Play (activity)

• 1. Introduction

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  Play is a range of intrinsically motivated activities done for recreation, and most people assume it belongs to children alone. The source pushes back on that assumption hard. It tells us play is engaged in at any life stage, and among other higher-functioning animals as well, most notably mammals and birds. A polar bear and a dog have been observed playing together, two natural enemies setting aside the rules of survival. Play is often interpreted as frivolous, yet the player can be intently focused on their objective. So what is this thing that looks like a pastime but might be something far more essential? Why do rats, cats, and macaques do it even when it costs them energy and exposes them to predators? And why do the ways children play differ so sharply from one culture to the next? The answers run from a 1944 book to the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, from a New Deal ball field to the brain cells of a young mammal.

• 2. The Magic Circle

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  Homo Ludens, first published in 1944, is the seminal text in the field of play studies. In it, Johan Huizinga defines play as a free activity standing quite consciously outside ordinary life as being not serious, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. He describes it as an activity connected with no material interest, from which no profit can be gained. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space, according to fixed rules, and in an orderly manner. This idea of play as a separate and independent sphere of human activity is sometimes called the magic circle notion, a phrase also attributed to Huizinga. Jean Piaget admitted the difficulty plainly, stating that the many theories of play expounded in the past are clear proof that the phenomenon is difficult to understand. A twenty-first century definition from the National Playing Fields Association takes a different angle. It calls play freely chosen, personally directed, intrinsically motivated behaviour that actively engages the child. That phrasing leans on a child's freedom of choice rather than on boundaries and rules.

• 3. Many Shapes Of Play

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  Improvisation, pretense, mimicry, games, sports, and thrill-seeking like sky-diving and high-speed racing all count as forms of play. Philosopher Roger Caillois wrote about this range in his 1961 book Man, Play and Games, interpreting many social structures as elaborate forms of games. Free-form play gives children the freedom to decide what they want to play and how, with both the activity and the rules subject to change at any moment. Some countries have written this freedom into their values for early childhood, among them Taiwan and Hungary. Structured play, by contrast, has clearly defined goals and rules, and such play is called a game. The California-based National Institute for Play describes seven play patterns, including attunement play that establishes a connection such as between newborn and mother, and creative play. As an example of creative play, the source notes that Einstein was known to wonder about things not yet known and to play with unproven ideas as a bridge to discovery. A separate classification lists categories like challenge play, such as solving a Rubik's Cube, and nurturing play, such as playing with baby dolls. Some forms overlap; building a blanket fort is both construction and creative. Separate from self-initiated play, play therapy is used as a clinical application aimed at treating children who suffer from trauma and emotional issues.

• 4. A Child's Right

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  Article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on the 29th of November 1989, explicitly recognizes play. It declares that parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child. Findings in neuroscience suggest play promotes flexibility of mind, including discovering multiple ways to achieve a desired result. Some forms of play are rehearsals for later life events, such as play fighting, pretend social encounters like parties with dolls, or flirting. As children get older, they turn to board games, video games, and computer play, and here the word gameplay describes the relationship between play, rules, and game design. In their book Rules of Play, researchers Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman outline 18 schemas for games. Game theorist Jesper Juul, in Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, explores how a player can win or lose in the real world by slaying a dragon in a fantasy one. The tension between adult control and a child's freedom is not new.

• 5. Toys And Their Makers

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  American historian Howard Chudacoff studied the interplay between parental control of toys and games and children's drive for freedom to play. In the colonial era, toys were makeshift and children taught each other very simple games with little adult supervision. The market economy of the 19th century enabled the modern concept of childhood as a distinct, happy life stage, and factory-made dolls and doll houses delighted young girls. Organized sports filtered down from adults and colleges, and boys learned to play with a bat, a ball, and an impromptu playing field. With the rise of motor vehicle traffic in the 20th century, teenagers were increasingly organized into club sports supervised and coached by adults. Under the American New Deal's Works Progress Administration, thousands of local playgrounds and ball fields opened, promoting softball especially as a sport for all ages and genders. By the 21st century, Chudacoff notes, the old tension between parental controls and a child's individual freedom was being played out in cyberspace.

• 6. Play Around The World

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  In the Efe of the Democratic Republic of Congo, groups of children can be seen making food from dirt or pretending to shoot bows and arrows much like their elders. The act of play is a cross-cultural phenomenon, yet it differs in how it is performed. Euro-American cultures tend to encourage play to stress cognitive benefits and learning how to care for one's self, while African American or Asian American heritages stress more group-oriented learning and play. Parents in the Mayan culture interact with their children in a playful mindset, supporting their play while also encouraging them to play while watching household work, so they become familiar with how to follow in their footsteps. By contrast, parents in the United States tend to set aside time to play and teach their children through games and activities. In Brazil, children play with balls, kites, marbles, pretend houses, or mud kitchens, and in smaller communities they use mud balls, little stones, or cashews to replace marbles. At an indigenous community of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia, children's play is highly valued and encouraged by leaders and parents. Some children in the Sahara use clay figures as their toys, which usually illustrate characters and objects of a community. Anji play, written 安吉游戏 in simplified Chinese, was created by Cheng Xueqin and is applied at pre-schools for children from three to six years old in Anji county, East China. Its guiding principles are love, risk, joy, engagement, and reflection, and teachers only observe and document the children's independent play without intervening, even in instances of possible risk.

• 7. The Workforce And The Old

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  Many adults in North America are in the workforce and spend half of their waking hours in a workplace environment with little to no time for play. There, play means leisure-type activities with colleagues, such as card games, board games, foosball, ping-pong, yoga, and boot-camp sessions during breaks. Playing games may promote positive affect, which increases the satisfaction people feel from work and improves their performance on problem-solving tasks. Incorporating play at work results in more productivity, creativity, higher job satisfaction, and a decrease in staff turnover, absenteeism, and stress. Older adults represent one of the fastest growing populations around the world. The United Nations predicted an increase of those aged 60 and above from 629 million in 2002 to approximately two billion in 2050. One qualitative study found older adults often chose games such as dominoes, checkers, and bingo for entertainment. American studies found that only 24% of seniors took part in regular physical activity and only 42% use the internet for entertainment purposes. The source raises a sharp possibility: it might not be aging itself that drives the decline in cognitive and physical capabilities, but the higher levels of inactivity in older adults.

• 8. Why Animals Play

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  Animals are often injured during play, become distracted from predators, and expend valuable energy, which is why evolutionary psychologists believe there must be an important benefit. Play has arisen independently in groups as varied as mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates. In wild Assamese macaques, physically active play is performed even during periods of low food availability and even at the expense of growth. The play as preparation theory was inspired by the observation that play often mimics adult themes of survival. Predators such as lions and bears play by chasing, pouncing, and biting as they learn to stalk prey, while prey animals like deer and zebras play by running and leaping to acquire speed. John Byers, a zoologist at the University of Idaho, discovered that play time in many mammals peaks around puberty and then drops off, corresponding to the development of the cerebellum. Sergio Pellis and colleagues at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, found evidence that play helps the young brain clean up an overabundance of cells in the cerebrum. Marc Bekoff, a University of Colorado evolutionary biologist, proposes a flexibility hypothesis, arguing that play helps animals learn to switch and improvise behaviors to be prepared for the unexpected. Alexandra Horowitz of the University of California studied dyadic play in dogs, noting how one dog used nudging, barking, growling, and pawing to recapture the attention of a preoccupied partner. This attention-getting skill had generally only been seen in humans, and is now being researched in many different species.