How do psychologists study the role of play in child development? Why is such research important in understanding the social development of children?
How do psychologists study the role of play in child development? Why is such research important in understanding the social development of children?
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, New Edition, 1995 defines "play" as: "[Children] when children play, they do things that they enjoy, often together or with toys." Play is one of the most powerful vehicles children have for trying out and mastering new social skills, concepts and experiences. Psychologists, such as Faulkner (1995), present evidence that play is seen as a mean of developing social skills and interpersonal relationships with others. The first section of the essay will present the different approaches psychologists use in the quest to learn about the role of children's play and their related issues. This section will briefly define the nature of play and the different types of play that influence social development. The second section will evaluate the importance of play on different aspects of social development and in various stages of an individual. The third section will analyze how viewpoints on function of play on development are shaped by historical and contextual factors such as culture and economy.
Developmental psychologists use various research methods such as naturalistic observations, interviews, experimental research and examining the natural context of children's everyday interaction within the family to study the role of play in children's development. They apply different approaches to study different types of play. Play by nature, creates a natural learning environment for the child. Wasserman (1992, p135) describes five benefits of play: children are able to create something new, take risks, avoid the fear of failure, be self-directed and actively engage their mind and body. Thus, play provides the natural and experiential learning that supports the child's construction of his own knowledge of the world and his place in it. Play significantly affects the development of the whole child. Within play's natural learning environment, children develop cognitively, socially, emotionally and physically.
One dominant method use in the study of play is through naturalistic observations. In naturalistic research, the observer does not intervene at all. For all intents and purposes, the researcher is invisible and works hard to not interrupt the natural dynamics of the situation being investigated. In 1932, Mildred Parten observed nursery children of aged 2 to 5 years old in their social participation in play. Through these observations, she had identified with four categories of play that influence social development: solitary independent play, parallel activity, associative play and co-operative play. In solitary independent play, the toddler enjoys playing alone. At this age there is little play with other children of the same age, though they may walk around each other. Older toddlers, about the age of 2 1/2, will begin to relate to other children by touching and speaking to them. In parallel activity, children enjoy being with each other, but they do not
interact very much. They will play side by side, watch, and listen to each other. They sometimes may fight over the same toy. During associative play, the children are still doing their own thing. They often do the same thing as other children, but they do not do it together. Children sitting side by side in a sandbox will repeat what the others are doing. In co-operative play, children communicate as speaking and listening skills are more developed. They plan, and tell each other what to do. They do things in response to what others do. They pretend to play house, be a mother and father, and try out relationships. Through her observation studies, Parten found that the younger children were more engaged in solitary and parallel play while the 4 and 5 year olds engaged in associative and co-operative play.
The second approach is conducting interviews with school children when they engaged in play. The interview method of research, typically, involves a face-to-face meeting in which a researcher (interviewer) asks an individual a series of questions. Piaget et al., 1932 developed his theory based on interviews and observations on his 3 children and Geneva school kids. From the collection of conversation transcripts during children's play and observations, four play types were discovered. They are: functional, constructive, dramatic and games with rules.
Functional or physical play is when the child runs, jumps, splashes in water or repeatedly ...
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The second approach is conducting interviews with school children when they engaged in play. The interview method of research, typically, involves a face-to-face meeting in which a researcher (interviewer) asks an individual a series of questions. Piaget et al., 1932 developed his theory based on interviews and observations on his 3 children and Geneva school kids. From the collection of conversation transcripts during children's play and observations, four play types were discovered. They are: functional, constructive, dramatic and games with rules.
Functional or physical play is when the child runs, jumps, splashes in water or repeatedly manipulates materials. In this type of play, the child repeats muscle movements. This form of play helps in the child's physical development.
Dramatic or imaginative play is when the child role-plays or make-believe transformations. Dramatic play becomes socio-dramatic play when children role-play together. In dramatic play, one child may pretend to be a mother while another may transform a Lego block into a racing car. Dramatic play is the most highly developed form of symbolic play in which the child begins to use objects as symbols of objects and events in the real world. Symbolic play helps in language development of a child and the key to representational thought (Piaget 1962). As the child plays with others, he must communicate meaning and develops narrative language. His vocabulary undergoes incredible growth during play as new words tied to meaning and experiences enacted during play were formed. In socio-dramatic play, the child is given chances to be social as he interacts with other peer mates as well as to play out his emotions. This type of play encourages social development as children learn how to negotiate, resolve conflicts, solve problems, get along with each other, take turns, be patient, cooperate and share. It encourages the children to understand concepts of fairness and competition. Through socio-dramatic play, the child learns perspective taking as he takes on the roles of different characters. The social interaction allows him to see things from his playmate's point of view. Being able to see something from someone's view is a developmental milestone for the egocentric child and is a process facilitated by this form of play.
Constructive play is when children use objects or materials to create things. They build with Legos and building blocks. They research solutions to problems as they play. Tegano, Sawyers and Moran (1989, p 97) discovered that children who engaged in this play type are more apt to learn generalizable skills and better equipped to cope with real-life problems in their social interaction with others.
Games with rules such as tag, hide-and-seek are the type of play children make or use rules to play games. These may be simple or complex rules that are pre-established by the players. In this form of play, children develop social competence as they interact with others. These games provide an arena for the players to practice social conventions with the freedom to accept or reject those conventions. They learn fairness in play and develop friendships during the game sessions.
Canadian researchers Jennifer Connolly and Anna-Beth Doyle (1984) investigated the function of fantasy play in its relation to social competence in 3 to 5 year old children. They use methods such as teacher's rating of children's popularity with their peers; their observed ability to comply with classroom rules; observations of the length of time each child spent in social interaction; observations of the amount of competitive and attention-seeking behaviour; expressions of friendliness and mood behavior. They found that the amount and complexity of fantasy play were significantly correlated with four measures of social competence: teacher rating of social skill; peer popularity; affective role-taking ability and amount of positive social activity and these measures were not statistically related to children's age, gender or intellectual competence. Children as early as 3 years old can be socially competent when they engaged in socio-dramatic joint play with their elder siblings. Older siblings directed the younger ones in pretend play episodes and gave them instructions on what to say and behave and through many play sessions, these young children understood that they were taking on a different identity during the play sessions.
By looking at the everyday interactions of the child within the family, it shows that within certain circumstances, some children are involved in joint play as early as 18 months and this approach provides more insights into some of the processes that underlie the child's social development. Studies such as Connolly and Doyle show that there is a lot of individual variation between children of the same age. An explanation due to this lies in the fact that social experience of any child is unique to that child. Different parenting styles and family experiences are not uniform across children.
Another method to study the role of play is the use of experimental research. Experimental researchers take care to create an environment in which they can make causal statements. They manipulate variables, randomly assign participants to various conditions, and seek to control other influences that could affect their research. Paul Harris used this method with pre-school and school-aged children to assist him in understanding the role of play. Here, he asked children to interpret the emotional experiences of a variety of story characters. He concluded that pretend play serves as a powerful function in the development of social perspective-taking skills of a child. The play enables the young child to step beyond the boundaries of their own identities into ways of behaving, talking and feeling that they attribute to others. The child is able to develop capacities for imaginative understanding. Among older school-age children, perspective-taking abilities acknowledge other people as observers and reviews of how behaviour matches up to normative levels.
Play varies across children's age. Play from birth to 18 months, primarily involves use of the senses. Babies see, smell, hear, taste, and touch. They learn about their world in these ways. The information infants gain from this simple play is important for their future play and learning.
At this stage, babies interact mostly with their care-givers. Although the child can play alone, part of the play period should include other people. Singing and cuddling are important ways that we can participate in play with infants so that they develop a sense of attachment with their primary care-givers.
At the toddler stage from 18 months to 4 years old, children are very active. The toddler gets pleasure out of larger toys. Use of these toys helps develop large muscle coordination and provides experiences in testing skills. Older toddlers benefit from play time with other children. Three-year-olds become more social and want to be with people. Play with other children is essential at this age. Through contact with other children, toddlers learn manners, how to cooperate, the importance of friendship, sharing, and waiting their turn. During this age, children also begin to try out their power. They may threaten, kick and fight, or push a child away from their group. They even begin to explore their sex differences.
At preschooler stage of 4 to 5 years of age, children are ready for more organized social play. They grow away from being interested only in their own ideas to being interested in the actions and feelings of others. Preschoolers love to dress-up and pretend play. They need dress-up clothes or anything grown-ups wear. Providing costumes and equipment or furnishings encourages preschoolers toward creative, dramatic play. These activities give them a chance to act out their feelings, emotions, and how they view the world about them. This practice of grown-up roles leads to the child's understanding of adults by giving the child a chance to play at being an adult. Preschoolers learn how it feels to be big. They pretend, imagine, create, and imitate what they think it is like to be grown up. They practice relating to their friends. Creative play combines the elements of imagination and fantasy with what is real.
At young school-age stage of 5 to 6 years old, play is directed more towards specific goals or constructive such as completion of word games, clay creation, puzzles, and games. Card games provide chances to learn rules and develop more complex thinking skills. By this time children are probably choosing their own playthings and playmates.
At older school-age stage of 9 to 12 years old, the children can do many things. They stay interested in activities long enough to complete them. They can finish a monopoly game or complete a leather craft project. These children spend longer periods of time alone, reading, knitting, putting a puzzle together, or just daydreaming. They often act on their ideas and put together elaborate experiments and inventions that may or may not work.
Children at this age are enthusiastic about team games and sports, especially if they win. Their feelings also are more intense and losing or being chosen last on a team can be a sad and emotional experience. Peer evaluation and acceptance is important to them.
In adolescent stage, girls will begin to show an interest in boys, usually in teasing, playful ways. However, most of their fun time will be spent in groups of the same sex such as having slumber parties among the girls and playing soccer among the boys. This play helps to create a sense of peer belonging before they become fully competent members of the social world. Peers who have a positive socio-emotional outcome tend to have positive self-esteems (Brown, 1990).
Viewpoints on the role of play differ across cultures. In Singapore, Wee Care Pte Ltd structured their educational programmes according to the theories of Vygotsky and Bruner who stressed on the importance of adult input in increasing a child's level of social development (http://www.weecare.com.sg/en/infant/playgroup/index_toddler.htm). One of the programmes is called "Parent-Infant Playgroup" that is catered to infants of aged 0 to 12 months. This programme is designed for babies to learn about themselves and familiarize themselves in the environment they live in. Here, babies learn in systematic and structured activities via exploration, discovery and manipulation of concrete objects. Sessions such as Snack and Circle Time allows the babies to interact, crawl and play together. This is aimed to let the child acquire social scripts and interaction skills through imitation of their peer mates, shared interests and turn-taking (http://www.weecare.com.sg/en/infant/playgroup/index_toddler.htm).
Specialists at Kids' Star Child Development Centre set out to provide an integrated curriculum that nurtures children holistically by planning activities that focused on play. The center's philosophy is that children are seen as unique individual who develop at their own pace. They learn best through play and interaction with human environment. This ideology is set based on Piagetian theory where cooperative learning is crucial in nurturing the child to grasp and construct knowledge (Appendix 1). Activities such as Dramatization and Role-Playing during Music and Movement session across various thematic units are integrated in their curriculum to enhance children's social development.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) are strong proponents of play as a curricular choice. However, in our national pursuit of academic excellence, many primary schools across nations reduced play to recess time, hidden in the curriculum or tagged as miscellaneous "free time" as "more important" curricular academic subjects are given priority (http://www.mtsu.edu/~kburriss/wanted.html).
Many changes in childhood that have occurred in recent years are undermining the quality of children's play. "Playtime" is being shortchanged in schools such in Japan and US as more emphasis is placed on teaching "the basics" at younger age. Today's children are busy in academic pursuit that the culture of neighbourhood kids playing after school is becoming a thing of the past. When children have time to play, they often choose to watch television, an average four hours a day.
The kinds of toys that are multi-purpose and unstructured such as blocks that encourage play has changed recently with toys that promote highly-structured play such as action figures or video games linked to movies or TV programmes. The worrisome impact is the promotion of violence as children imitate violent characters found in most popular shows such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Star Wars (http://familyeducation.com).
In conclusion, psychologists adopt a combination of methods to study the role of play in a child's development. Play is seen to be an important agent in a child's social development. Different types of play promote different aspects of social development such as social competence, achievement of sense of self and social perspective-taking skills. However, play is not the single causal factor that promotes a child's social development. Family relationships and the discourse that occurs between carers and children do influence social development of a child. One example is the impact of divorce between parents made the child's social interactions with others immature and ineffective (Hetherington et al., 1970). Peer culture plays significant impact on adolescent's social development. Recent changes in toys and changing views of childhood which focus shifts on academic pursuits show the change in the role of play in children's social development across different cultures and regions.
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