Perspectives on play: Motivations and constraints across lifespan and species

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Few phenomena in childhood are as compelling - and mystifying - as play. While play is widely held to be beneficial for learning and development, the exact mechanisms are unknown. Play is especially perplexing when one considers its ubiquity across development and evolution against the heterogeneity of behaviors that we recognize as play. This symposium features work from a diverse group of emerging and established researchers in the United States and internationally. Presenters will discuss work across ages (infants through six-year-olds) and species (including non-primate) to integrate insights from behavioral, neural, and computational investigations on the factors that underlie play. By examining how organisms at play flexibly adjust their behaviors in real time to achieve diverse goals, this symposium offers new insights on how the apparent frivolity of play can contribute to learning and development.

Paper 1 examines infants’ real-time, spontaneous locomotor play and asks how infants consider locomotor costs and their social and physical environments when deciding what to do. Paper 2 looks at communicative signals employed during social play in animals (both primate and non-primate), focusing on how such signals vary with context when playing with conspecifics of different ages and even members of other species. Paper 3 investigates the efficiency of goal-directed action in children’s exploratory play (ages 3-6 years), finding that in play, children deliberately perform arbitrary actions and incur unnecessary costs, despite recognizing and avoiding such costs in non-playful contexts. A leading computational neuroscientist will discuss the studies’ relationship to computational models of learning and decision making.

Sub Unit

• Methods, History, Theory

Chair

• Junyi Chu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Discussant

• Natalia Velez, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• Motivations and constraints: Factors that shape infant locomotor play - Presenting Author: Justine Hoch, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Christina Hospodar, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Karen E Adolph, New York University

• Social play in non-human animals: functions and communicative strategies - Presenting Author: Elisabetta Palagi, University of Pisa

• Exploratory play goes beyond rational action and efficient search - Presenting Author: Junyi Chu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Non-Presenting Author: Laura E Schulz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)