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November 2017
David Whitebread & Dave Neale, Hanne Jensen, Claire Liu & S. Lynneth Solis,
Emily Hopkins & Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Jennifer Zosh
The role of play in
children’s development:
a review of the evidence
White paper
ISBN: 978-87-999589-3-1
Table of contents
2
Table of contents
Introduction • 4
Physical play • 6
Play with objects • 10
Symbolic play • 14
Pretend play • 18
Games with rules • 24
Closing thoughts • 28
References • 34
This white paper is published in 2017 and
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.09)
ISBN: 978-87-999589-3-1
Suggested citation
Whitebread, D., Neale, D., Jensen, H., Liu, C., Solis,
S.L., Hopkins, E., Hirsh-Pasek, K. Zosh, J. M. (2017). The
role of play in children’s development: a review of the
evidence (research summary). The LEGO Foundation, DK.
4
Introduction
There is a considerable body of research which is
indicative, relating children’s play and aspects of their
learning and development. This evidence includes
work in evolutionary and developmental psychology,
anthropology, neuroscience and educational studies.
However, while researchers in these elds have
hypothesised about how play might enhance child
outcomes, much of this evidence merely establishes
associations rather than rm, causal relationships. In
fact, there is little or no conclusive evidence regarding
possible explanatory mechanisms.
With this white paper, we set out to move the study
of children’s play and development forward, urging
researchers to address the psychological processes
involved in playful behaviour and the mechanisms by
which they might enhance learning. We propose that
this can be best achieved by focusing on the specic
psychological characteristics of playful experiences,
set out in the related white paper by Zosh et al. (2017)
and the specic types of play children engage in.
Following a brief overview of the general, indicative
evidence, this white paper reviews research which has
been conducted in relation to the ve types of play
proposed by Whitebread (2012), namely physical play,
play with objects, symbolic/semiotic play, pretend
play and games with rules. It concludes by examining
theoretical links between the ve characteristics of
playful experiences and the types of play reported here,
and by suggesting mechanisms emerging from current
research that could form the focus of future research.
The general indicative evidence of a relation between
children’s play, their learning and development has
come from the following disciplines:
Evolutionary psychology
• Bruner (1972) argued that as more and more
complex animals evolved, the length of biological
immaturity increased, facilitating a related
increase in learning and in the amount and the
variety of dierent types of play - physical play
(mostly ‘rough-and-tumble’) in mammals, ‘play
with objects’ in primates and ‘symbolic’ play,
including pretence, in humans. His proposed
mechanisms included humans’ enhanced
representational abilities (language, drawing etc.)
and ‘exibility of thought’.
• Pellegrini (2009), in a review of evolutionary work
on play, concluded that, in animals and humans,
play contexts allow individuals to focus on ‘means’
rather than ‘ends’, allowing exploratory or iterative
play in which they ‘exaggerate, modify, abbreviate
or change the sequence of behaviours, endlessly
repeat slight variations of behaviours, and so on’.
Developmental psychology
• Much of the research on play within developmental
psychology has been inspired by the theoretical
writings of Vygotsky (1978). During play, when
it is spontaneous and child-initiated, he argued,
children exercise control over their own activity,
set themselves appropriate challenges, and so
create their own ‘zone of proximal development’
within which learning is most powerfully
enhanced. Karpov (2005) reviewed the work of
neo-Vygotskians supporting the notion that, in
play, children are required to regulate their own
behavior, making it a signicant factor in their
development of self-regulation.
Introduction
5
Introduction
• A number of studies reviewed demonstrated
children being able to perform tasks in play at
signicantly higher levels than in non-playful
contexts (e.g. a study of 3-7-year-old children
‘standing sentry’ by Manuilenko, 1975).
• Tamis-LeMonda and Bornstein (1989)
demonstrated that infant habituation (an
established measure of speed of processing
strongly related to cognitive development)
predicted the amount of pretend play individuals
engaged in as young children.
• Bornstein (2006) reviewed evidence of the
universality of pretend play (although with cultural
variations) and inter-relationships between the
complexity of this type of play and children’s
emotional well-being.
• Whitebread (2010) reviewed a range of studies,
including an observational study of 3-5-year-olds
in 32 preschool settings, providing evidence that
self-regulatory behaviours were most commonly
observed in children during collaborative, child-
initiated play.
Anthropology
• Gray (2009), in a review of anthropological studies
of extant hunter-gatherer societies, reported
the unfettered, playful lives of children in these
cultural groups, the context in which humans
evolved over tens of thousands of years until the
very recent evolutionary past (c.10-12,000 BC).
He argued that humans have evolved to learn
through playful behaviour, and in a further study
(Gray, 2012), he revealed a strong relationship
between the decline of play opportunities for
children in the USA over the last half century and
an alarming increase in child psychopathology.
Neuroscience
• Pellis & Pellis (2009) reviewed their extensive
research, spanning over 30 years, of play in simple
mammals, mainly mice and rats. This consists
in physical ‘rough and tumble’ and in play with
objects. Their studies have provided evidence of
impact on brain development in specic areas of
the pre-frontal cortex, and of poor levels of social
competence in animals deprived of these play
opportunities.
Educational studies
• Diamond, Barnett, Thomas & Munro (2007)
and Hyson, Copple & Jones (2007), in their
reviews of the Tools of the Mind curriculum,
found that children attending pre-schools using
this play-based curriculum achieved higher
scores on measures of executive function, skills
underpinning self-regulatory abilities, than
children attending regular, instruction-based pre-
schools.
• Barker, Semenov, Michaelson, Provan, Snyder
& Munakata (2014) showed that the amount of
less-structured time in 6-7 year-olds’daily lives,
including free play alone and with others, social
outings, sightseeing and visiting museums & zoos,
predicted their cognitive self-regulation.
• Marcon (2002), found that playful learning in pre-
schools in the USA was associated with better
short and long-term academic, motivational and
well-being outcomes by the end of primary school.
• Sylva, Melhuish, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford &
Taggart (2004), in a cohort study of 3,000 children
in the UK, showed that extended play-based pre-
school experience (i.e. 3 years) was advantageous
to children from disadvantaged households in
relation to their academic and social development.
• Darling-Hammond & Snyder (1992), in a study
of 50 ‘play-based kindergartens’ and 50 ‘early
learning centres’ in Germany, found that by
Grade 4 the children from the former were more
advanced in reading, maths and social/emotional
adjustment in school.
So, as we can see, there is a substantial body of
research, across a number of disciplines, arguing
for the importance of play in human development,
and, in some cases, proposing intriguing potential
mechanisms that might explain the role of play in
children’s cognitive, emotional and social learning. The
following sections review the evidence in relation to
specic types of play, and begin to set out an agenda
for play research going forward, in order to examine
these various hypothetical psychological processes.
6
Physical play
This type of play is the earliest to evolve and can be
observed in most, if not all, mammals, and arguably
some reptiles and amphibians. In human children it
includes activity play (e.g. jumping, climbing, dancing,
skipping, bike riding and ball play), ne-motor practice
(e.g. sewing, colouring, cutting, junk modelling and
manipulating action toys and construction toys) and
what is usually referred to as ‘rough-and-tumble’ (play
ghting with friends, siblings or caregivers).
There have been 5 signicant reviews of research
and theory in this area exploring evidence of
causal relationships between play and aspects of
development, and we have found 13 empirical papers
which are suciently rigorous to be included in this
review. The reviews are those by Bjorklund & Brown
(1998) on rough-and-tumble and physical activity
play, Pellegrini & Smith (1998) on physical activity play,
Pellegrini & Bohn (2005) on play during school recess
or playtime, Pellis & Pellis (2009) on rough-and-tumble
play in simple mammals and Brussoni et al. (2015)
on ‘risky outdoor play’. Both in these reviews, and in
the various empirical studies, results are reported
related to development in cognition and academic
achievement, social competence and popularity, social
status and dominance, gender dierences, emotional
awareness and self-regulation. Studies in this area also
incorporated physical games with rules, and contrasted
physical play with play with objects (toys) and pretence.
We found no signicant studies of ne motor play.
In a signicant, but purely theoretical paper, Bjorklund
& Brown (1998) argued that dierent types of physical
play could contribute to gender dierences in spatial
abilities, for example boys might engage in more
hand-eye coordination or estimating trajectories of
objects. Pellegrini & Smith (1998), in a review of the
empirical evidence in the same year, concluded that
there was evidence that exercise play was linked to
Physical play
motor development and some tenuous evidence
that exercise play may also be related to cognitive
performance. In a more recent review Brussoni et al.
(2015) concluded that ‘the evidence suggests overall
positive eects of risky outdoor play on a variety
of health indicators and behaviours in children aged
3-12 years’. However, they pointed out that these
conclusions were based on ‘very low’ to ‘moderate’
quality evidence.
Amongst particular studies focusing on physical
activity play, Colwell & Lindsey (2005), in a study with
4-6-year-olds, focused on outcomes, in same-sex
and mixed-sex play, for peer acceptance and teacher
ratings of social competence. For girls, but not for
boys, same-sex physical activity play was associated
with these outcomes. Becker et al. (2014) used
accelerometers to assess preschool children’s level of
physical activity and found a medium level correlation
(0.46) with cognitive self-regulation, measured using
the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders Task (HTKS) test.
There was also a signicant indirect eect of active
play on maths and literacy scores via the HTKS
test, leading to the conclusion that self-regulation
mediates a relationship between active play and school
achievement. However, Lehrer, Petrakos & Venkatesh
(2014), in a study with 6-7-year-olds, failed to nd any
signicant relationships between the amount of out-
of-school time they engaged in active physical play and
measures of school achievement, ‘adaptive’ behaviour
and creativity.
As regards rough-and-tumble play, Bjorklund & Brown
(1998) suggested that it facilitates development of
social cognition through the coding and decoding
of social cues or signals. While, in their review of the
empirical evidence in the same year, Pellegrini & Smith
(1998) found minimal support for this hypothesis,
more recent studies have reported evidence in its
Physical play
support. Pellis & Pellis (2009), for example, reviewed
a series of studies with simple mammals, mainly
rats, showing that ‘there is a mechanism by which
experiences accrued during play ghting can improve
social competence’. Similarly, Brussoni et al. (2015), in
their very recent review of empirical research on ‘risky
outdoor play’, reported studies showing relationships
between rough-and-tumble play and enhanced levels
of social competence. In one study, for example,
moderate to large positive correlations, for popular
children and for boys (but not for rejected children
and girls), were found between rough-and-tumble
play and higher interpersonal cognitive problem-
solving scores. Colwell & Lindsey (2005) also found
these kinds of dierential relationships according to
gender. They reported that, for boys (but not girls),
same-sex rough-and-tumble play was associated
with same-sex peer acceptance and teachers’ ratings
of social competence. Interestingly, however, boys’
rough-and-tumble play with mixed-sex peers was
negatively associated with peer acceptance and
teachers’ ratings of social competence. Fletcher, St.
George & Freeman (2012) developed a new measure
of rough-and-tumble play between fathers and 3-4
year olds and investigated its relation to scores on
the Strengths and Diculties Questionnaire (SDQ).
They reported negative correlations of father-child
rough-and-tumble play with father reports of SDQ
conduct and peer problems, with mother reports
of emotional problems, and with both mother- and
father-reported total problems scores. In a subsequent
study, they have recently repeated this nding and also
showed that this relationship is particular to rough-
and-tumble, and does not arise from play with toys (St
George, Fletcher & Palazzi, 2016).
8
Summary
The evidence base for conclusions on physical play is not extensive. In addition to the studies
reviewed here, we found a further 8 studies which were mostly small scale, exploratory case
studies. This adds up to little more than 20 studies, and the majority of these are with quite
small samples of less than a hundred children.
• there is good evidence that physically active play provides children with exercise and the
consequent health benets;
• there seems to be reasonable evidence associating physical play of various kinds with
academic progress and cognitive self-regulation, and with social competence;
• there is some evidence that, for boys, rough-and-tumble play supports the
development of their social competence and emotional awareness and has possible
indirect eects on academic progress;
• there is evidence that unstructured breaks from cognitive tasks improve learning and
attention, though it is unclear whether physical play contributes to this eect beyond
simply taking a break and, for example, talking with friends.
Play during school recess
A nal theme of research in this area has focused
on play in school recess or playtime, outside in
the playground, although a signicant issue in this
research has been whether any relationships with
developmental outcomes arise from the physical
activity involved or from the break from academic work
and the opportunities for social interaction.
Thus, in their review of this area, Pellegrini & Bohn
(2005) conclude that ‘unstructured breaks from
demanding cognitive tasks seem to facilitate school
learning, as well as more general social competence
and adjustment to school.’ In support of this
conclusion, they cite a number of Pellegrini’s earlier
studies. For example, in a study of 5-9-year-olds’
playground behaviour, Pellegrini, Huberty & Jones
(1995) found that children’s attentiveness improved
after recess, but physical activity did not seem to
play an important role in this, as recess with limited
opportunity for physical activity was found to have
the same eect. Similarly, in a year-long study of
playground games with rules (ball games, chase,
and jumping or singing games) during 5-6-year-old
children’s rst year in school, they concluded that it
was the social interaction with peers during recess that
was linked to school success, in terms of academic
outcomes (Pellegrini, Kato, Blatchford & Baines, 2002).
Physical play
9
A range of open questions remain, some of which have
been touched upon in the existing studies, which need
to be addressed by future research:
• the unique contribution of physical play. It is very
dicult to isolate the purely physical nature of
physical play. This type of play often involves social
interaction of various kinds, playing with rules,
and, undoubtedly, when children are engaged in
physical activity they are also often engaged in
pretence;
• the mechanisms by which physical play
contributes to cognitive self-regulation,
attentiveness and other aspects of cognitive
development;
Physical play
• the interactions with gender, suggesting that
what appear to be physically similar activities can
have dierential impacts on children depending on
other aspects of their development;
• the consequences of changes in physical play
as children grow up. It is notable that the vast
majority of studies in this area are with quite
young children and, as children grow up, physical
play tends to transform into sports and games
which are arguably less playful. The consequences
of this, possibly accelerated by the emphasis
on sports in schools, remain an entirely open
question, as does the potential benets of
holding onto the playfulness of young children’s
physical play as they move into adolescence and
adulthood.
Play with objects
10
Play with objects
This second type of play, which is also widely
observed in primates, concerns children’s developing
explorations of the world and the objects they nd
within it. It also has interesting and important links to
physical play – particularly in ne motor development
and pretence when it involves building models of real
or imaginary objects and creatures, and imagining a
scenario or narrative.
Play with objects begins as soon as infants can grasp
and hold on to them; early investigative behaviours
include mouthing/biting, rotating while looking,
rubbing/stroking, hitting and dropping. This might be
described as ‘sensori-motor’ play when the child is
exploring how objects and materials feel and behave.
From around 18-24 months, toddlers begin to arrange
objects, which gradually develops into sorting and
classifying activities. By the age of 4 years, building,
making and constructing behaviours emerge.
While there have been no systematic reviews published
in this area, there has been a fair amount of empirical
study. A number of key theoretical contributions also
underpin the empirical work in relation to this type of
play. First, it is in play with objects that it is claimed that
young children start to develop their representational
abilities. This suggestion was rst made by Vygotsky
(1978) and has been further elaborated, for example,
by Stroud (1995), who argues that, once children begin
to build models of real objects, their play becomes
representational and serves as an introduction
to symbolisation:
“...the blocks themselves become
symbols for other objects, just
as printed letters and words are
symbols for objects and ideas.”
(Stroud, 1995, p. 9)
Second, Vygotsky also argued that play of this type
is particularly related to the development of thinking,
reasoning and problem-solving strategies. This
suggestion was particularly taken up by Bruner (1972)
who argued that a primary function of play during human
children’s long period of immaturity was to support the
development of their ‘exibility of thought’.
Object play and problem-solving
A major spur to empirical investigation of play with
objects was the seminal study conducted by Bruner
exploring this hypothesis with colleagues. In his study
of play with objects and problem-solving (Sylva,
Bruner and Genova, 1976) two groups of matched
3-5-year-olds were presented with a practical problem
to solve. Beforehand, however, one group were given
the opportunity to play with the objects involved,
while the other group were ‘taught’ how to use the
objects in ways which would help solve the problem.
The results, perhaps surprisingly, appeared to support
the hypothesis, revealing that the children who had
the experience of playing beforehand with the objects
were more inventive in devising strategies to solve the
problem and persevered longer if their initial attempts
did not work, ultimately leading to higher levels of full
or partial success.
While this study was the subject of a number of
methodological criticisms, it has been replicated on
a number of occasions. In a study with 4-year-olds,
for example, Smith & Dutton (1979) reported data
showing that for some types of problem-solving, play
experience and instruction can be equally eective,
but for more challenging problems requiring creative
and innovative approaches, play with objects appeared
to be superior as a learning context, compared to
instructional approaches. A study by Pellegrini and
Gustafson (2005), also concerned with object play, in
which observational data was collected of 3 to 5-year-
olds over an entire school year, demonstrated that the
amount of playful exploration, construction and tool use
11
Play with objects
in which children engaged predicted their subsequent
performance on a problem-solving task very similar to
that used in Bruner’s original experiment.
Object play and language
A group of studies have exploited the advantages of
longitudinal designs in investigating the impact of
particular play experiences on language development.
These studies have also commonly compared the
impact of purely functional object play with that of
pretence using objects. Ungerer & Sigman (1984), for
example, carried out an observational longitudinal
study of play with toys with infants aged 13.5 and 22
months. At the younger age, playing with objects in
a conventional, functional way predicted language
scores at 22 months, but at 22 months only pretend
play with objects related to language. This suggests
the possibility of a developmental trend in play with
objects and language, where more functional forms of
object play may help lay the foundations for language
development, along the lines suggested by Stroud,
then pretend play extends this as children enter
toddlerhood. A longitudinal study by Lyytinen, Laakso,
Poikkeus & Rita (1999) with 171 children aged 14, 18 and
24 months conrmed this view, showing that, when the
children played alone, functional and combinatorial play
with objects did not relate to language development,
but pretend play with objects did.
An earlier observational study by Pellegrini (1980) with
5 to 6-year-olds also showed a similar pattern, with
the amount of construction play children engaged in
being signicantly correlated with their pre-reading,
language and writing abilities, but not as strongly
as their pretend play. In contrast, however, a small
longitudinal study by Hanline, Milton & Phelps (2010),
with just 29 children over three years between the
ages of 5 and 8 years, found no signicant relationship
between children’s block building abilities and their
mathematics scores, but a signicant relationship with
reading scores. More recently, Whitebread, Jameson &
Basilio (2015) report two studies exploring the impact
of object play on children’s writing. In these studies,
6-7-year-old children were given the opportunity to
play with a ‘story sack’ containing dolls and objects
related to a particular story, and 5 to 10-year-olds
undertook a construction task with LEGO® bricks as
preparation for various genres of writing. The results
in both studies showed that the children wrote with
greater engagement and enthusiasm, and higher
levels of creativity, after play with objects experiences
(in which there was also, however, a clear pretence
element) than when they did not have this opportunity.
Play with objects, math and spatial abilities
Studies of play with objects and development in
mathematical abilities, in contrast to Hanline et al.’s
result, have also shown positive results. In a small
longitudinal study with 24 children over a 2 year period,
from the ages of 5 to 7 years, Pellegrini (1992) reported
that object play in recess signicantly predicted their
rst-grade school achievement, even when controlling
for kindergarten achievement, and particularly in
maths. Nath & Szücs (2014), in a study with 7-year-
olds, have also recently reported a positive relationship
between abilities on a LEGO construction task and
children’s mathematics performance (although, as this
is a correlation, no causal relationship can be imputed).
This is, however, one of a very few studies investigating
the mechanisms by which play with objects might
impact upon development. Their analysis showed
that the relationship between construction and maths
abilities was mediated by visuo-spatial memory.
Yet other studies have shown relationships between
children’s puzzle play from 2 to 4 years of age and
their spatial ability at 4 years old (Levine, Ratli,
Huttenlocher & Cannon, 2012), play with objects
and self-regulatory abilities among 4-year-olds (St
George, Fletcher & Palazzi, 2016), and 3 to 5-year-olds’
perceptions of tasks with objects as playful and their
level of involvement and emotional well-being (Howard
& Mcinnes, 2013).
12
Summary
• theoretical arguments have been developed, and have been supported by
some empirical studies, linking play with objects with the development of
representational abilities, reasoning and problem-solving strategies;
• a range of studies have provided reasonable evidence of links between play with
objects with the development of language, maths and spatial skills;
• however, while some points have been established, some results are contradictory,
and the usual range of methodological limitations of small or purely correlational
studies are present. It is also the case that, overwhelmingly, studies of play with
objects have been with young children under the age of 7 years.
Once again, a range of open questions remain. Some
have been touched upon in the existing studies, but all
need further investigation:
• the nature of the psychological mechanisms
through which play with objects might inuence
development; does this type of play have an
impact by enhancing enjoyment and engagement,
or through its support for representational
abilities, or visuo-spatial memory, or self-
regulation, or all of these?
Play with objects
• to what extent can Pellegrini’s advice from 25
years ago, that ‘observers might attend more
closely to what children actually say and do during
object play’ (Pellegrini, 1992, pp. 571-2), help us
to understand any potential mechanisms, or any
potential benets?
• will any type of play with objects suce, or is
a range of dierent activities required? Is a
problem-solving element essential? How vital is it
that a pretence element should be encouraged?
• is there, as some studies have suggested, a
developmental progression of types of object play
of which we need to aware?
Symbolic play
We now come to types of play which are engaged
in only by humans, mainly because they rely on our
incomparable symbolic representational abilities.
The rst of the types, which we are referring to as
symbolic play, concerns play with the various symbolic
representational systems we use to make and
communicate meaning. For this reason, an alternative
name for this type of play might be ‘semiotic’ play.
This type of play emerges in children from around the
age of 12 months when they rst begin to intentionally
use sounds to convey meaning (although it could
be argued that they play with sounds, in babbling,
much earlier and also with gestures, which are used
to convey meaning during the rst year of life).
Progressively during early childhood, these aspects
are an important element within children’s play
and learning when they begin to master a range of
‘symbolic’ systems, including spoken language, various
visual media, mark making/writing, number, music and
so on.
Theoretically, therefore, it might be presumed that
this type of play would support their developing
technical abilities to express their ideas, feelings and
experiences through these various media. However,
while there is a general presumption that this is the
case, with the exception of language and literacy, there
is a dearth of rigorous scientic studies examining
the impact of symbolic play on development. As a
consequence, there appear to be no overall systematic
reviews in this area.
Given that the studies in this area each address one
specic symbolic system, this section is divided into
separate reviews relating to the dierent media.
Symbolic play and language
We begin with play with language and its impact on
early literacy, as this is the most researched area and
the only one which has merited a signicant review,
namely that by Christie & Roskos (2006). Much of this
review relates to the role of pretence in language
and literacy development, to which we return in the
next section. However, they also review a signicant
body of evidence relating play with language to early
phonological awareness, a key predictor of early
literacy abilities. They cite, for example:
• evidence that infants and toddlers frequently play
with the sounds of language, including repeating
strings of words containing related sounds,
exploring both rhyme and alliteration (Weir, 1976,
pp. 610-611)
• ndings that children’s knowledge of nursery
rhymes and the frequency that they engage
in word play were both strong predictors of
children’s phonological awareness (Fernandez-
Fein & Baker, 1997).
• the many research-based strategies for
promoting phonological awareness in preschool
and kindergarten use playful activities such as
singing songs, reciting nursery rhymes, reading
books that play with the sounds of language,
and game-like activities (e.g., Adams, Foorman,
Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998).
More recent studies have conrmed that children
do indeed play with language, but these have been
generally qualitative, small-scale observational studies
– see for example, Alcock, Cullen & St George’s (2008)
study in three early childhood education centres in
Australia, and Varga’s (2000) study of 4 to 5 year-old
children’s playful use of language at one nursery school
in Canada, within which she reports that:
14
Symbolic play
“Language play, a common
children’s activity, includes diverse
behaviors such as joke telling,
using metaphors, and repeating
sounds as in chants, rhymes, and
nonsense verse.”
(Varga, 2000, p. 142).
In a very recent study, Burrell & Beard (2016)
have also reported a qualitative analysis to show
that 9-11-year old children play with language in
writing as well as in speech. Three empirical studies
have been carried out, however, that do appear
to provide evidence to support a link specically
between language play and literacy development
more generally. Ely & McCabe (1994), in a small-scale
study involving just 20 children aged 5-6, did show a
statistically signicant correlation between frequency
of language play and scores on the Riddle explication
task (r = .48), a test of the ability to understand
some subtle nuances of language and metalinguistic
awareness. Ravid & Geiger (2009) demonstrated that
an intervention based on linguistic humour and some
forms of language play signicantly enhanced 9-10-
year old children’s awareness of the morphology or
structure of words. Finally, Read, James & Weaver
(2017) have very recently reported a study showing
that 3-5-year old children’s abilities in four specic
types of language play were signicantly correlated
to their teacher-reported verbal skills. However, each
of these studies has its limitations arising from the lack
of comparison groups or the inability of correlations to
establish the direction of causality.
Musical play
Despite their accepted prevalence in the activities of
young children, the role of other forms of symbolic or
semiotic play in development have been even more
sparsely researched. In relation to musical play, for
example, it is a common observation that children
sing, dance and delight in exploring and making
sounds of all kinds, with their own bodies and with all
kinds of objects. There is also a signicant body of
theory suggesting inuence on development arising
from these activities. Trevarthen (see Malloch &
Trevarthen, 2009), for example, has demonstrated
the ‘musicality’ of early infant-mother interactions
and argued for the importance of the infant’s innate
response to rhythm and sounds in establishing early
communicative abilities.
Yet there have been only a handful of studies
attempting to investigate any impact of musical
play on development and, as with the studies on
language play, each have their methodological
limitations. Kirschner & Tomasello (2010) showed
that the prosocial behaviour (helping each other and
co-operating) of a group of 5-6-year old children
who took part in a musical play activity improved to a
signicantly greater extent than that of a group who
took part in non-musical play. Similarly, Putkinen,
Tervaniemi & Huotilainen (2013) showed that children
who experienced higher levels of informal musical
activities in the home appeared more sensitive to
subtle changes in sounds, which could be indicative of
more advanced auditory development, and showed
a reduced activation in response to the appearance
of novel sounds, suggesting they were less surprised
and distracted by these unusual sounds than children
from less musical homes. A common problem of both
of these studies, however, is that they failed to clearly
distinguish musical play from other forms of musical
15
Symbolic play
activity. More recently, Zachariou & Whitebread (2015)
have shown in an observational study of 6-year-old
children that engagement in musical play allowed self-
regulatory behaviours to emerge. However, it is not
clearly established that the musical play activities, as
such, promoted self-regulation, or merely allowed the
children to use abilities they already possessed.
Play drawing and writing
The nal aspect of symbolic or semiotic play to be
signicantly theorised and researched concerns
children’s drawing. Like language and musical play,
play with mark-making and drawing is ubiquitous in
the behaviour of children across cultures, and is widely
accepted as an important way in which children, even
before they are literate, record their experiences and
express their ideas. Vygotsky (1986) himself pointed
out the very close links between early drawing and
writing which is very commonly observed in young
children’s mark-making. However, research in this
Summary
• it seems reasonable to hypothesise that play with symbolic systems will help develop
those systems; however, this is a relatively neglected and weak area of play research as
regards the impact of play on children’s development;
• there is reasonably good evidence that language play enhances children’s language
development in a variety of ways; this is important, as there is reasonably good
evidence that language development has relations with other important skills and
outcomes, including self-regulation (Vallatton & Ayoub, 2011) and school achievement
(Ho, E, 2013);
• there is some evidence that musical play might be signicant in relation to the
development of communication skills, and there is some evidence that it is related to
higher cognitive functioning, and can be used for self-regulation (Winsler, Ducenne &
Koury, 2011).
area has largely conned itself to understanding
the developmental processes that lead to children
drawing as they do. Thomas & Silk (1990) and Cox
(1992), for example, pioneered work of this kind.
Ring (2010) documents very persuasively the role
of drawing as a tool for children to make meaning
from their experiences and their worlds, and argues
passionately and persuasively for the importance of
continuous provision for playful drawing in early years
educational settings. In our increasingly visual world,
this would seem to be an eminently sound proposition.
However, no studies appear to have been carried
out that unambiguously demonstrate an impact on
development of children’s play with drawing or any
other kind of visual representational media.
16
A range of open questions remain, some of which have
been touched upon in the existing studies. These will
need to be addressed by future research:
• the extent to which play with symbolic systems,
other than language, enhances children’s
abilities in using those systems to develop and
communicate their ideas and understandings;
• the nature of the psychological mechanisms
through which play with symbolic or semiotic
systems might inuence signicant aspects of
development more generally, including higher
cognitive functioning, abstract thought and self-
regulatory abilities;
• is play of this type most valuable in the early
stages of development, or is there advantage in
encouraging play with language, music, drawing
etc. through middle childhood and beyond?
17
Symbolic play
Pretend play is the type of play which has been
researched most extensively. In a recent review paper,
Lillard, Lerner, Hopkins, Dore, Smith & Palmquist (2013)
identied and critiqued 154 studies of pretend play
relations with children’s learning and development in
various areas. The authors conclude that:
• pretend play is one way of developing children’s
reasoning skills, but there are other ways of
achieving the same result that are just as eective;
• pretend play may be a way of developing children’s
social skills and awareness of others’ minds
(‘Theory of Mind’) but the evidence is mixed or
unsatisfactory;
• pretend play could be crucial to the development
of language, narrative skills and emotion
regulation, but the evidence is very limited and
more research is needed;
• There is little to no evidence that pretend play
helps to develop children’s creativity, intelligence,
problem-solving, or self-regulation and executive
functioning.
We identied 13 research studies into pretend play and
learning outcomes that have been published since the
Lillard et al. review. In this section, we describe these
studies and assess whether they alter the conclusions
drawn by Lillard and colleagues.
Learning in pretence and real contexts
One study, investigating children’s ability to learn new
information in pretence and real contexts, and directly
addressing some of the methodological concerns
expressed by Lillard et al., has been published by some
of the authors involved in this original review (Hopkins,
Dore & Lillard, 2015). In two tightly controlled studies
using blind testers, 56 and 54 typically developing
children aged 4,5-5,5 years were taught information
of two types (labels and object functions) in a pretend
Pretend play
or real context. In each condition, they were taught
a typical, atypical and novel function for two familiar
objects (a screwdriver and a spoon), and the real object
label and a new pretend label (a sprock and a coodle)
for the object when it was used for the novel function.
Intriguingly, when subsequently presented with a set
of three objects, including the original objects and two
others, children in the pretend condition were more
likely to extend the pretend label to novel objects
similar in appearance to the substitute used during the
pretence episode, but children in the real condition
were more likely to apply the pretend label only to
the identical object used during the learning episode.
The authors discuss various possible explanations for
this dierence in the quality of the information learnt
in pretend and real contexts, and refer to Vygotsky’s
proposal that pretence is a ‘‘zone of proximal
development’’ where children are capable of more
complex thought than they would be otherwise.
Pretend play and creativity
We found three studies that addressed the relation
between pretend play and creativity. Mottweiler and
Taylor (2014) classied 75 4 to 5 year-old children
based on the extent to which they engaged in
elaborated role play, as assessed through an interview
and parental questionnaire. Children were asked
questions such as whether they had an imaginary
friend, and if they often pretended to be someone they
were not. They were also asked to perform actions
with an imagined object (for example “pretend to brush
your teeth with a toothbrush”) to assess their current
level of pretend play. As a measure of creativity,
children were asked to provide endings to stories
and to make drawings, both of which were rated for
creativity by the experimenters. Children who engaged
in more elaborate role play – particularly involving
imaginary friends and pretend identities – scored
signicantly higher for creativity in their narratives.
18
Pretend play
Notably, in response to one of Lillard et al’s criticisms
of research in this area, the authors took steps in
this study to control for experimenter bias, (e.g.
conducting a separate analysis using scores from
raters who had not collected the original data and did
not know the children).
Wallace and Russ (2015) looked at how pretend play
predicted the creativity of 31 privately educated
girls over a four-year period, from when the girls
were between 5 and 10 years old to when they
were between 9 and 14 years old. Pretend play was
assessed using the Aect in Play Scale, and creativity
was measured with the Alternative Uses Task, where
children are asked to think of dierent uses for
common objects such as a key or a shoe. Children who
were more imaginative and organised in their pretend
play at the start of the study scored higher on the
Alternative Uses Task four years later.
Both of the above studies suggest that pretend play
and creativity are related, but they do not provide any
evidence that pretence causes increases in children’s
creativity. The only study found in this area to take a
more experimental approach is that by Homann and
Russ (2016), who conducted an intervention study
with a sample of 50 5 to 8-year-old girls. In groups of
four the children took part in a play session twice a
week for three weeks, and were asked to tell stories
using the toys provided. A control group played
with beads, puzzles and colouring books. Creativity
was assessed within two weeks of the intervention
ending, using a story book test and the Alternative
Uses Task. For children in the intervention group, the
level of organisation and imagination in pretend play
(measured using the Aect in Play Scale) improved
substantially over the course of the study compared to
the control group. However, there were no signicant
improvements in either creativity measure in the
intervention group compared to the control group.
When the authors only included children who were
scored low on the Aect in Play Scale at the start of the
study, however, there was a signicant improvement
in creativity on the Alternative Uses Task for the
intervention group compared to control. This is
tentative evidence that pretend play might lead to
improvements in creativity for children (or at least
19
girls) who are less advanced in their play skills than
their peers, but the fact that the result is based on a
sub-sample and only one outcome measure out of
two means it should be treated with caution. Overall,
these studies do not aect the conclusions of Lillard
et al., suggesting that pretend play may be related to
children’s creativity, but there is little evidence that it
improves children’s creativity.
Pretence and executive functions
We also found four studies looking at pretend play
and executive function outcomes. Pierucci, O’Brien,
McInnis, Gilpin and Barber (2014) measured children’s
fantasy orientation, which is the extent to which
children engage in fantastical pretence such as being a
wizard or ying, rather than non-fantastical pretence
such as being a reman. Fantasy orientation was
assessed through interviews and teacher and parent
reports, and children’s executive function measured
using a variety of tests. They found correlations
between specic types of fantasy orientation and
specic executive function measures. Thus, while
children’s fantasy-related thoughts correlated with
their ability to shift attention and their beliefs in
fantastical entities or imaginary friends correlated
with their inhibitory control, children who reported
more favourite fantasy-related toys and games
had lower scores for inhibitory control and working
memory. Children’s reported proclivity to pretend
to be someone or something other than themselves
also did not correlate with any executive function
measures. At the same time, in a study of 104 4-year-
old children, Carlson, White, and Davis-Unger (2014)
found that understanding the distinction between
pretence and reality, and engaging in more pretend
behaviours, were both correlated with aspects of
children’s executive functioning.
In order to explore whether such a relationship
between fantasy orientation and executive functioning
is causal in nature, Thibodeau, Gilpin, Brown, & Meyer
(2016) divided 110 children between 3 and 5 years
old into three dierent groups. Over a ve-week
period, children in the ‘fantastical play’ group were
given regular sessions where imaginative fantastical
play was supported and encouraged, children in the
non-imaginative play group were supported to play
with objects, balls, and games that involved minimal
imaginative elements, and children in the control group
engaged in normal classroom activities.
Results showed that children in the
fantastical play group increased
in their working memory scores
over the course of the intervention,
whereas children in the other two
groups did not. Furthermore, the
children who were most fantastical
and highly engaged in the play
were the ones who showed most
improvement.
There were no signicant changes in the other
executive function measures (attention shifting and
inhibitory control). This study addressed many of the
methodological concerns raised by Lillard et al., so
can be considered good evidence of a relationship
between fantasy-oriented pretend play and working
memory development, but not other aspects of
executive functioning.
However, in an experimental study by White and
Carlson (2016), children were asked to use dierent
strategies to complete an executive function task
based on attention switching. Five-year-olds who were
encouraged to distance themselves from the task by
pretending to be an imaginary character who was very
good at the task (e.g. Batman), and children who were
asked to think of themselves in the third-person while
completing the task, both performed signicantly
20
Pretend play
better than children in the control condition. However,
this was not the case with 3-year-olds. These results
add to earlier research by Singer (1961) and the
study mentioned earlier by Manuilenko (1975), both
discussed by Lillard et al., suggesting that pretence
may be a strategy that children can apply to improve
performance on certain executive function tasks. It
could also be the case that whether such strategies are
eective (and perhaps which are eective) changes
with the age of the child.
Overall, the recent research on pretend play and
executive functioning suggests some changes to the
conclusions of Lillard et al. There is now evidence of a
potential causal relationship between fantasy-oriented
pretence and working memory development, and
further indication that pretence may be a strategy that
can be applied in executive function tasks. Both these
hypotheses, however, need to be further examined in
future research.
Pretend play and language
Conner, Kelly-Vance, Ryalls & Friehe (2014) reported
the one study we found relating pretend play to
language development. This involved 10 2 year-
olds with whom they developed an intervention
which included components of reading, modeling,
and positive reinforcement of language and play.
The children were read a story and played with a
matching toy set. Five of the children received the
play intervention, and ve were used as a comparison.
All the children were assessed using the Play in Early
Childhood Evaluation System, the Preschool Language
Scale and a Vocabulary Assessment. The results
showed that children who received the intervention
increased pretend play, comprehension and expressive
communication skills more than the comparison
group. Given the extremely small sample (with only 3
out of the 5 children in the play group contributing to
the group improvement) this study adds little to the
Lillard et al. conclusion that play is associated with
language development, but no clear causal measure
has been determined. As most previous studies in the
area have been conducted with 3-5 year-olds, this
study’s main contribution is to suggest that pretend
play interventions are feasible with, and may have an
impact upon, children as young as 2 years of age.
Pretence and emotion regulation
We found one study on emotion regulation. Gilpin,
Brown and Pierucci (2015) measured the emotion
regulation skills and fantasy orientation of 103 5-year-
old children using checklists and questionnaires, and
found that the two measures were correlated. This
nding slightly expands the previous correlational
nding of Shields and Cicchetti (1997), discussed by
Lillard et al., in that it shows that there is a specic
correlation with fantasy orientation in addition to
pretence behaviour in general. However, this does not
change Lillard et al.’s main conclusion, that whether
pretend play helps develop emotion regulation is still
very much an open question.
Pretence and social development
In one very recent study in Hong Kong, Fung & Cheng
(2017) have reported evidence related to pretend play
and social development. 60 5-year-old pre-schoolers
with matched home pretend play time period were
randomly assigned to pretend or non-pretend play
groups to take part in a one-month play training.
Children’s pre- and post-training social competences
were assessed, using the Peer Interactive Play Rating
Scales, by two assistant teachers who did not take part
in the play training. Results revealed a trend that girls
who participated in the pretend play training tended
to be less disruptive during peer interactions after the
training than those who participated in non-pretend
play, while boys beneted equally from the two play
activities. This study is interesting in that it separated
out the pretence element from general play, and
that it showed a moderating eect of gender, which
suggests further study. The authors argue that, due to
their experimental design, their study goes some way to
addressing the Lillard et al. conclusion that play may not
be a primary source of social competence development.
21
Pretend play
Summary
Here follows a revised version of the list provided at the beginning of the pretend
play section in this review:
• pretend play is one way of developing children’s reasoning skills, but there are other
ways of achieving the same result that are just as eective;
• pretend play may be a way of developing children’s social skills and awareness of
others’ minds (‘Theory of mind’). Most of the evidence is mixed or unsatisfactory,
but there is good evidence from one recent study that pretend play may have an
impact on social development;
• pretend play could be crucial to the development of language, narrative skills and
emotion regulation, but the evidence is very limited and more research is needed;
• there are dierences in the quality of learning and applications of learning when
children learn in pretence versus non-pretence contexts;
• there is some good new evidence that pretend play – and particularly fantasy-
oriented pretence – may relate to learning-to-learn skills such as executive function
and self-regulation;
• There is very tentative evidence for a link between pretence and motivation.
Qu, Shen, Chee & Chen, (2015) conducted the one
study we found relating to Theory of Mind (ToM). They
randomly assigned 71 5-year-old kindergartners in
Singapore to three groups: free play, socio-dramatic
play or socio-dramatic play + ToM coaching. Each
condition included four weekly sessions of 45 minutes.
Before and after the training, children’s ToM, language
and executive functioning were measured. The results
showed that socio-dramatic play positively predicted
children’s gains in ToM, and that teachers’ ToM-related
guidance during socio-dramatic play and children’s
pretest executive functioning positively predicted this
eect of socio-dramatic play on children’s ToM. This
study would seem to provide some evidence, contrary
to the conclusion of Lillard et al., that socio-dramatic
play, a sophisticated form of pretence, might impact
on ToM development. This is a potentially interesting
route for further research, picking up on Bodrova,
Germeroth & Leong’s (2013) reminder of Vygotsky’s
distinction between immature and mature forms of
play, particularly in relation to pretence.
Pretence and motivation
Finally, Sawyer (2017) investigated the impact of
pretence on motivation. They allocated 38 preschool
children to either a pretend play or non-play condition
and gave them a shing task. The two conditions
diered only in how the task was initially framed by
the experimenter, which was either as a chance for the
child to pretend to be a sherman, or as a challenge
to the child to catch sh for sticker rewards. During
the activity, the children in the pretend play condition
demonstrated more types of self-directed speech
associated with higher persistence on-task. These
results indicate that framing an activity as pretence
may increase children’s motivation. However, the study
did have a small sample and the experimenter was
not blind to the test condition for each child, meaning
experimenter-bias could have aected the results.
22
Pretend play
Once again, a range of open questions remain, some of
which have been touched upon in the existing studies,
which need to be addressed by future research:
• How does pretence change the learning
experience of children? Is it primarily a motivator,
or does it aect learning in other ways?
• What are the implications of ndings about
pretence and development for cultures where
pretend play is discouraged and does not occur
frequently?
• How are pretence and counterfactual reasoning
related?
Pretend play
Young children are strongly motivated by the need to
make sense of their world and, as part of this, they are
very interested in rules. From a very young age children
begin to enjoy games with rules, and to invent their
own. These include physical games such as chasing
games, hide-and-seek, throwing and catching etc.
As children mature, electronic and computer games,
and the whole variety of sporting activities emerge.
In young children, a considerable proportion of the
time and energy spent playing games is devoted to
establishing, agreeing, modifying and reminding one
another about the rules. As well as helping children
to develop their understandings about rules, the
main developmental contribution of playing games
derives from their essentially social nature. While
playing games with their friends, siblings and parents,
it has been argued that young children are learning a
range of social skills related to sharing, taking turns,
understanding others’ perspectives and so on.
Due to the current level of interest in computer games,
there have been a number of systematic reviews of
the research in this area. For the purposes of this brief
review, it is probably simplest to quote the abstract
from the latest of these authored by Boyle, Hainey,
Connolly, Gray, Earp, Ott, … & Pereira, J. (2016):
‘Continuing interest in digital games indicated that
it would be useful to update Connolly et al.’s (2012)
systematic literature review of empirical evidence about
the positive impacts and outcomes of games. Since a
large number of papers was identied in the period from
2009 to 2014, the current review focused on 143 papers
that provided higher quality evidence about the positive
outcomes of games. Connolly et al.’s multidimensional
analysis of games and their outcomes provided a useful
framework for organising the varied research in this
Games with rules
area. The most frequently occurring outcome reported
for games for learning was knowledge acquisition, while
entertainment games addressed a broader range of
aective, behaviour change, perceptual and cognitive
and physiological outcomes. Games for learning were
found across varied topics with STEM subjects and
health the most popular. Future research on digital
games would benet from a systematic programme
of experimental work, examining in detail which game
features are most eective in promoting engagement
and supporting learning.’
There appear, however, to be no existing systematic
reviews of empirical research on non-computer
games with rules or board games and child outcomes.
Hassinger-Das et al. (2017) consider how games can
scaold children’s learning in a similar way to an adult,
foster curiosity and require the inhibition of reality.
They give examples from research with digital games,
playground games, board and card games. DeVries
(2006) has reviewed Piaget’s seminal contribution
to the analysis of children’s games, particularly his
analysis of stages in their play with marbles, and his
proposals concerning their contribution to social and
moral development. She also reviews her subsequent
analyses, based on observations of children playing
‘Guess-which-hand-the-penny-is-in’ and ‘Tic-Tac-Toe’
suggesting that the former supports children’s ability
to take the perspective of another, and the latter to
be exible in their use of strategies. She concludes by
arguing that, in broad agreement with Piaget’s view,
playing games with rules supports aspects of children’s
social-moral and intellectual development.
24
Games with rules
Games and socio-cultural development
Two other largely theoretical papers are worth
mentioning. Oren (2008) outlines the way board games
can be used in child psychotherapy and gives examples
of how they facilitate children’s shifting perspectives
as part of the therapeutic process. Hromek &
Roey (2009), similarly, discuss the use of games
during “circle time” in social and emotional learning
approaches in schools. They review the theoretical and
practical literature on the use of games to facilitate
social and emotional learning and argue that games
are a powerful way of developing social and emotional
learning in children. These articles, however, epitomise
a reasonably extensive literature in these applied
areas, in that the evidence cited is largely anecdotal,
based on case studies, or of an inferential nature,
based on theory.
Playground games and social skills
The very small number of reasonably rigorous
empirical studies of games with rules have focused
on children’s playground or out-of-school games
and on board games involving numbers. In the rst
category, Pellegrini, Kato, Blatchford & Baines (2002),
observed 77 6-7-year-old children’s playground games
for one school year in two inner-city schools. They
concluded that facility with games (ball games, chase,
and jumping or singing games), particularly for boys,
was related to social competence with their peers and
adjustment to very early schooling (as assessed by
self-report and teacher ratings). Regression analyses
showed that game facility predicted unique and
signicant variance in children’s end-of-year social
competence (measured by teacher rating scales and
peer nominations of popularity), beyond that predicted
by beginning-of-year social competence and in end-
of-year adjus tment. This suggests that games with a
strong social element – such as most playground games
– could help children develop their social networks and a
sense of belonging in the school environment.
In a second study in this area, however, Lehrer,
Petrakos & Venkatesh (2014) investigated whether
time spent in unstructured play outside of school
predicted 6-7-year-old children’s creativity,
cognitive, social, or emotional outcomes in school,
but largely produced negative results. In particular, as
regards games with rules, they found no signicant
correlations between the amount of time children
spent engaged in ‘board games and puzzles’ and any
of their outcome measures.
Board games and numbers
The research on board games involving numbers
principally derives from two experimental studies
by Siegler & Ramani (2008) and Ramani & Siegler
(2008) with 4-5-year-old children from low-income
households. In the rst study 36 children were
randomly assigned to an experimental group who
played a board game that used numbers to move
around the board, and a control group that used
colours. After four 15-minute sessions over a two-
week period, only the children in the experimental
group showed signicant improvement on a number
line investigation task. In the second study, using
the same procedure but with a larger sample of 125
children, and more extensive testing, they showed that
playing the number board game resulted in substantial
improvements on four dierent tasks assessing
number knowledge and that this improvement
remained strongly apparent 9 weeks later. In a
subsequent survey of 145 4 to 5-year-old children
children’s game playing, also reported in Ramani &
Siegler (2008), they found that children who played
board games in more contexts had signicantly more
number knowledge than other children. Analysis also
showed that children who reported playing Chutes and
Ladders had signicantly higher numerical knowledge
than those who did not.
25
Games with rules
In a more recent study with 88 3-5-year-olds, Cheung
& McBride (2016) looked at parents playing games with
their children and investigated the eects of training
parents in strategy-use during game playing, to see
if this would have an eect on the learning of their
children. Specically they investigated improvements
in rote counting, numerical identication, mathematics
interest and addition. After a 4-week intervention,
with two 15-minute sessions per week, children in
the ‘Game with parent training’ group improved on all
four outcome measures while children in the ‘Game
without parent training’ group improved on numerical
identication and mathematics interest. Therefore,
there is evidence that board games involving numbers
appear to help children’s number-based skills, and
may lead to children having a greater interest in
mathematics, perhaps because they have experienced
it and its applications in a fun, relaxed context.
Games and spatial skills
Two recent studies have begun to investigate
neuroscientic aspects of game playing. Wan,
Nakatani, Ueno, Asamizuya, Cheng & Tanaka (2011)
carried out an interesting study identifying which areas
of the brain are activated when expert adult players
make choices about the ‘next best move’ in the board
game Shogi. However, this study tells us nothing
about development. Newman, Hansen & Gutierrez
(2016), on the other hand, in a study with 8-year-
olds, investigated the eects of playing two dierent
games (Block building or Scrabble) on spatial ability,
with pre and post-tests involving a computerised
mental rotation test with reaction time as the outcome
measure, and fMRI scans. Not surprisingly, only the
block play group showed signicant training eects
on the mental rotation test and increased activation
in brain regions associated with spatial processing.
However, what this tells us about the specic eects of
playing games with rules is not clear.
Games: an untapped eld of study
Overall, then, while there has been much theoretical
speculation regarding the social, moral and intellectual
benets of playing games with rules, the evidence
base, apart from that relating to computer games,
comes down to a handful of studies. The key
theoretical point about games with rules, that their
essentially social nature supports children’s social and
moral development, has been supported, for boys at
least, by one study. As regards intellectual benets,
there are 3 or 4 studies supporting some gains, over a
short period of time, for aspects of numeracy. There is
a considerable body of research regarding the impacts
of computer games, which we have not covered in
this brief review. However, in their recent review of
this eld, Boyle et al (2016) express disappointment
that games designed to promote learning are mostly
concerned with knowledge transmission and the
strongest evidence for impact on more fundamental
learning skills arise inadvertently from entertainment
games. A few studies have begun to investigate which
elements within computer games (e.g. competition
versus co-operation) have most inuence on their
impact, but little of substance has yet to emerge
from this. No studies of non-computer games have
undertaken this kind of analysis.
Clearly the study of games with rules, particularly
those not involving a computer, is very much in its
infancy. At the moment the eld is enjoying something
of a resurgence due to the popularity of computer
games, but there are no studies, as far as we are aware,
of the dierential eects of playing the same games
on or o-screen. A vast range of un-addressed and
un-answered questions therefore remain. Principal
amongst these, that would be most productive in
relation to the general eld of play and learning, would
be the analysis of which game features inuence any
impact on social, emotional of cognitive outcomes.
It may be simply that the social aspects of games
increase motivation and engagement and thus
increase any potential developmental outcomes. Or,
the social interaction in a game playing context might
be benecial to broader aspects of social competence.
The problem-solving element in some games, with the
inevitably iterative patterns of behaviour therefore
induced, might support the development of mental
strategy development and metacognitive review,
which in turn enhances creative thinking. As with the
entire eld of play research, there is much to discover.
26
Games with rules
• Most studies of games with rules and learning
explore knowledge transmission – i.e. how games
support children’s acquisition of knowledge in
specic domains (mathematics, chemistry etc).
There is little research looking at games with rules
and more fundamental learning to learn skills like
executive functioning and self-regulation.
• Games with rules have been advocated as tools
for therapeutic use, but there is very little rigorous
research with large samples exploring their
therapeutic value.
• It is unclear whether and how dierent types of
games with rules – specically solo versus social
games and board games versus computer games
– aect children’s development and learning in
dierent ways.
Summary
• board games (particularly those with numbers and linear number sequences) lead to
improvements in numeracy/mathematics ability;
• physical games with rules help children (and especially boys) adapt to formal schooling;
• games with rules may act as a proxy for an adult scaolding and guiding children’s
learning, while also giving the child freedom and choice in their activity.
Games with rules
When and how is play more eective than other
contexts for learning? As outlined in the previous
sections, there is evidence, among other things, that:
• physical play is linked to motor development, and
some tentative evidence that it is linked to social
development;
• unstructured breaks from cognitive tasks improve
learning and attention, though it is unclear
whether play leads to greater improvements
in learning than simply taking a break and, for
example, talking with friends;
• block play leads to improvements in spatial
processing/mental rotation;
• construction play relates to language
development, and this relationship may be
strongest in infancy, with pretend play becoming
more important for language as children enter
toddlerhood;
• word-play and word-games relate to language
development;
• pretend play relates to language development,
and particularly narrative skills;
• pretend play – and particularly fantasy-oriented
pretence – may relate to learning-to-learn skills
such as executive function and self-regulation.
• board games (particularly those with numbers and
linear number sequences) lead to improvements in
numeracy/mathematics ability;
• physical games with rules help children (and
especially boys) adapt to formal schooling.
Closing thoughts
The majority of these ndings relate to learning
outcomes in specic domains, such as motor
development or spatial processing, rather than domain
general learning-to-learn skills. The one exception is
recent evidence suggesting a role for fantasy-oriented
pretence in executive function and self-regulation,
but overall it is clear that more research into how play
may help develop domain-general learning skills is
needed. Also, to make stronger conclusions about the
importance of learning through play, we need to look
at studies comparing play to other learning contexts.
Not many such studies have been conducted, but
the results from those that do exist suggest how the
ve characteristics of playful experiences set out
in the Zosh et al. (2017) white paper may facilitate
learning through play. These suggested relationships
between the research on the ve types of play
and development, and the ve characteristics, are
described on the following pages.
Joyful and actively engaging
Children who perceive an activity as play are more
focused, attentive, motivated and show signs of
higher well-being while on-task (Howard & McInnes,
2013; Sawyer, 2017). This suggests that perceiving
an activity as play creates active engagement and
joy, which leads to children being in the appropriate
cognitive and emotional state to remain on-task
and process information. This increased level of
engagement, and the dopamine chemical reward
system activated through joyful experience, is likely
to underpin the ecacy of learning through play in all
contexts and types of playful activity. But in addition
to this, various studies show how social interaction,
meaning and iteration can also be important factors in
children’s learning.
28
Closing thoughts
Socially interactive
Lehrer at al. (2014) assessed whether the activities
children engaged in during their unstructured time
predicted their ‘adaptive skills’ (as measured on the
teacher-report BASC-2 measure). Children’s adaptive
skills were correlated with time spent in ‘active
physical play’, but when all predictors were entered
into a regression model the only one that remained
signicant was ‘watching other children play’. While
this study did not compare play to other learning
contexts, it does suggest an important role for the
social aspect of play in enhancing children’s learning
outcomes. Similarly, Pellegrini (1992) found that
5-year-old children’s level of social interaction with
other children during recess predicted their school
achievement, whereas their level of social interaction
with teachers during recess was negatively related to
their school achievement.
Playing with other children, watching them and
learning from them, may be one of the ways in which
playful learning exerts its eect. In a recent study of
children building collaboratively in a playful context
to support their narrative and writing skills (reported
in Whitebread, Jameson & Basilio, 2015) playfulness
within the group was very signicantly related to the
level of socially-shared regulation, which suggests a
mediating role for play in supporting eective group-
work, demonstrated in many studies to have a clear
positive impact on children’s learning.
However, children can also learn from adults in
playful contexts. While Pellegrini (1992) found that
interactions with adults during recess were negatively
related to school achievement, this could have been
because teachers interacted more with children with
behavioural problems, and/or children, who were
struggling to adapt to school, may have approached
teachers for comfort or support. It would therefore
be behavioural problems and diculties adapting
to school that were negatively related to school
achievement, rather than interactions with teachers
causing a reduction in children’s school achievement.
Cheung and McBride (2016) compared children playing
a number board game with parents who had been
trained to use strategies to help children think about
the game (assessing number magnitude, counting
squares, predicting outcomes, etc.) with children
playing with untrained parents and children doing
mathematics problems from an exercise book. The
children who played with trained parents improved on
all four numeracy outcome measures. The children
with non-trained parents improved on numerical
identication and mathematics interest. The children
with the exercise book improved on addition. Children
in the control group (who did nothing dierent to
their normal daily routine), improved on numerical
identication.
These results demonstrate that playful interaction with
a knowledgeable adult can be a more eective context
for learning than traditional teaching approaches such
as completing problems in an exercise book. We can
see that learning from others – both adults and children
– through social interaction explains some of the
ways in which playful learning can be superior to other
learning approaches. Future research could explore
this further by comparing when and how children
learn from other children versus adults through play.
Furthermore, it seems possible that playing with
others could also be detrimental to learning in some
situations – for example if the play partner passes on
false information or a decient strategy. We do not
29
Closing thoughts
yet understand whether the positive eects of social
interaction in play are predominantly the result of
learning information from the play partner, or if there
are other aspects of the social experience that are
important, such as learning about other people or
increasing one’s social condence, which could exert a
positive eect even in the presence of an ignorant or
misguided play partner.
Meaningful
It is interesting that in the study by Cheung and
McBride (2016), the dierence between the children
with non-trained parents and those in the control
group lay in mathematics interest. The children who
simply played the number board game became more
interested in mathematics, and one explanation for
this result is that numbers now had more meaning
for them – they had found a new context in their lives
in which numbers could be applied, and that context
was fun! Although the children given the traditional
teaching approach of mathematics exercises
outperformed the board game children on addition,
their interest in mathematics did not increase.
Learning about numbers from conducting abstract
exercises would not have shown them any new ways of
applying numbers in their lives.
Studies comparing engagement in pretend play with
other learning contexts also suggest an important role
for meaning-making in explaining play’s eect. Dansky
(1980) found that sociodramatic play led to children
developing higher narrative skills than other conditions
with equal adult contact, showing that social
interactions with a more knowledgeable partner is not
the important factor in this case. Baumer, Ferholt &
Lecusay (2005) compared how pretending versus story
talk inuenced narrative development, and pretending
led to superior outcomes.
As with the comparison of the number board game and
mathematics exercises by Cheung and McBride (2016),
the important element here could be the level of
personal connection and the extent to which children
can create meaning by integrating their learning into
other aspects of their life. When pretending, a child
needs to draw on their own personal experience and
interests in order to generate ideas for characters and
situations. Discussing a story, by contrast, can remain
a relatively abstract, detached activity. Of course, it
is possible that children could talk about how a story
reects their own experience, and it is unclear whether
children did this, or to what extent, in the Baumer et al.
(2005) study. An interesting avenue for future research
would be to use experimental designs to assess the
extent to which creating meaning during learning
(in terms of how links are made to a child’s personal
experience) can explain learning outcomes.
Iterative
While the studies discussed above likely involved
some level of iterative activity, it is dicult to know
how much, and children may well engage in board
games and pretend play without much repetition-
with-variation. However, studies of play with objects
demonstrate how iteration may explain some of
playful learning’s eects. In the study by Smith &
Dutton (1979), before being asked to solve a problem
(involving retrieving a marble) children were either
trained in using materials, or were allowed to play with
the materials. Both groups outperformed children
in the control group in solving the simple problem
that required two sticks to be connected. For the
more complex problem, which required three sticks
to be connected, both groups again outperformed
children in the control group, but the play group also
outperformed the trained group. Other studies using
this method have found similar results (Hutt et al.,
1989; Sylva, Bruner, & Genova, 1976).
30
Closing thoughts
What is dierent about the play condition compared to
the training condition in such studies? The play in this
case is clearly iterative, as children would have tried
out dierent actions with the materials and dierent
ways of connecting the sticks. In fact, it is likely that
the play condition would have involved a higher level of
iteration than the training condition, because children
are more likely to try more alternative actions with the
materials than the actions demonstrated by the adult.
When tested on the simpler problem, which required
connecting two sticks, both groups performed equally
well. However, for the more complex problem, the
play group probably had a better understanding of
the range of possible actions with the sticks than
children in the training condition, and so performed at
a higher level. Therefore, these studies of object play
demonstrate how the iterative nature of play can make
it a more eective learning context for innovative
problem-solving.
Two much more recent studies have provided
additional support to this aspect of playful learning. In
their studies of the impact of pedagogical approaches
on children’s exploratory play, Bonawitz, Shafto,
Gweon, Goodman, Spelke & Schulz (2011) found that
pre-schoolers restricted their exploration of a toy to
its demonstrated function both after direct instruction
to themselves and after overhearing direct instruction
given to another child. By contrast, intriguingly, they
explored more widely after observing direct instruction
given to an adult or an adult performing an action with
the toy with no instructional element. Bonawitz et
al. concluded that instruction appeared to promote
ecient learning, but at the cost of reducing children’s
exploration and their likelihood of discovering novel
information. In a similar vein, Ramani (2012) reported
a study in which four- and ve-year-old peer dyads
completed a playful, exible and child-driven building
task or a more structured, adult-driven building task.
As predicted, the children in the playful condition
engaged in greater positive joint communication and
built more complex structures than did those in the
structured condition, and these dierences carried
over into a subsequent joint building task. Ramani
concluded that cooperative problem-solving activities
that allow children greater control of the task goals and
interaction, similar to play contexts, appear to promote
higher levels of cooperation and more eective
learning and performance in young children.
In sum, certain studies from the existing body of
research into play types and child outcomes support
the hypothesis that the ve characteristics of playful
experiences are the main factors that facilitate learning
through play. However, more research is needed to
conrm this hypothesis.
Closing thoughts
What we know:
• Perceiving an activity as play seems to lead to higher levels of joy and active
engagement.
• Social interaction during play is sometimes linked to improved learning outcomes.
• Pretending may lead to improved outcomes because children make more meaningful
links to their own knowledge and experience.
• Iterative play may lead to more creative, innovative ways of thinking and problem-
solving.
What we don’t know:
• What is the relative contribution of joy and active engagement to learning through play?
Are they both required for learning to occur?
• What is it about social interaction that can improve learning outcomes? Is it the
knowledge transmitted by the play partner, increases in condence and communication
skills, or something else?
• Does pretence make children create meaningful links to their own experience,
compared to other learning contexts and other types of play?
• How much eect does meaning have on learning during play? Is there a large or small
dierence in learning if children can link material to their own experience?
• Under what conditions, if any, are the characteristics detrimental to learning?
Particularly for social interaction, it seems logical that playing with an ignorant or
misguided partner could lead to reduced or maladaptive learning.
Finally, although there is some suggestive evidence
about the role of play in supporting the development
of communication skills, of abstract thought, self-
regulation,and more adaptive, exible, creative
thinking, we still do not have conclusive evidence of
causal relations.
It is still largely an open question as to whether children
are more playful if they have more enhanced abilities in
these other aspects of development, or if these other
developments depend upon the sophistication and
maturity of children’s play.
32
Closing thoughts
Canada
Finland
Hong Kong
UK
Germany
Israel
Singapore
11
1
2
2
2
2
Geographic Distribution of play research reviewed in this report:
USA
Australia
3
27
33
Closing thoughts
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