Child playing with bubbles

Play is a rite and a quality of mind in engaging with one's worldview. Play refers to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment.^[1] Play may consist of amusing, pretend or imaginary interpersonal and intrapersonal interactions or interplay. The rites of play are evident throughout nature and are perceived in people and animals, particularly in the cognitive development and socialization of those engaged in developmental processes and the young. Play often entertains props, tools, animals, or toys in the context of learning and recreation. Some play has clearly defined goals and when structured with rules is entitled a game. Whereas, some play exhibits no such goals nor rules and is considered to be "unstructured" in the literature.

Playing Children, by Chinese Song Dynasty artist Su Hanchen, c. 1150 AD.

Concerted endeavor has been made to identify the qualities of play, but this task is not without its ambiguities. For example, play is commonly perceived as a frivolous and non-serious activity; yet when watching children at play, one can observe the transfixed seriousness and entrancing absorption with which they engage in it. Other criteria of play include a relaxed pace and freedom versus compulsion. Yet play seems to have its intrinsic constraints as in, "You're not playing fair."

When play is structured and goal orientated it is often presented as a game. Play can also be seen as the activity of rehearsing life events e.g. young animals play fighting. Play may also serve as a pretext, allowing people to explore reactions of others by engaging in playful interaction. Flirting is an example of such behavior. These and other concepts or rhetorics of play are discussed at length by Brian Sutton-Smith in the book The Ambiguity of Play. Sometimes play is dangerous, such as in extreme sports. This type of play could be considered stunt play, whether engaging in play frighting, sky-diving, or riding a device at high speed in an unusual manner.

Types of play listed by psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Brown include: body, object, social, fantasy, and transformational.^[2] The National Institute for Play describes the previous five play types, as well as the play types attunement and narrative.^[3]

[edit] Definitions

The seminal text in play studies is Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga. Huizinga defined play as follows:

Summing up the formal characteristic of play, we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings that tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress the difference from the common world by disguise or other means.

This definition of play as constituting a separate and independent sphere of human activity is sometimes referred to as the "magic circle" notion of play, and attributed to Huizinga, who does make reference to the term at some points in Homo Ludens. According to Huizinga, within play spaces, human behavior is structured by very different rules: e.g. kicking (and only kicking) a ball in one direction or another, using physical force to impede another player (in a way which might be illegal outside the context of the game).

Another classic in play theory is Man, Play and Games by Roger Caillois. Borrowing much of his definition from Huizinga, Caillois coined several formal sub-categories of play, such as alea (games of chance) and ilinx (vertigo or thrill-seeking play).

According to Stephen Nachmanovitch, play is the root and foundation of creativity in the arts and sciences also as in daily life.

Improvisation, composition, writing, painting, theater, invention, all creative acts are forms of play, the starting place of creativity in the human growth cycle, and one of the great primal life functions. ^[4]

A notable contemporary play theorist is Jesper Juul who works on both pure play theory and the application of this theory to Computer game studies. The theory of play and its relationship with rules and game design is also extensively discussed by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman in their book: Rules of Play : Game Design Fundamentals. In computer games the word gameplay is often used to describe the concept of play.

Symbolic play uses one thing to stand for another and shows the child's ability to create mental images. There are three types of symbolic play, dramatic play, constructive play, and playing games with rules.

Researchers at the National Institute for Play are creating a clinical, scientific framework for play. They describe seven patterns of play which indicate the range of activities and states of being which play encompasses.^[3] References for each type of play are also listed.^[3]

James Findlay, a Social Educator, defines play as a "meta intelligence", suggesting that play is behind, together with, and changes, the various multiple intelligences that people have.^[5]

[edit] Childhood and play

Play is freely chosen, intrinsically motivated and personally directed. Playing has been long recognized as a critical aspect of childhood and child development. Some of the earliest studies of play started in the 1890s with G. Stanley Hall, the father of the child study movement that sparked an interest in the developmental, mental and behavioral world of babies and children. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a study in 2006 entitled: "The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds". The report states: "free and unstructured play is healthy and - in fact - essential for helping children reach important social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones as well as helping them manage stress and become resilient" ^[6]

Many of the most prominent researchers in the field of psychology (including Jean Piaget, William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Lev Vygotsky) have viewed play as endemic to the human species; indeed, the attributions projected upon an imaginary friend by children are key to understanding the construction of human spirituality and it pantheon(s) of deification (and demonization).

Play is explicitly recognized in Article 31 of The Convention on the Rights of the Child (adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, November 29, 1989). which states:

1. 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 and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.
2. Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activities.

Childhood 'play' is also seen by Sally Jenkinson (author of The Genius of Play) to be an intimate and integral part of childhood development. "In giving primacy to adult knowledge, to our 'grown-up' ways of seeing the world, have we forgotten how to value other kinds of wisdom? Do we still care about the small secret corners of children's wisdom?"^[7]

Modern research in the field of 'affective neuroscience' has uncovered important links between role playing and neurogenesis in the brain.^[8] Sociologist Roger Caillois coined the word "ilinx" to describe the momentary disruption of perception that comes from forms of physical play that disorient the senses, especially balance.

In addition evolutionary psychologists have begun to expound the phylogenetic relationship between higher intelligence in humans and its relationship to play.

Stevanne Auerbach mentions the role of play therapy in treating children suffering from traumas, emotional issues, and other problems.^[9] She also emphasizes the importance of toys with high play value for child development and the role of the parent in evaluating toys and being the child's play guide.

Sudbury model of democratic education schools assert that play is a big part of life at their schools where it is seen as a serious business. They maintain that play is always serious for kids, as well as for adults who haven't forgotten how to play, and much of the learning going on at these schools is done through play. So they don't interfere with it. Hence play flourishes at all ages, and the graduates who leave these schools go out into the world knowing how to give their all to whatever they're doing, and still remembering how to laugh and enjoy life as it comes. ^[10]

[edit] See also

• Imaginary friends
• Play (animal behaviour)‎
• Play therapy
• Play value
• Playground
• Playwork

[edit] References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: play

[edit] Further reading

Sports and games portal

Please expand this article using the suggested source(s) below. More information might be found in a section of the talk page.

• Caillois, R. (2001). Man, play, and games. Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press (originally published in 1958; translated from the French by Meyer Barash).
• Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo ludens; a study of the play-element in culture. Boston,, Beacon Press.
• Jenkinson, Sally (2001). The Genius of Play. Hawthorn Press
• Sutton-Smith, B. (1997). The ambiguity of play. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
• The Genesis of Animal Play: Testing the Limits Gordon M. Burghardt [1]
• Wenner, M. (2009). "The Serious Need for Play" - Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed, Scientific American.
• Gray, P. (2008-2009). "Social Play and the Genesis of Democracy", "The Value of Play I: The Definition of Play Provides Clues to Its Purposes", "The Value of Play II: How Play Promotes Reasoning in Children and Adults", "The Value of Play III: Children Use Play to Confront, not Avoid, Life’s Challenges and Even Life’s Horrors", "The Value of Play IV: Play is Nature’s Way of Teaching Us New Skills", "How to Ruin Children's Play: Supervise, Praise, Intervene", Psychology Today.

[edit] External links

• Design for Play- A play environment and outdoor classroom design firm that specializes in designing playgrounds based on child development and brain development research.
• Arquetipo Ludi (Spanish)
• IPA World Home (International Play Association: Promoting the Child's Right to Play)
• Creative Play
• Brown, Stuart (2008) Why play is vital -- no matter your age, TEDtalks, TED.com