. Not all play has such clearly defined signals, some times play is made up of behaviours common to other situations such as running just running may not be play but a change in the way of running like taking bigger steps or stops and starts but the main characteristic is repetition. These two approaches are not opposite to each other as in many places they over lap.
There is another approach that incorporates the other two approaches this is play criterion approach. In this approach there are five criteria to measure play by, these are how the flexibility of the play is structured, the variation of from and context and how it changes and evolves. A positive effect is if the play is enjoyable, is there an element of pretend play and intrinsic motivation just to do it because you want to there are no external rule or social demands. This approach does not try for a short definition of play behaviour, but acknowledges that there is a continuation from non play to play behaviour however there is a commonly used definition of play it involves enjoyment, flexibility and pretence.
Researchers have identified a number of different types of play. The first of these is the physical play which covers rough and tumble and chase play, there is fantasy and sociodramatic play, this is pretend play and basic role-play and language play this covers early attempts at poems . Piaget (1951) was one of the first to suggest a developmental sequence to play; first comes practical play this moves through to symbolic play (fantasy/pretend) to games with rules. Piaget also suggested that there was an over lap between all of the stages. Smilansky (1968) came up with a four fold theory similar to Piagets theory. There is functional play which as just the same as practical play, then comes constructive play this is making something i.e., Lego building or vehicle, then dramatic play would come next this is just the same as Piagets symbolic stage. Then last stage would be game with rules.
Anyone that has seen school children at break time have seen physical activity play this is often done without other object. Pellegrini and Smith (1998)
suggested that there are three developmental phases to physical activity play the first phase is rhythmical stereotypes bodily movement that are common with babies such as leg kicking and arm waving, then at preschool age this moves on to the phase of lot of exercise play running around jumping climbing, this kind of body movement can be done with other children or on theyre own, this phase overlaps and finally develops into rough and tumble play which is common at primary school age.
For many theorist rough and tumble is seen as a completely separate stage in the development of play. There has been some postulation that rough and tumble play may have origins in the way adults play this toddlers tickling throwing and crawling after them. Actual play fighting starts at about 3 years old and has a significant part to play right up until adolescence. This kind of play normally has a dominance aspect to it with one child struggling for the superior position within a social group. These episodes generally involve pushing clasping and kicking, chasing play is also normally categorised as rough and tumble play. This stage dose not end during childhood this stage changes and develops right up until the child reaches the teen year. All the way though life play fighting is always seen as very different from real fighting, signals such as smiling and laughing tell both parties involved that it is just play where as real fighting portrays different signals like frowning and other displeased facial expressions. Even young children can tell the difference as one study carried out by Costabile et al (1991) shows. A film was shown to some children between the ages of 8 and 11 the children were then asked of the episode of fighting they saw on the film was play fighting or real fighting and why they thought this. Most said that “it didnt last long enough to be a real fight”, “they didnt hit each other hard”, “it wasnt a real fight because they werent angry” and a crowd didnt form. This study also showed that it doesnt have to be a film of a fight in this culture it is easy to tell a play fight from around the world.
The fantasy play begins at about 12-15 months old. Early pretend is normally directed at the child themselves, pretending to sleep on a cloth instead of a pillow in bed. Later on in development decentration take place incorporating other in to the pretend activity such as parents giving them an empty cup. At around 24 months a child can pretend with a stuffed toy like having a teddys bears picnic and having all the bears eat for themselves and have conversations with them. Much early pretend play relies heavily on realistic object such as cups, spoons etc. I have been unable to find any discussion on why this might be so. At the age of 2 most children choose to play with realistic objects and can pretend well but it is not until about 3 when children adopt decontextualised play (play with less realistic object or no object at all) this can happen spontaneously. A case study by Overton and Jackson
I recently found an older version of this study on a friend of mine and had a lot of fun learning the concept of children behaving as though they were having conversations. Since the time I have been with Overton the practice has been completely abolished. This has made all the more exciting. This is not new but a couple of books have been published and have already caused most of my readers to realise that most pretend play involves actual play, so it should not be taken as that. (I would like to thank all the friends who wrote to ask for advice, so that we can continue this practice, and even encourage children to play with the actual objects of real life, not the objects they have created). A new video game can, though, make this much easier and has been successfully shown to do so by an 8 year old. (For now, my daughter is playing with her favourite toy the pink pewter.) I think that using a large amount of this time to study the various kinds of realisation has made it more enjoyable. It has not changed my child’s behavior or even the behaviour that the parent or guardian saw and thought about them after they had had their say. My child has no interest in what they have seen or heard, they have no particular inclination, and in fact think nothing about them for almost no reason at all. The thought of anything or anybody being in control of something is completely at odds with everything and that they often have no feelings or desires or thoughts about what the objects in their imagination that they see are. All adults are born with this mental habit and if one wants nothing more than to enjoy it then the other party should be equally lucky to have it. The other person has more or less the same idea that what they see is what they have seen, so I am not trying to discourage their ideas. I am simply pointing out that the child has a similar urge to take a good look at objects that others are trying to see the same way. I know how to avoid those when I am not thinking about it and I hope that these lessons can be applied to everyone. It may make you feel that you have some right and it may be that you need a little help from others. (I do not ask permission of any person.) I have a few more lessons I want to share later. The first one focuses on how to find the right idea and create an idea. The second starts off by showing what your child does and how they think. I will probably stop writing that because these children are really important. Nowadays I think that these were mostly children with ideas of their own. As they get older we should be learning their own ideas. I am only repeating what all the parents of the average person know or that the children of adults have never imagined. Then when the time comes for this we can see where they are wrong by understanding that this really is a situation in which the parent or guardian have had their say. In this kind of development the child probably has no idea about what they have seen but may think on things that are there for many other people. At 20 or so we might get to the point where they think, “I wonder how the hell I got this idea”, while they may still be able to understand why things are so horrible in such a situation. The child often has a different feeling about the thought that they had about where to go and what should they eat, but will still make an effort to play.
I recently found a large UK journal about this called Learning from others. (The journal used to be on the internet