Abstract
Play during early life is a ubiquitous activity, and an individual’s propensity for play is positively related to cognitive development and emotional well-being. Play behavior (which may be solitary or shared with a social partner) is diverse and multi-faceted. A challenge for current research is to converge on a common definition and measurement system for play – whether examined at a behavioral, cognitive or neurological level. Combining these different approaches in a multimodal analysis could yield significant advances in understanding the neurocognitive mechanisms of play, and provide the basis for developing biologically grounded play models. However, there is currently no integrated framework for conducting a multimodal analysis of play that spans brain, cognition and behavior. The proposed coding framework uses grounded and observable behaviors along three dimensions (sensorimotor, cognitive and socio-emotional), to compute inferences about playful behavior in a social context, and related social interactional states. Here, we illustrate the sensitivity and utility of the proposed coding framework using two contrasting dyadic corpora (N = 5) of mother-infant object-oriented interactions during experimental conditions that were either non-conducive (Condition 1) or conducive (Condition 2) to the emergence of playful behavior. We find that the framework accurately identifies the modal form of social interaction as being either non-playful (Condition 1) or playful (Condition 2), and further provides useful insights about differences in the quality of social interaction and temporal synchronicity within the dyad. It is intended that this fine-grained coding of play behavior will be easily assimilated with, and inform, future analysis of neural data that is also collected during adult–infant play. In conclusion, here, we present a novel framework for analyzing the continuous time-evolution of adult–infant play patterns, underpinned by biologically informed state coding along sensorimotor, cognitive and socio-emotional dimensions. We expect that the proposed framework will have wide utility amongst researchers wishing to employ an integrated, multimodal approach to the study of play, and lead toward a greater understanding of the neuroscientific basis of play. It may also yield insights into a new biologically grounded taxonomy of play interactions.
Highlights
Challenges to a Neuroscientific Understanding of PlayPlay during early life is a ubiquitous activity
Play can be categorized based on the focus of play, i.e., what is the individual playing with? For example, physical play is play with one’s own body and other people, for example, climbing, sliding, chasing (Power, 1999; Pellegrini et al, 2002; St George et al, 2016); sociodramatic or pretend play is play with a makebelieve world, and the focus of play is more than a concrete observable entity (Lillard et al, 2013); games with rules involve playing with a set of rules that participants agree to abide by to partake in the play experience, for example, board games or playground games such as tag (Hassinger-Das et al, 2017); and object play involves playing with physical objects (Power, 1999; Pellegrini and Gustafson, 2005)
EEG data were concurrently collected from mothers and infants during social interactions, but this data is not reported here as the primary focus of the current study is to develop a framework for assessing play behavior
Summary
Play during early life is a ubiquitous activity. Engaging in play is positively associated with the development of social skills, cognitive skills, language and emotional well-being (Lyytinen et al, 1999; Pellegrini et al, 2002; St George et al, 2016; Thibodeau et al, 2016; Fung and Cheng, 2017). Current conceptualizations of play in the behavioral sciences view it in broad terms as behavior that is voluntary, engaging, nonfunctional, and associated with the expression of positive affect (Burghardt, 2005; Lillard et al, 2013; Miller, 2017). Object play can be further subdivided, depending on the activity conducted with the object. Objects may be used in relational play, where multiple objects are combined or joined together, and object-pretense, where the object is used to represent something else (Belsky and Most, 1981)
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