Play and playfulness are enigmatic from an evolutionary perspective as it is not obvious that they provide any survival or reproductive benefits. Indeed, animals engaged in play can be injured or even killed, waste energy that could presumably be better put to other uses, or open themselves to predation through reduced vigilance. Play fighting can […]
Rough-and-tumble play, also called play fighting, is a form of play in which partners compete with one another to gain some advantage (e.g., strike, bite, push onto ground), but do so without the severity or consequences of serious fighting, which it resembles (Aldis, 1975). Play fighting is one of the most commonly reported forms of […]
Play is not neatly defined in terms of any single characteristic; instead, it involves a constellation of characteristics, which have to do with the motives or mental framework underlying the observed behavior. After analyzing multiple sources of play definitions, the author concludes that essentially all of the descriptors of human play used by prominent play […]
Drawing on ethnographic and interview data collected from the United States and Finland on lifestyle (ìswinging “) events, this article explores the implicit and explicit rules influencing negotiations for group sex as a type of play. Participants maintain a sense of freedom and spontaneity while acting within situational constraintsóethical expectations, preexplicated rules, implicit rules, and […]
Inspired by work/think/play in qualitative research, we centered the idea of “play ” in a qualitative research project to explore what proceeding from the idea of work/think/play might look like and accomplish. We pursued play in an experimental qualitative inquiry over dinner one night at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. […]
Conceptually, there is a common association between gambling games with fast speeds of play and problem gambling. This relationship however, is largely correlational in nature, which comes at the expense of carefully controlled empirical investigation. Research that does exist aimed towards investigating the impact of gambling speeds on psychological and behavioural factors, is in its […]
Although play occurs in a wide variety of animals, models of the origins of play behavior are lacking. We propose a novel computational model exploring the evolution of non-social frivolous play. Asexually reproducing semelparous animals can either rest or forage. Foraging occurs when an organism is below an energy threshold. Success is determined by the […]
Within this article, we attempt to counter the seriousness that sometimes tends to weigh down academic pursuits. Although we acknowledge the necessary anchors that tether us to various obligations in our work, we enact a form of play that emerged over the course of our dissertations and extended into our budding careers. We call this […]
A large body of educational research has focused on play as one of children’s own activities, however, considerably less attention has been paid to structures and practices associated with joint play between adults and children. This article contributes to this line of research by analyzing adults’ participation in joint play with very young children. The […]
Visual signals convey emotions and intentions between individuals. Darwin underlined that human facial expressions represent a shared heritage between our species and many other social mammals. Social play is a fertile field to examine the role and the potential communicative function of facial expressions. The relaxed open-mouth (or play face) is a context-specific playful expression, […]
Studies have been completed which attempt to detect players’ sentiment, and intensify game-play immersion. Emotions, while an indicator of experience, have been proposed to be ‘reactive predictions’ by the player, during interactions in game-play. Designers arrange core game-play mechanics, visuals and audio atmosphere to create mood. This arrangement of content and mechanics is crucial to […]
The article aims to present, analyze, and discuss the attitudes of the three groups of adultsótheorists, hobbyists and “everyday players “ótoward play(ful) behavior and activities in relation to character toys. The rhetoric of play theorists is mirrored against the rhetoric of organized players (hobbyists) and (nonorganized) everyday players through in-depth interviews and participatory observation. Questions […]
Mothers and fathers prefer different games when playing with their children, nonetheless, they share common latent play characteristics. This study aimed to evaluate an observational coding system comprising three rating scales for adjustment, calibration, and familiarity of parent-child play situations that, together, indicate latent parent-child play-quality. 335 toddlers and preschoolers and their parents (332 fathers […]
Abstract: Parent-child play directly influences child development. One aspect of parent-child play that is gaining interest is a form of physical play, ‘rough-and-tumble play’ (RTP), or roughhousing. RTP is most often played by fathers and has been shown to have positive benefits for children. However, little is known about parents’ perceptions of this type of […]
Research about playfulness in adults has viewed it as something that emanates from personality and other individualized characteristics, and therefore many previous studies adopted a trait approach to predict playfulness, largely ignoring gender differences. The author conducted a facet-level analysis of the so-called big-five personality predictors and of four humor-related attributes and analyzed whether playfulness […]
Drinking motives have been theorized as “the final common pathway ” to alcohol use, and have been found to be associated with certain drinking patterns and related outcomes. Given the importance of the context in which people drink, researchers have also begun to pay close attention to motives that are specific to participation in a […]
This article highlights the necessity of considering socio-cultural values and attitudes when designing digital media, through presenting a study that explores parental attitudes toward play and digital media in childhood. Here we present a study examining the effectiveness of a mobile application designed to encourage real-world play between parents and their children (aged three to […]
Over the past decade, there has been an increased use of playful approaches to teaching and learning in higher education. Proponents argue that creating ‘safe’ playful spaces supports learning from failure, management of risk-taking, creativity and innovation, as well as increasing the enjoyment of learning for many students. However, the emergent field of playful learning […]
The study of recurring groups of adults involved in common leisure activity is scant. Adult play groups are important to participants, and studying them furthers our understanding of the community-building potential of leisure. In this paper, I seek to rediscover adult play group by outlining five themes. Borrowing from Huizinga, I begin by arguing that […]
Sexual abuse by a perpetrator outside of the family is the most prevalent form of child sexual abuse. It is associated with serious consequences for both the child and his family. Surprisingly, however, the issue of extra-familial sexual abuse has received very little research and clinical attention. The purpose of the current study was to […]
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