So what we\u2019ve got now is two things: we\u2019ve got experiments with nature, early stress early exposure to drugs, I didn\u2019t mention brain injury, early brain injury, all change play and they all change the way animals behave as adults. And we\u2019ve also done is we\u2019ve manipulated play directly, and shown that it seems to have a real impact on brain plasticity. So the logic here is that the function of play is to make the brain more changeable. Now why would that be? Well, according to Fraser Mustard, play is problem solving. So if you\u2019re problem solving then that makes you better at problem solving later. When I described the data, that was how he explained it, and I think it\u2019s probably right. So it\u2019s not the play per se, it\u2019s what play is: problem solving. We\u2019re having this tussle, and so if you\u2019re a rat what you\u2019re trying to do is you\u2019re trying to nuzzle the back of my neck, and I\u2019m trying to do the same to you, and so you get this what I\u2019ll call popcorn behaviour, if you\u2019ve seen kittens, when they play, it\u2019s all rolling, they\u2019re doing the same thing, they\u2019re trying to nuzzle, it\u2019s not fighting, they\u2019re not fighting, because if you\u2019re fighting, the last place you\u2019re going to put your mouth is anywhere near the other animal\u2019s mouth. You don\u2019t want to be near the teeth, you going to go after the butt, there\u2019s no teeth there. So when animals fight, they bite one another in the rump. When they play, they play around the head. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So our thinking here is that it\u2019s problem solving practice is what play is. So when you look at in adulthood problem solving, the more problem solving practice you have early, the better you are at it later. And it just so happens that play is the mechanism Mother Nature has chosen, or one of the mechanisms, and early experiences that alter play behaviour are going to alter as a result, problem solving in adulthood. Now one can be, perhaps, not p.c. here and say oh, so you\u2019re saying that if children are one-child families there\u2019s going to be less play, and if in those one child families they have home schooling, you can see where I\u2019m going here, there\u2019s going to be less play, are they going to pay a price for that, and the obvious conclusion is that if the rat studies are correct, they might. So what it\u2019s really important to do in situations where you\u2019ve smaller number of kids, which is the demographics now that these kids have to be involved in activities that encourage play. And of course we do that. We\u2019ve got kids; if you\u2019re a parent you drive them all over the place for all sorts of activities. So the more activities they\u2019re in, the more play they\u2019re engaged in, the more problem solving and so on. So although the number of children has gone down and there\u2019s less play probably in the household, there\u2019s been compensation by having play outside the house. But any situation that\u2019s going to reduce the chances of that child engaging in play outside the house is going to be detrimental, and that\u2019s why programs like Kids Sport that, I don\u2019t know if you\u2019re familiar with Kids Sport, but Kids Sport where the agency, actually started by my sister, will pay for the entrance fees or registration fees for kids in soccer and so on to get them out playing. It\u2019s so important because this is getting kids out doing what\u2019s necessary to make their brain plastic as adults. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So what we\u2019ve got now is two things: we\u2019ve got experiments with nature, early stress early exposure to drugs, I didn\u2019t mention brain injury, early brain injury, all change play and they all change the way animals behave as adults. And we\u2019ve also done is we\u2019ve manipulated play directly, and shown that it seems to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-text-only.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1838","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1839,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1838\/revisions\/1839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}