The Development in Play Behaviour Has Been Described as a Series of Stages. Present the Evidence for This and Evaluate with Reference to the Development of the Notion of the 'self'.

In this essay I am going to discuss the characteristics of play starting from the difficulty of the definition to how it is now commonly described. I will also look at how many theorist believe play develops. Many theorist believe they know what the play types are and at what stage these play type may manifest. I am also going to look at how these theorist manage to talk abot the development of play with at mentioning the development of self and fits in with play. And finally how gender identity affects play and how it is developed.

There have been many attempts to define play. Fagan (1974) made a distinction between two different types of definition a functional and the structural approach. The functionalist approach suggests that play has no external goals so if the end goal is to eat seek comfort etc then this behaviour is not play. How ever if there was no goal at all then children would on play the play because the enjoy it, so the functionalist approach has led to a definition of play where there is no obvious benefit. Many theorists would argue that children get benefits from play but it is still unclear what they are. The structural approach tries to describe behaviour that only occurs during play, or behaviours performed playfully these are play behaviours. The main example would be play signals such as the 'open mouth play face' for monkey and in humans this is laughter which looks a lot like the 'open mouth play face' of monkeys. These signals are seen to be most useful when in rough and tumble play as it signals that there is no aggressive intention in the play. Not all play has such clearly defined signals, some times play is made up of behaviours common to other situations such as running just running may not be play but a change in the way of running like taking bigger steps or stops and starts but the main characteristic is repetition. These two approaches are not opposite to each other as in many places they over lap.

There is another approach that incorporates the other two approaches this is play criterion approach. In this approach there are five criteria to measure play by, these are how the flexibility of the play is structured, the variation of from and context and how it changes and evolves. A positive effect is if the play is enjoyable, is there an element of pretend play and intrinsic motivation just to do it because you want to there are no external rule or social demands. This approach does not try for a short definition of play behaviour, but acknowledges that there is a continuation from non play to play behaviour however there is a commonly used definition of play it involves enjoyment, flexibility and pretence.

Researchers have identified a number of different types of play. The first of these is the physical play which covers rough and tumble and chase play, there is fantasy and sociodramatic play, this is pretend play and basic role-play and language play this covers early attempts at poems . Piaget (1951) was one of the first to suggest a developmental sequence to play; first comes practical play this moves through to symbolic play (fantasy/pretend) to games with rules. Piaget also suggested that there was an over lap between all of the stages. Smilansky (1968) came up with a four fold theory similar to Piaget's theory. There is functional play which as just the same as practical play, then comes constructive play this is making something i.e., Lego building or vehicle, then dramatic play would come next this is just the same as Piaget's symbolic stage. Then last stage would be game with rules.

Anyone that has seen school children at break time have seen physical activity play this is often done without other object. Pellegrini and Smith (1998)

suggested that there are three developmental phases to physical activity play the first phase is 'rhythmical stereotypes' bodily movement that are common with babies such as leg kicking and arm waving, then at preschool age this moves on to the phase of lot of 'exercise play' running around jumping climbing, this kind of body movement can be done with other children or on they're own, this phase overlaps and finally develops into rough and tumble play which is common at primary school age.

For many theorist rough and tumble is seen as a completely separate stage in the development of play. There has been some postulation that rough and tumble play may have origins in the way adults play this toddlers tickling throwing and crawling after them. Actual play fighting starts at about 3 years old and has a significant part to play right up until adolescence. This kind of play normally has a dominance aspect to it with one child struggling for the superior position within a social group. These episodes generally involve pushing clasping and kicking, chasing play is also normally categorised as rough and tumble play. This stage dose not end during childhood this stage changes and develops right up until the child reaches the teen year. All the way though life play fighting is always seen as very different from real fighting, signals such as smiling and laughing tell both parties involved that it is just play where as real fighting portrays different signals like frowning and other displeased facial expressions. Even young children can tell the difference as one study carried out by Costabile et al (1991) shows. A film was shown to some children between the ages of 8 and 11 the children were then asked of the episode of fighting they saw on the film was play fighting or real fighting and why they thought this. Most said that "it didn't last long enough to be a real fight", "they didn't hit each other hard", "it wasn't a real fight because they weren't angry" and a crowd didn't form. This study also showed that it doesn't have to be a film of a fight in this culture it is easy to tell a play fight from around the world.

The fantasy play begins at about 12-15 months old. Early pretend is normally directed at the child themselves, pretending to sleep on a cloth instead of a pillow in bed. Later on in development decentration take place incorporating other in to the pretend activity such as parents giving them an empty cup. At around 24 months a child can pretend with a stuffed toy like having a teddy's bear's picnic and having all the bears eat for themselves and have conversations with them. Much early pretend play relies heavily on realistic object such as cups, spoons etc. I have been unable to find any discussion on why this might be so. At the age of 2 most children choose to play with realistic objects and can pretend well but it is not until about 3 when children adopt decontextualised play (play with less realistic object or no object at all) this can happen spontaneously. A case study by Overton and Jackson