Play from Birth to Twelve

Contexts, Perspectives, and Meanings

Doris Pronin Fromberg, Doris Bergen, Doris Pronin Fromberg, Doris Bergen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317620341
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In light of recent standards-based and testing movements, the issue of play in child development has taken on increased meaning for educational professionals and social scientists. This third edition of Play From Birth to Twelve offers comprehensive coverage of what we now know about play and its guiding principles, dynamics, and importance in early learning. These up-to-date essays, written by some of the most distinguished experts in the field, help educators, psychologists, anthropologists, parents, health service personnel, and students explore a variety of theoretical and practical ideas, such as:

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• all aspects of play, including historical and diverse perspectives as well as new approaches not yet covered in the literature

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• how teachers in various classroom situations set up and guide play to facilitate learning

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• how play is affected by societal violence, media reportage, technological innovations, and other contemporary issues

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• play and imagination within the current scope of educational policies, childrearing methods, educational variations, cultural differences, and intellectual diversity

New chapters in the third edition of Play From Birth to Twelve cover current and projected future developments in the field of play, such as executive function, neuroscience, autism, play in museums, "small world" play, global issues, media, and technology. The book also suggests ways to support children's play across different environments at home, in communities, and within various institutional settings.

Part I
Perspectives on Play Development

Introduction

Most observers of children would agree that the nature of play changes over the course of children’s development. The early theorists’ categorizations of various types of play at different age levels formed the framework for the perception of play as a developmental phenomenon. Early researchers categorized the play they observed in young children into related stages (e.g., Parten, 1932/1971). Later theorists described the stages of play development in specific domains (Erikson, 1976; Piaget, 1976; Vygotsky, 1967); domains include cognitive and moral reasoning, language, cognition and social understanding; and social-emotional mastery. Many researchers have attempted to verify the theoretical progression of play in precise and detailed studies.

The conceptualization of play as a developmental phenomenon has resulted in the systematic study of trends in types of play exhibited at various stages, in diagnostic practices that identify developmental problems when these types of play do not occur as expected, and in recommendations for interventions to enhance play development (Bergen, 1998). The systematic study of play development has also made explicit individual and cultural differences that may occur in the sequence, transitions, and content of play. Even in the dominant culture, a number of assumptions about the qualitative differences that occur in play at various ages and stages have recently been called into question. Although adults usually characterize pretend play, for example, as a phenomenon of early childhood, researchers report finding that pretense continues to be an important activity throughout childhood (Bergen, 2003; Bergen, Liu, & Liu, 1994). The settings in which it occurs (home, backyard) during later childhood differ from the more public settings (preschool, school) of the early childhood years, however, and the activities are usually more private. Although adults usually characterize solitary play as a phenomenon of young children, this type of play seems to have a mature as well as an immature form (Rubin, Fein, & Vandenberg, 1983).

For most children, play is as effortless as breathing and as varied as the images in a kaleido-scope. Their development of proficient use of language, social competence, complex thinking, and creative problem solving seems to occur in parallel and integrative ways in concert with their play development.

Part I includes chapters that describe the knowledge base that researchers have accumulated through the study of typical play development. Descriptions of the “typical” development of play during three age periods provide a basis for discussing specific developmental domain issues. The specific domains include cognitive and language facets of play development, and the connections between play, gender identity, and emotional development within the context of the life span. This section also includes chapters that discuss the experience of children who struggle or who have different ways of playing and dealing with the interpersonal issues present in play.

References

Bergen, D. (1998). Readings from play as a learning medium. Olney, MD: Association for Childhood Education International.

Bergen, D. (2003). College students’ memories of their childhood play: A ten year comparison. Paper presented at the annual conference of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, Chicago.

Bergen, D., Liu, W., & Lie, G. (1994). Chinese and American college students’ memories of childhood play: A comparison. Paper presented at the conference of the Association for the Study of Play, Atlanta, GA.

Davis, D. & Bergen, D. (2014) Relationships among play behaviors reported by college students and their responses to moral issues: A pilot study. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 28, 484–498.

Erikson, 1951, Sex differences in the play configurations of American pre-adolescents. American journal of Orthopsychiatry, 21.

Parten, M. (1932) Social participation among preschool children. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 27, 243–269.

Piaget, J. (1952) The origins of intelligence in children. New York: International Universities Press.

Rubin, K. N. Fein. G G., Vandenberg, B. (1983). Play. In E. M. Hetherington (Ed.) & P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 4. Socialization, personality, and social development (pp. 698–774). New York: Wiley.

Vygotsky, L. (1967) Play in the role of mental development in the child. Soviet Psychology, 5, 6–18.

1
Play Development from Birth to Age Four

BARBARA P. GARNER AND DORIS BERGEN

Play is an ubiquitous activity of young children and forms the basis for play throughout life (Bergen, 1998; Bergen, Hutchinson, Nolan, & Weber, 2010; Bergen, Reid, & Torelli, 2009). As significant developmental changes occur during the first 4 years of life in children’s social, emotional, physical, and cognitive domains, concomitant progressive changes occur in play.

Defining and Categorizing Infant Play

Researchers investigating play have embraced many methods and theoretical orientations; thus, a result has often been a lack of consensus regarding definitions, categories, and views of the developmental progression of play. Observations of play in solitary or social contexts and in a laboratory or a naturalistic setting may yield varying definitions and during infancy these definitions are amorphous and flexible. One prevalent quality of play during early childhood, for example, asserts that play is a pleasurable and intrinsically motivated activity (Fromberg, 1992). Using this definition, it is possible to define as play many behaviors that infants show. Although adults might define infants’ struggle to balance and begin to stand or walk independently as work, infants appear to have intrinsic motivations for achieving motor skills (Adolph, 1997) and express pleasure in achieving them. This motor practice appears to be play for infants, although some adults might consider it to be exploration or work.

Various categories can delineate infants’ play. Researchers have noted a high proportion of object play (e.g., Wachs, 1993), which they have called practice, exploratory, manipulative, or functional play. Studies of social play related to peer and adult–child interactions have focused on comparisons of social play with or without objects and social play with familiar or unfamiliar objects or people. There also has been research about beginnings of pretend play, perhaps because researchers often link it to advances in cognitive development (Youngblade & Dunn, 1996). During infancy, however, these categories of play frequently overlap. For example, toddlers engaged in exploratory play may be practicing newly acquired motor skills in the presence of familiar peers. Similarly, when they imitate each other’s motor behaviors, the activity may be both practice play and social play.

Throughout infancy, developmental changes in other domains affect the kinds and levels of play. Changes in physical development, for example, result in changes in coordinated motor play that allow mobility, expanded and advanced fine motor skill, and greater manipulation of objects. As cognitive concepts develop, infants begin to see relations between individual action patterns, and as they combine these, relational and functional play increases. When symbolic thinking advances, pretense emerges and develops. As social development changes from a symbiotic view of self to recognition of a separate self, peer interactions in play begin and progress rapidly. This discussion of types of infant and toddler play uses the more commonly identified categories; however, with two caveats: (1) play development is influenced by rapid developmental changes in other domains, and (2) it is difficult to categorize play into discrete types during this age period.

Categorizing Infant and Toddler Play

Scholars often categorize the play behaviors of very young children as object play, motor play, social play, and symbolic/pretend play.

Object Play

Object play in the first few months of life is limited if not absent. Infants’ reflexive grasp may permit a chance contact with an object but this is fleeting and is certainly not the primary mode of play during the newborn period. Initial infant object play consists of practice play that is focused on their own body. Infants repeat over and over again the motor behaviors that cause an interesting event to occur. Piaget (1962a, 1962b) called this period of development “primary circular reactions,” and pointed out infants’ intrinsic motivation to perform them. By 4 months of age, infants’ interests begin to shift away from primary focus on the body to external things, such as objects and people. Infants seem uniquely motivated to explore objects. At first, they indiscriminately engage in mouthing, banging, and shaking objects, food, and people. Later in the first year, differentiation occurs, and infants shake rattles, bang toys, and mouth bottles and food (Uzgiris & Hunt, 1975).

Between 4 and 12 months infants gain the ability to sit, and they can have visual guidance in reaching to grasp objects and bringing their hands to midline for object exploration. Between 7 and 12 months, infants’ manipulative skill increases, and they can use both hands independently for exploration. Although much research on object manipulation in infancy focuses on cognition or perceptual development rather than developmental trends in object manipulations (Lockman & McHale, 1989), several researchers have investigated the developmental sequence involved in manipulating objects.

One group of researchers reported that patterns of exploratory play emerge between 9 and 16 months, showing that infants are capable of making inferences about novel objects based on very brief exposures to an exemplar (Baldwin, Markman, & Melartin, 1993). When given objects with similar appearance and properties, infants immediately used similar patterns of exploration, but their actions on dissimilar objects varied; they are able to use visually available surface properties to infer the presence of underlying functional properties of objects. By 19 months, infants treat symbolic objects (i.e., pictures) differently from three-dimensional objects; pictures are “looked at” rather than treated as toys (DeLoache, Pierroutsakos, Uttal, Rosengren, & Gottlieb, 1998). Infants’ ability to make quick, correct inferences helps explain how their knowledge base expands so rapidly over this period. Knowing that objects have such an impact on infants’ cognitive development provides support for the value of environments with a rich and available wide variety of objects.

Between 7 and 12 months infants’ manipulative skill increases, enabling them to use both hands to manipulate an object independently (Kimmerle, Mick, & Michel, 1995). Typically, one hand will stabilize an item and the dominant hand will manipulate it. Researchers observed simple independent use of both hands as early as 7 months. The specific properties of the object do not seem to matter; infants use each hand independently regardless of whether or not the object has movable parts. As their cognitive development advances, the object needs to have movable parts in order for infants to manipulate it. Thus, infants’ concepts of causality and object properties, such as stability and movability, increase. Functional play (i.e., object play with relational goals) increases over a similar time span as infants become more able to combine action patterns. At first, infants will combine the action patterns indiscriminately: a comb may be placed in a bowl or a spoon on top of a truck. Later, they will begin to combine items in typical relational patterns: they will place a spoon in a pot, for example, and then place a lid on the top. Before they are 1 year old, most infants will put items into containers and, by 12 months, many will have learned to dump items out of the container.

During the second year, the major focus of play remains object-centered, and such manipulative play is predominant. Mouthing as a form of exploration decreases in frequency and is rarely seen after the second year (Mayes, Carter, & Stubbe, 1993). Infants between 1 and 2 years of age seem to ask, “What can I do with this object?” (Vondra & Belsky, 1989, p. 176). This marks their entry into the cognitive stage of tertiary circular reactions (Piaget, 1962a, 1962b), frequently referred to as the age of experimentation. Indeed, toddlers act like scientists experimenting with what objects can do and learning what they can do with the objects (Gopnik, Meltzer, & Kuhl, 2001). Some researchers regard this as the time when infant activity has changed from exploration to play (Hutt, 1979). Infants from 12 to 18 months delight in toys that react to their action, such as pop-up characters activated by pressing buttons, jacks-in-the-box that pop out when a string is pulled, books that emit words or music when a button is pressed, or an app on a phone or other electronic device.

As children enter the third year of life, manipulative materials such as clay, finger paints, water play toys, blocks, books, dolls, stuffed animals, and puzzles take on added importance. Young children’s sense of mastery increases as they can control the play activities. Manipulative or practice play remains an important part of play for the 3 year old, but most play now is functional; in the service of a self-chosen play goal, rather than being simply exploration of object characteristics.

Motor Play

Researchers who have studied the sequence of motor play during infancy have rarely focused on implications for infant social and cognitive development. However, motor development is intimately tied to other developmental areas. “Enough research has been done to clearly show that the body plays a fundamental role … [in development and] … there is no such thing as a brain without a body” (Fischer & Hogan, 1989, p. 298). As infant motor skills are developing, practice takes precedence over all other activities. Although manipulation of objects and interactions with adults and peers increase dramatically during the first year, motor play continues to have an important presence. From ages 9 to 12 months, a great deal of infant play relates to developing physical skills. Infants learn to pull themselves up, cruise along furniture, stand alone, and walk independently. Genetic factors, physiological factors such as body build and muscle tone, and environmental experiences all affect the achievement of these milestones (Thelan & Smith, 1994). The age of onset of walking has decreased, perhaps due to parents’ lessened use of playpens in recent decades. When infants have opportunities to explore, risk, and try again and again, in an environment that is safe but challenging, they engage in motor practice play that leads to advanced physical a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Perspectives on Play Development
• Part II Meanings of Play
• Part III Educational Contexts for Play
• Part IV Social and Physical Contexts for Play
• Part V Particular Meanings Embedded in Play
• Contributors
• Index