3 Conceptual Review of Play

Abstract

Conceptual Review of Play Definition of PlayLUDI adopted the definition of play proposed by Garvey (1990), as it has been considered the most representative one for the purposes of the project: "Play is a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with recreational pleasure and enjoyment".This definition shows interesting features: it can include all kinds of activities performed with ludic intention and takes into consideration three important and typical dimensions of the infant play: pleasure, self-direction, and intrinsic drive.On the contrary, all the activities made in ludic contexts and/or in a ludic mood, with ludic tools (toys, games, etc.), but driven by an extrinsic goal (i.e., educational, rehabilitative) are defined as 'play-like' activities, and are not the core of the LUDI research activity.The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health -Children and Youth Version (ICF-CY, WHO, 2007) includes play -that is not considered in the version for adult -thus underlying the great importance it has in childhood.Defined as a component of the domain 'Activities and Participation', play is placed both in Chapter 1 'Learning and applying knowledge' and in Chapter 8 'Major life areas'.In the first case, play is seen as an engine for the child's development, in particular, for learning: in the item 'Learning through actions with objects' (d131), the ICF-CY includes learning through actions with single, two or more objects, and also through symbolic play (actions relating objects, toys, or materials symbolically) as well as pretend play (actions involving pretence, substituting an object, body part, or body movement to enact a situation or event).In the second case, play is interpreted as 'Engagement in play' (d880), that is "Purposeful, sustained engagement in activities with objects, toys, materials or games, occupying oneself or with other" (2007:184).This second definition is more adherent to the aims of our project and is then inserted as a further definition of play adopted by LUDI.The item 'Engagement in play' is subdivided into: play (d8800), onlooker play (d8801), parallel play (d8802), shared cooperative play (8803); these categories will be better illustrated in the following paragraph.In relation to the objectives of LUDI, it is worth mentioning the fact that play is also treated within the domain of Environmental Factors in Chapter 1, 'Product and technology': in fact, this chapter considers the following items: 'Equipment, products and technologies used in structured or unstructured play by an individual or group ' (2007:192) and 'Products and technology used for play' (d1152).Both adapted and non-adapted toys, or specially designed technologies to assist play can be described.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 20 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.