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The Power Of Play; It's critical to our very existence
Topic Started: Jun 11 2006, 12:20 PM (217 Views)
teryt
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Missing in Action Member
Now for a lighter and (perhaps) less controversial topic! ;)

Psychology Today: The Power of Play

I was dozing off last night when I came across this hour-long show on PBS. It delved into what some researchers have been doing concerning the activity of play, in both animals & humans.

It showed how critical play was to the development of different species. Animals that were seperated from their mothers early, often didn't know how to play, and therefore didn't know how to interact properly with others. Several problems resulted from this lack of play, and eventually they were often not even able to mate. (It took me way too long to discover that the way to get into a woman's, ah . . . heart, was to get her laughing.)

The studies also show that the more intelligent the animal is, the more prone it is to play. They don't know which resulted in which - i.e., more play resulted in more intelligence or visa versa.

They have found that play in children helps them to learn, as their minds seem to be better prepared for learning. Play seems to stimulate parts of the brain that allows learning to occur more effectively.

One person in the video was saying that wolves & dogs have two types of play. One is play for play sake; the other is a sort of cultural play. The play for play sake is open to everyone, and is very light-hearted in nature. The other is a more serious play that establishes things like pack heirachy. He said he can interact with dogs & domestic wolves in the play for play sake mode, but is careful not to enter into their specific cultural play.

They showed young otters that weren't raised by their mothers, which they were releasing back into the wild. They found that the young otters needed to be taught how to play, in order to be able to survive in the wild. Otters that engauged in a lot of play early on, stood a much better chance of survival.

Besides being fun, play appears to have several functions, including:

> It helps with soclialization
> It stimulates creativity
> It stimulates & enlarges verious brain functions & alertness
> Physical play helps to develop various coordination functions
> It promotes mental & physical health
> And, of course, helps attract the opposite sex

They showed several trainers of dogs for police & rescue. Instead of carrying treats around to help train the dogs, many are carrying things like tennis balls. The dog's drive for play is so strong, that the prospect of having play time drives them to complete the task. I know that there is nothing that excites my dog than if I just say "Freesbie!?" I swear that if you opened his brain, you would see a Freesbie sitting in there!

Children that have not had much play show a very high correlation of a wide variety of problems later on. An average, they don't learn as well, socialize as well, are not nearly as happy or productive.

Quote:
 
Play is an opening to our very being, Terr observes in Beyond Love and Work: Why Adults Need to Play (Scribner, 1999). It permits us emotional discharge, but in a way that carries little risk. In fact, she says, play is not just an activity--it's a state of mind, and "all the mental activity of play comes at you sideways." Therein lies its value: the mental activity is never the direct goal. Terr uses play therapy as a way to allow children--and adults, who often remain frozen in patterns of play originating in fearful experiences in childhood--to create new endings for their experience.

Perhaps for that reason, adults who play appear to live longer than those who don't. Terr cites as evidence the most recent findings of the long-standing Terman study. Begun by Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman in the 1920s to examine the lives of gifted children, the study has allowed other researchers to track the consequences of high intelligence and other psychological factors to health and longevity. In the Terman group, those still surviving are those who have played the most throughout their lives, Terr told PSYCHOLOGY TODAY.


A statement from the article really caught my eye: "THE OPPOSITE OF PLAY ISN'T WORK, IT'S DEPRESSION!" In other words, little activity.

Another interesting thing to note was that one researcher guessed that in the evolutionary past, animals that did better with play were the ones to survive. Coming from the other way, you could say God placed this capacity in His creation.

So be sure to have some fun today!!! :party:
My Boast is Christ :pray:
Soon to have MBA (I'll perhaps be smart then)
Recovering Perfectionist
Christian Hedonist

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cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal is a good example of how God plays.
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
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PRT
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tomdrobin
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Much has been said and written about the benefit of exercise. But, IMO there are two kinds of exercise, work and play. Work gets worthwhile things done, but doesn't nourish the body and soul like vigorous play. Which lowers the BP, and helps relieve stress in my exerience.
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DocInBird
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Please don't tell my clients, but I would pay to do the work I do. I do my physical play with Orson, but for my mental play I need things to really challenge my intellect. I need to create things that don't currently exist and do difficult tasks, and I need there to be a concrete result that accomplishes something. I need to exercise the brain areas on both the left and right hemispheres and to light up the corpus collosem (the connection between the artistic side of the brain and engineering side). If both hemispheres of the brain are working sufficiently hard, they begin communicating with each other.

Think of what a painter (artist) does. On one side of his/her brain are all of the techniques and on the other side is the vision of what is to be painted. It is the same for a musician. There are all the rules of music - what chords go with what progressions, what is the third movement of a symphony supposed to accomplish, etc. On the other side is the music in the head, the vision of what the musical piece is supposed to accomplish. Some neurophysiologists think that activity that reaches that level prolongs life and delays the natural degradation of the overall system.

Some preliminary studies indicate that such activity can prevent Alzhiemers. The data is far from complete, so don't jump to any conclusions yet. Interestingly enough, the amigdula seems to play a role. I'm sure you remember reading that learning multiple languages is so easy at certain ages and gets progressively more difficult. This is the amigula at work. This new research indicates that there might be a possible link between the function of the amigdula and brain degeneration, and that the amigdula can be stimulated by intense complex thought processes as I described above.

So, the question arises. As technology increases, as it will (look up Noyce's Law if you don't already know it), am I going to have to teach my robots about how to play, to remain "sane"? There is no research available on how to even teach humans how to play (or very little). How will I describe this to them? Will clients then prefer the older designs that didn't require time to play?

Oh, this is getting to be too complicated <grin> for a guy and a dog on "vacation"....
--doc
Just Doc and Orson (German Shepherd) wandering around North America.
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