Lev Vygotsky- Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child
Kindle Cloud Reader
How play arises in development- origins and genesis?
Role of play as a developmental activity?
Is play the leading form of activity at this stage or the one most noticed?
Vygotsky says play is not the predominant form but the leading source of development.
Defining the value of play as the source of pleasure it provides the child is insufficient to ascertaining its true meaning because:
Other sources of functional pleasure (ex. sucking a pacifier) provide equal or greater satisfaction
Not all games are pleasurable experiences for the child, particularly when the outcome leads to dissatisfaction (loss)
However excluding pleasure from play leads to [over] intellectualization, also incorrect assessment of value/role and a problem among many theories of play (who/what is Vygotsky's referring to here?).
We need to consider the child’s needs beyond intellectual functions that move the child from one stage to the next (lower to higher, Piaget).
“Without a consideration of the child’s needs, inclinations, incentives, and motives to act- as research has demonstrated- there will never be any advance from one stage to the next. I think that an analysis of play should begin with these particular aspects.”
Advance to next stage accompanied by an abrupt change in motives and incentives according to V.
Understanding the incentives is key to understanding uniqueness of play.
Needs and incentives are expressed spontaneously in/thru playful activity.
Immediate (instant) gratification is desired, -the younger the child, the shorter the intervals between motivation and action.
“I think that if there were no development in preschool years of needs that cannot be realized immediately, there would be no play. Experiments show that the development of play is arrested both in intellectually underdeveloped children and those who are affectively immature.”
“...play is invented at the point when unrealizable tendencies appear in development.”
“..., a child over three will shoe his own particular conflicting tendencies; on the one hand, many long-lasting needs and desires will appear that cannot be met at once but that nevertheless are not passed over like whims; on the other hand, the tendency towards immediated realization of desires is almost completely retained.”
“Henceforth play is such that the explanation for it must always be that it is the imaginary, illusory realization of unrealizable desires.”
Imagination- not present in young and in animals because, according to V.it is/was viewed as a specific form of conscious activity available only to humans...perhaps debateable today) - as a function of consciousness arises out of action.
If play is ‘imagination in action’ in children, than in youth and adults ‘imagination’ is play without action.
Play does not occur as a simple response to each and every unsatisfied desire because children do not only respond only with individual but also with general tendencies. According to V. this move towards the generalized response increases with age (development).
According to V. play is the fulfillment of wishes that are themselves generalized affects, but this does not mean the child understands what those generalized effects are (where they originate).
Children play without realizing the motives of what they are playing. The motives remain abstract and are only discernible once the child has grown to adolescence and able to reason.
V. distinguishes play from other activity in children as “...in play a child creates an imaginary situation.” V. states this is a new POV because the imaginary was in previous theories assigned a secondary, one of many, role in play. He places it at the front...in part to avoid the over intellectualization by: 1. defining play as ‘symbolic action’. V. states play is never this; 2. limiting play to a cognitive process which neglects the circumstances (context); 3. does not address how imaginary situation assists the child’s development.
“What does a child’s behavior in an imaginary situation mean?” -the development of games with rules
Examining how children play games with rules offers a way to examine earlier forms of play where the ‘rules’ are less clear. There are always rules of play.
Ex. Sully’s observation children can make the imaginary and reality coincide in play by the rules and how they engage with them (sisters playing sisters). V. has found it is easier to evoke this imaginary-reality play in children than in adults.
“ The vital difference in play, as Sully describes it, is that the child in playing tries to be a sister. In life the child behaves without thinking that she is her sister’s sister. … In the game of sisters playing at “sisters,” however, they are both concerned with displaying their sisterhood; the fact that two sisters decided to play sisters makes them both acquire rules of behavior.”
“Only actions that fit the(se) rules are acceptable in the play situation.”
“What passes unnoticed by the child in real life becomes a rule of behavior in play.”
V. goes on to ask a question (relevant to the artist in the studio):
“If play, then, were structured in such a way that there were no imaginary situation, what would remain? The rules would remain. The child would begin to behave in this situation as the situation dictates.”
Play in general
There are rules stemming from the imaginary situation in play; the ‘freedom’ of play is thus illusory.
Studying games with rules played by older children revealed the rules of the game also stemmed from the imaginary situation. In other words, all the rules of a game come from the imaginary situation because all games played contain an imaginary situation.
Rules limit the possibility of actions by ‘ruling out’ certain actions. [ex. chess and the rules of movement associated with each figure]
V. states the development of play in children moves from overt imaginary situations with covert rules to games with overt rules and covert imaginary situations.
Thesis: “All games with imaginary situations are simultaneously games with rules, and vice versa.”
“What is specific to rules followed in games or play?”
V. found an answer in Piaget’s study of the development of the child and moral rules.
Two moralities -distinct sources/categories for the development of rules of behavior
(playing games): 1. acquired directly from adult/parent -thou shalt not; 2. acquired thru
mutual collaboration or independent from adult/parent -agreed upon code of conduct.
Rules of games tend to fall in the second category. Piaget termed these ‘rules of self-restraint and self-determination’.
Moral realism- according to Piaget the first category produces moral realism - a confusion between moral and physical rules, ex. lighting a match a second time versus prohibition from lighting a match at all; the child’s attitude is “all ‘don’ts’ are the same”. But the attitude is different to the rules s/he makes (category 2).
Role of play and its influence on child development: “enormous”.
Play with an imaginary situation is new, impossible for a child under three, and frees the child from situational constraints according to V.
Lewin- “things dictate to the child what he must do” the situational constraints of this in a young child mean that he or she cannot act other than how the situation is perceived...the motivation factors he or she encounters in the moment. In older children, in situations of play he or she can act other than as the situation dictates….they’ve moved beyond being motivated by their perception of the situation. ‘Things’ are no longer the motivating force. But this occurs over a stretch of time...developmentally, the ability to separate what is seen and what is meant, word from object. [Think literal versus figurative.]
“...in play activity thought is separated from objects, and action arises from ideas rather than from things.”
Play is a transitional stage for the child to separate the object from the meaning of the word (for the object)...playing with sticks….when this occurs the relationship to reality is radically altered, structure of perception changes.
Difference between symbolism and play. Children cannot yet address objects symbolically, only playfully. The properties of an object are maintained, ex. What makes a stick a horse, but meaning is inverted.
“... in play the child creates the structure meaning/object...”
Meaning is severed from object, but not in real action where they remain fused.
“This is the transitional nature of play, which makes it an intermediary between the purely situational constraints of early childhood and thought that is totally free of real situations.”
Play- school age- converted to internal process, such as internalized speech, logical memory, abstract thought.
“In play a child unconsciously and spontaneously makes use of the fact that he can separate meaning from an object without knowing he is doing it;”
Creation of an imaginary situation is “...the first effect of the child’s emancipation from
situational constraints.”
“The first paradox of play is that the child operates with an alienated meaning in a real situation. The second is that in play he adopts the line of least resistance, i.e. he does what he feels like most because play is connected with pleasure. At the same time he learns to follow the line of greatest resistance; for by subordinating themselves to rules, children renounce what they want, since subjection to rule and renunciation of spontaneous impulsive action constitute the path to maximum pleasure in play.”
“Why does the child not do what he wants, spontaneously and at once? Because to observe the rules of play structure promises much greater pleasure from the game than the gratification of an immediate impulse. In other words, ...recalling the words of Spinoza: ‘An effect can be overcome only be a stronger effect.’”
Groos- a child’s will originates and is developed through interaction the rules of play… between following the rules and acting spontaneously the child engages with conflict by acting counter to his or her desires. Here the child learns self-control, willpower as a means to maximum pleasure.
Such rules leading to maximum effect (per Spinoza) are internal rules; self-restraint and self-determination in the words of Piaget and not physical laws (or those of the first category ‘thou shalt’).
In short, play gives the child a new form of desires, i.e. teaches him to desire by relating his desires to a fictitious “I” -to his role in the game and its rules. Therefore, a child’s greatest achievements are possible in play - achievements that tomorrow will become his average level of real action and his morality.”
From action/meaning to meaning/action
How the child is liberated from actions in play.
ex. finger movements representative of eating.
A child is able to do more than he is able to understand.
Just as the inversion of object/meaning occurs with (age) development, so to does the action/meaning to meaning/action.
Meaning of action is basic, but not neutral.
Pivots- actions or objects to replace the ‘real’ ones in the transitional phase.
Movement in the ‘field of meaning’ allows replacement of one object or action for another; predominates in play where the field is ‘abstract’ but the method of movement is situational and concrete.
Play is the inverse of the child’s daily behavior; in play action is subordinate to meaning whereas in real life action dominates meaning.
For V. play is not the predominant form of a (preschool age) child’s activity because:
“To behave in a real situation as in an illusory one is the first sign of delirium.”
Play behavior in real life is only seen in the type of games (ex. sisters playing “sisters”) where they are playing at what they are actually doing. (“..., evidently creating associations that facilitate the execution of an unpleasant action.”)
Suggesting otherwise V. states would be to support theory that the only the search for pleasure is the requirement of a child’s life...it is not.
But it is also not guided only by meaning, the subordination to rules- this is only possible in play.
“...play also creates the zone of proximal development of the child.”
“In play a child is always above his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form; in play it is as though the child were attempting to jump above the level of his normal behavior.”
play-development and instruction-development relationships
“Play is the source of development and creates the zone of proximal development. ...the highest level of preschool development.”
“The child moves forward essentially through play activity. Only in this sense can play be termed a leading activity that determines the child’s development.”
How does play develop?
Imaginary situation with which the child starts is a reproduction of a real situation close to the child.
“Play is more nearly recollection than imagination -that is, it is more memory in action than a novel imaginary situation. As play develops, we see a movement toward the conscious realization of its purpose.”
“..., play is purposeful activity for a child.”
“In short, the purpose decides the game; it justifies all the rest.”
Purpose determines the child’s attitude…
The rules emerge with/thru play/game, becoming more demanding as it goes….if they didn’t it would become dull, and the game/play would end. What was originally secondary or undeveloped at the beginning through the process come, at the end, to the fore.
What changes in a child's behavior can be attributed to play?
The ‘illusory freedom’ of starting from the child’s own “I”
“A child learns to consciously recognize his own actions and becomes aware that every object has a meaning.”
Means of developing abstract thought thru creating imaginary situations, or for V., leads to actions dividing work and play, a fundamental fact.
“I should like to mention just one other aspect: play is really a particular feature of preschool age. …”
“All examinations of the essence of play have shown that in play a new relationship is created between the semantic and the visible -that is between situations in thought and real situations.”