Is ‘Play’ on Its Way Out?
Is ‘Play’ on Its Way Out?
Introduction
The paper addresses two questions in service of the overall query, “Is ‘play’ on its way out?” The two questions are:
- Do children play less than they used to?
- Why should we be concerned?
Do Children Play Less Than They Used To?
Two research efforts have concluded that children do indeed play less than they used to. Hofferth and Sandberg (cited by Gray, 2011) compared 6 to 8 year old children in 1997 with children of the same age in 1981 and found a substantial decrease in time spent playing in 1997. Clements (2004) asked 830 mothers to compare the amount they played outdoors as children with the amount of time their own children play outdoors. She found that the latter was considerable less than the former.
Clements’ study was based on self-report and respondent recall and concerned only outdoor play, which limits comparability with Hofferth and Sandberg. Also, this writer was unable to find a follow up or a replication of Hofferth’s and Sandberg’s study—other than Entin’s (2011) report in the magazine The Monthly . The magazine report was based on Gray’s (2011) article.
So the answer to the question, “Do children play less than they used to?” is a resounding, “Maybe”.
Why Should We Be Concerned?
Gray (2010) states that children do not play as much as they used to, and he links the decline of play to an increase in later psychopathology in the form of anxiety and depression. The alarming conclusion he reaches is contained in the following.
This article has documented the decline of play and the rise of psychopathology in young people over the past several decades and has described reasons for believing that there is a causal connection between the two. Play, especially social play with other children, serves a variety of developmental functions, all of which promote children’s mental health. In the absence of such play, children fail to acquire the social and emotional skills that are essential for healthy psychological development.
Evidence for the decline in play is thin, as noted in the first section. However, the other side of the relationship, an increase in anxiety (and neuroticism), was well documented by Twenge (2000).
Twenge conducted two meta-analyses. In the first she collected published studies conducted on American college students between 1952 and 1993. To be included in the analysis, study samples had to be students assessed for anxiety and neuroticism on the most popular measures of these traits (e.g. Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and Eysenck’s Personality Questionnaire Neuroticism). The correlations between mean anxiety score and year ranged from .40 to .60, depending on the anxiety or neuroticism measure, indicating a significant increase in anxiety and neuroticism over the years 1952 to 1993.
In Twenge’s second meta-analysis, she collected studies of children between 9 and 17 who were assessed on the Children’s Manifest Anxiety scale (CMAS) between 1954 and 1981. The correlations between CMAS means and year were .58 or above, again indicating a significant increase in anxiety (no measure of neuroticism) over the years 1954 to 1993, which is roughly the same time span as for the college studies. Thus Twenge’s analysis supported the conclusion that anxiety has increased over the years 1952 to 1993.
Gray (2010) took a giant step in linking the alleged decline in play to Twenge’s finding of an increase in anxiety and neuroticism. Arguing a causal relationship, he concluded that play allows the child to feel mastery or control and that low incidence of play means little mastery or control of environment. This lack of mastery due to too little play leads to adult anxiety and neuroticism. It seems that Gray’s giant step took him somewhat beyond the evidence.
However, Gray’s emphasis on the need to experience mastery in childhood does accord with Erikson’s (1963) developmental theory. According to Erikson, the function of play and the reason children do it is to exert control over the environment. It is an ego activity and is especially critical in Erikson’s second and third developmental stages, normally experienced by toddlers and preschool children, respectively. The second stage, which Erikson calls Autonomy versus shame and doubt, is characterized as exploration; the toddler explores and tests his or her impact on the environment. In the third stage, Initiative versus guilt, the preschool child attempts to master and control the environment.
Erikson’s examples are enlightening. He borrows one from Freud, who told of 18 month old boy whose play involves an object tied to a string. The boy would throw the object and then retrieve it by dragging it back with the string. The interpretation is that the object represents the boy’s mother who sometimes leaves him at home but by throwing and retrieving the object he controls when she leaves and when she returns.
Another example concerns a somewhat older child, Tom Sawyer’s friend Ben Rogers. Ben’s behavior (before being conned into doing Tom’s job of painting the fence) illustrates play in the third stage. He whoops at intervals, goes ding-dong-ding in his role as a steamboat, rocks as though imitating the waters’ movement, and yells “stop the stabbord”; in other words, he impersonates the river, the boat and the captain. Mark Twain, author of Tom Sawyer, seems to have been adept at representing the attitude and behavior boy in Erikson’s Stage 3.
The role of play
Most child development specialists would agree that play is important, even though its absence or reduction in childhood probably does not result in mental illness. This leads to questions of how and why play is important.
A significant contribution to the literature on play is a study by Lillard et al. (2012). These authors limit their investigation to “pretend play”, a subset of generic play that has an “as-if” quality (p. 2), such as a block of wood being treated as a cell phone. Following Smith’s (cited by Lillard et al.) explication, the authors distinguish three possible ways that pretend play relates to positive developmental outcomes. The first is “direct causal; i.e., play acts directly on the outcome and is crucial to achieving that outcome. The second is “equifinality”, meaning that pretend play is only one of several routes to the outcome. The third is “epiphenomenal”, that the outcome is due to some other capability and play is a byproduct of that capability. The authors suggest that the first aligns with Vygotsky’s developmental theory and the third with Piaget’s, while the originator of the distinctions subscribes to the second stance.
The bulk of the article by Lillard et al. discusses the published evidence relating play to different outcomes to see if and to what degree it supports any of the three causal views. The outcomes in question include creativity, intelligence, problem solving, reasoning, conservation (understanding that objects retain essential properties after superficial transformations, p. 11), social skills, self regulation and language.
Regarding the first view, direct causality, Lillard et al. argue that if pretend play causes positive outcomes, then strong positive correlations between play and the outcome should be found consistently. If, for example, pretend play promotes reasoning ability, then children who play more will be better at reasoning. There might be additional predictors, such as intelligence, but if play is the important variable, then partialling out intelligence should not reduce the correlation between play and reasoning ability.
If the equifinality position is correct, play would correlate with the outcome but other predictors would also, perhaps to an even greater degree. Play might correlate with language skills, but so too might social skills, perhaps to a higher degree. Interventions that increase both social skills and play might even have an additive effect, leading to greater language skills than an intervention that involved just more play or just involved social skills training.
The epiphenomenon position would be supported if pretend play occurs as a result of some other more primary causal influence. It could happen that play is taken as causal because the real primary cause is overlooked. An example would be of pretend play correlating with creativity, when in fact adult interactions that happen to involve play are the real causal agents behind the correlation.
Lillard et al. summarize their findings as leaning strongly away from a direct causal view and toward either an equifinality or epiphenomenal view, depending on the outcome in question. For example, they found support for the equifinality view when narrative skill was the outcome of interest. Supporting the epiphenomenal position were findings for creativity, intelligence, and conservation outcomes. Findings for reasoning, social skills, and language outcomes could be taken as support for either the equifinality or epiphemomenal position.
Because Jerome Kagan is so highly regarded in the field of child development, it is of interest to consider what he would say if asked to weigh in on the issue. His recent book, The Human Spark (2013) suggests that he would favor the epiphenomenal role of play in the child’s development. Kagan (2013) emphasizes the critical role of parents and caregivers because he believes that it is their interactions with the child that influence the child’s personality and that play as only one kind of interaction. He says:
The most important requirement during the first year is to provide infants with affectionate care that is predictable and to engage them in reciprocal play that involves physical contact, conversation, laughter, and modest surprises in all the sensory modalities. Unexpected events that infants can understand with effort are major sources of brain growth and, therefore, the foundation of cognitive and emotional development. In cases where surrogate care is necessary, parents should spend a few hours observing a few day care centers or homes and pick the one in which most of the infants seem lively and happy (p. 123).
But Kagan also observes that native temperament in addition to caregiver interactions with the child is an important influence on personality. This observation, which recurs throughout his writing, puts him squarely in the equifinality camp. Perhaps, the most important conclusion about play and its role in influencing personality and cognition is that it is unlikely to be a direct cause. This conclusion is directly opposite that of Gray’s (2011), described earlier in the paper.
The importance of play
Even if play is not a direct cause of outcomes in the cognitive and personality domains, it does appear to be an important marker or index of child development. Lifter, Mason and Barton (2012), who have special interest in autism, cite two others in giving reasons for the importance of play.
Play is important for three major reasons: (a) play increases the likelihood of placement and learning in natural, inclusive, less restrictive settings; (b) play is adaptable and can be used in multiple settings as a context for embedding intervention, practicing new skills (e.g., symbolic thinking, motor planning), conducting authentic assessments, and it provides opportunities for social and communicative interactions with peers and adults (McConnell, 2002); and (c) play has predictive value for communication and social skills (Charman et al., 2003) (p. 289).
Casby (2003) concurs with Lifter et al. (2012). He notes that play behavior is often the only performance available for observation of child development, and, “Much can be revealed about the developmental status of an infant, toddler, or young child through the observation, assessment, and evaluation of his or her play” (p. 175). Casby has in fact developed an observation and assessment scheme for determining whether a child is developing “normally” or if he or she might be experiencing developmental delays. Cosby cites evidence for the reliability and validity of his assessment instrument, which addresses four levels of play ranging from early sensorimotor-exploratory play, generally observed around 2 to 4 months of age, through symbolic play, which usually appears around 30 months of age. Casby suggests that the assessed levels of play can serve as criteria/mastery levels for intervention decision-making.
Summary and Conclusion
An article by Gray (2011), which drew the alarming conclusion that too little play in childhood leads to psychopathology in adulthood, sparked a discussion of play and its role in a child’s cognitive and emotional development. Following a description of Gray’s article, the discussion moved to Erikson’s psychosocial developmental levels, which are congruent with one aspect of Gray’s argument—that play is a way the child can manage or control his or her environment. A discussion of the nature of the relationship between play and various cognitive and emotional outcomes followed. It centered on research by Lillard et al. (2012) who concluded that play is probably either one of several influences on an outcome or it is a by-product of a more primary cause of the outcome. Thus, the paper arrived at the conclusion that play is important as an index or marker of a child’s development, but not as a direct cause of the cognitive and emotional outcomes studied.
References
Casby, M.W. (2003). Developmental assessment of play: a model for early intervention. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 24(4), 175-183.
Clements, R. (2004). An investigation of the status of outdoor play. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 5(1), 68-80.
Entin, E. (2011 Oct. 12). All work and no play: why your kids and more anxious, depressed. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/
Erikson, H. E. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.) New York: Norton.
Gray, P. (2011). The decline of play and the rise of psychopathology in children and adolescents. American Journal of Play, 3(4), 443-463.
Kagan, J. (2013). The human spark. New York: Basic Books.
Lifter, K, Mason, E.J., Barton, E.E. (2012). Children’s play: where we have been and where we could go. Journal of Early Intervention,33(4), 281-297.
Lillard, A.S., Lerner, M.D., Hopkins, E.J., Dore, R.G., Smith, E.D., & Palmquist, C.M. (2012). The impact of pretend play on children’s development: a review of the evidence. Psychological Bulletin, Advance online publication, doi: 10.1037/a0029321.
Smith, P.K. 2010). Children and play. West Sussex, England: Wiley-Blackwell.
Twenge, J. M. (2000). The age of anxiety? Birth cohort change in anxiety and neuroticism, 1952-1993. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,79(6), 1007-1021.
