The transactions between the physical environment and children's play have not been well studied. The theory of affordances provides a way to better understand how environmental characteristics offer ...opportunities for play occupation.
To investigate the relationship between environmental characteristics of outdoor play spaces and children's outdoor play and to develop an environmental taxonomy to support the analysis of play affordances in community play spaces.
Peer-reviewed literature (1974-2023) was sourced from a previously published scoping review (Morgenthaler, Schulze, et al., 2023). The Academic Search Complete, Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were searched using the keywords and synonyms of playground, environmental qualities, and children with and without disabilities.
A secondary analysis of the previously published scoping review was conducted. Included studies were those that provided descriptions of physical environment-play activity transactions.
A qualitative content analysis of 45 articles was conducted and used to form an environmental taxonomy. This taxonomy consisted of 14 space and object categories defined by their functional qualities and linked to play affordances. An array of 284 play occupations were identified in different forms. Play affordances of spaces and object categories and their functional environmental qualities were subsequently identified.
This study provides evidence to support the understanding of how the physical environment shapes children's outdoor play occupations. Plain-Language Summary: The study authors developed the Environmental Taxonomy of Outdoor Play Space Features as a tool that occupational therapists can use to better understand and describe how the physical environment shapes opportunities for play. The tool could also be useful to justify environmental intervention in schools and public playgrounds to create spaces that support more play for a diversity of children.
During the international coronavirus lockdowns of 2020–2021, millions of children, youth, and adults found their usual play areas out of bounds and their friends out of reach. How did the pandemic ...restrict everyday play and how did the pandemic offer new spaces and new content? This unique collection of essays documents the ways in which communities around the world harnessed play within the limiting frame of Covid-19. Folklorists Anna Beresin and Julia Bishop adopt a multidisciplinary approach to this phenomenon, bringing together the insights of a geographically and demographically diverse range of scholars, practitioners, and community activists. The book begins with a focus on social and physical landscapes before moving onto more intimate portraits of play among the old and young, including coronavirus-themed games and novel toy inventions. Finally, the co-authors explore the creative shifts observed in frames of play, ranging from Zoom screens to street walls. This singular chronicle of coronavirus play will be of interest to researchers and students of developmental psychology, childhood studies, education, playwork, sociology, anthropology and folklore, as well as to toy, museum, and landscape designers. This book will also be of help to parents, professional organizations, educators, and urban planners, with a postscript of concrete suggestions advocating for the essential role of play in a post-pandemic world.
Although decorticated rats are able to engage in play, their play is abnormal in three ways. First, decorticates do not display the normal, age-related shifts in defensive strategies during ...development. Second, decorticates do not modify their defensive tactics in response to the social identity of their partners. Third, decorticates display a global shift in defensive tactics from more complex to less complex strategies. It has been shown that lesions of the motor cortex (MC) selectively produce the abnormal developmental effects on play, and that lesions of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) selectively produce the deficits in behavioral discrimination between social partners. In the current set of experiments, we demonstrate that lesions of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) produce the shift from more complex to less complex defensive tactics, while leaving intact the age-related and partner-related modulation of defensive strategies. Thus, we have evidence for a triple dissociation of function between the MC, the OFC, and the mPFC with respect to social play behavior.
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There is much controversy over what is needed for culture to flourish and what has led human culture to be different from "cultural" characteristics of other animals. Here I argue that the emergence ...of childhood as a step in the life cycle was critical to the evolution of the human cultural mind. My line of reasoning is built around two complementary features of childhood: imitation and play. When children imitate adults they routinely copy unnecessary and arbitrary actions. They will persistently replicate how an object is used, even when doing so interferes with their ability to produce the very outcome those actions are intended to bring about. Though seemingly maladaptive, this behavior provides for the faithful transmission of cultural ideas across generations. When children play together they commonly construct rules and meanings that exist purely because the players agree they "exist." Play thus provides the building blocks with which children rehearse the kinds of institutional realities that typify cultural practices. I argue that these forms of imitation and play represent a foundation upon which human culture flourished and that neither are prevalent in nonhuman animals. In light of these arguments evidence will be assessed suggesting that childhood emerged relatively late in human evolution.
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This paper focuses on children's perspective on their outdoor play environment. The research took place in settings with designated disadvantaged status-in the backyards of Przedmieście Oławskie-a ...small district of a large city of Wrocław, Poland. The research aimed to reveal dimensions of children's perception and understanding of studied backyards. Multimethod qualitative research procedure was used: the ethnographic research strategy with elements of mosaic approach were combined. Around 70 children aged 3-10 years were observed in their natural play environment and 23 of them were engaged in guided-tours and meetings in backyards. The results of this research show multidimensionality of children's experiences of their play environment. The study underlines the importance of considering children's experience as competent social agents while planning outdoor play environments.
The authors conducted a randomized controlled trial to investigate differences among 36 elementary school age children who received 16 sessions of child‐centered play therapy and 35 children who were ...assigned to a waitlist control group. Pre‐ and postassessments were used to measure children's levels of aggression, self‐regulation, and empathy per parent and teacher report. Results revealed statistically significant positive results for parents and nonstatistically significant results for teachers. Implications and future research are examined.
The purpose of this study was to develop learning freestyle swimming for elementary school students, as well as to find out the effectiveness of the model that had been developed. The method in this ...study was to develop a freestyle swimming learning model for elementary school students using the Research & Development model approach from Brog and Gall. The aim of this research is to develop a swimming learning model for students at State Elementary School 1 Lokatabat Utara, State Elementary School Guntung Manggis, State Elementary School Landasan Ulin Utara. The small group trial consisted of 20 people while the large group trial consisted of 110 people. Data collection in this study was to review various literature or literature studies related to the model concepts that would be developed according to the product to be made and referred to needs analysis, expert review and field trials. To calculate the effectiveness test using (t-test) with an analysis of the difference between the two means for dependent samples. The results of the study of the freestyle swimming learning model for elementary school students are in accordance with the characteristics of the students and are effective for improving freestyle swimming learning.
Play is one of the most difficult behaviors to quantify and for this reason, its study has had a very rocky history. Social play is ephemeral, difficult to distinguish from the other so-called ...serious behaviors, not so frequent (especially in sexually mature subjects), fast, and complex to describe. Due to its multifaceted nature, it has often been considered as a wastebasket category that has included all kinds of the behaviors not showing any immediate, obvious goal. Yet, play is widespread across the whole primate order and can have a strong impact on the development of cognitive, psychological, and social skills of many species, including humans. Unlike functional behaviors that are specifically and economically performed to reduce uncertainty and to increase the opportunity to gain resources, play seems to introduce and increase uncertainty, creating new challenges for the animals. For this reason, social play has been hypothesized to be the engine of behavioral innovation in ontogeny. From the first mild and gentle interactions with the mother to the most sophisticated play fighting sessions and acrobatic action sequences with peers, play represents for juveniles (and not only for them!) a window onto the social and physical environment. In this review, I focus on social play and its relation to adult social competence. By playing, juveniles acquire competence to manage interactions with conspecifics, enlarge their social networks, and test their physical power and motor skills (i.e., long-term benefits). At the same time, I propose the view that play—due to its plastic and versatile nature—can be used in an opportunistic way, as a joker behavior, throughout life to strategically obtain short-term or immediate benefits. I put forward the hypothesis that, during ontogeny, the joker function of play can be modulated according to the differing inter-individual relationships present in the diverse societies, characterizing the primate order.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) exist today as a component of a broader, ever-evolving financial environment in which questions of value, ownership, and intention are characterized by their ambiguity. ...This article considers Dapper Labs “NBA Top Shot,” a blockchain-backed website inviting NBA fans to join in “a new era in fandom” wherein they may acquire NFTs of NBA highlights by opening “packs,” which are functionally similar to trading cards. NFTs reflect the pressures of market forces, as well as increased cultural and economic emphasis on marketization, financialization, commodification, and the ubiquity of gambling-like designs and interactions. Furthermore, this study explores tensions present in differing intentions for the NBA Top Shot platform and Discord server, the diffuse nature of user conversations (a nature that disregards topical boundaries), and audience attention toward marketization and investment interests. The commodification of the NBA fan experience illustrates a shared social pressure to more readily think of one’s life, interactions, and consumptive behaviors through the lens of the investor, fostering financial attitudes that normalize instability and encourage risk-taking beyond the scope of a platform where purchase-dependent interactions serve as a source of joy and social experience in a venue representing a perceived electronic gold rush.
Highlights • Rats emit pro-social 50-kHz USV during social play behavior as juveniles. • Reduced social play behavior in highly anxious male and female juvenile rats is accompanied by low amounts of ...pro-social 50-kHz USV. • Blockade of the central AVP system reduces play behavior and pro-social 50-kHz USV. • Synthetic AVP does not further increase natural play behavior or pro-social 50 kHz USV.
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