American Journal of Play 

About: American Journal of Play is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Creativity & Video game. It has an ISSN identifier of 1938-0399. Over the lifetime, 266 publications have been published receiving 5305 citations.

The decline of play and the rise of psychopathology in children and adolescents.

Abstract: Over the past half century, in the United States and other developed nations, children’s free play with other children has declined sharply. Over the same period, anxiety, depression, suicide, feelings of helplessness, and narcissism have increased sharply in children, adolescents, and young adults. This article documents these historical changes and contends that the decline in play has contributed to the rise in the psychopathology of young people. Play functions as the major means by which children (1) develop intrinsic interests and competencies; (2) learn how to make decisions, solve problems, exert self-control, and follow rules; (3) learn to regulate their emotions; (4) make friends and learn to get along with others as equals; and (5) experience joy. Through all of these effects, play promotes mental health.

Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming

Abstract: Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer GamingT. L. TaylorCambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. 304 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780262017374In Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming, author T. L. Taylor examines the ups and downs of a slowly emerging industry, e-sports (electronic sports). The e-sports industry aims to turn real-time video game competition into the next major professional sport-complete with franchises, broadcast tournaments, superstar players, and mogul team and league managers. Those who would make e-sports a success point to South Korea, the only country so far in which the industry has taken hold. Taylor tells us that tournaments like the World Cyber Games draw sponsors like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Samsung and that Korean Telecom companies, and even the Korean Navy have-or sponsor-teams. Outside of the promised land of South Korea, however, e-sports have struggled and exist as a generally small, niche industry.Taylor's book does an excellent job of examining e-sports through numerous lenses. Providing historical context, she takes us back to the roots of e-sports, delving into the early days of informal, head-to-head video game competitions around the first computer game, Space War! (1962) and the inclusion of highscore record keeping on arcade machines to arcade-based tournaments (still happening today on the old machines like Pac Man and Donkey Kong and chronicled in the 2007 documentary King of Kong) and the video game-themed Starcade (1982- 1984) television show. She then moves to the emergence of the on-line networked play of Id Software's Doom (1993) and Quake (1996) through today's current live and networked tournaments of firstperson shooters and other video game competitions. Yet Raising the Stakes is not just a historical effort. With her first book, Play between Worlds: Exploring On-Line Game Culture, Taylor established herself as a solid analyst of games as media and community.And Taylor brings those skills to bare on gaming as a sport. For example, in her second chapter, titled "Computer Games a Professional Sport," Taylor guides us through an in-depth, well-reasoned, and documented analysis. She cites the literature on the debates around computer games as play. She examines the modification of rules, and occasionally of systems, of the games themselves for tournament play, judging, and broadcast. She compares the requirements and practices of professional sports and professional athletes (mental and physical training, hours and routines of practice, preferences for specific brands and makes of equipment or insistence on the use of personal equipment) in other sports to those of professional gamers. …

Children's Pastimes and Play in Sixteen Nations: Is Free-Play Declining?.

Abstract: This article is based on a study of the role of play and experiential-learning activities beyond formal schooling in sixteen nations. The study, supported by Unilever PLC, gathered information from the mothers of twenty-four hundred children in countries in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia who described and rated their children's daily activities in telephone interviews or faceto- face conversations. They answered questions about their beliefs and attitudes concerning experiential learning, about their worries for the safety and health of their children, and about the general values of their children's various pastimes, including the use of electronic media. The study concerned children of comparable socioeconomic status in each country and looked at equal numbers of boys and girls and an equal distribution of children's ages ranging from one to twelve. The study's findings indicate surprising similarities of children's play in all nations. The mothers interviewed agreed, for example, that a lack of free-play and experientiallearning opportunities was eroding childhood. The study indicates that children's major free-time activity is watching television. In analyzing the data collected in the study, the authors discuss detailed cross-national comparisons and differences in play activities by degrees of industrial development. Language: en

Playful Learning and Montessori Education.

Abstract: Although Montessori education is often considered a form of playful learning, Maria Montessori herself spoke negatively about a major component of playful learning-pretend play, or fantasy-for young children. In this essay, the author discusses this apparent contradiction: how and why Montessori education includes elements of playful learning while simultaneously eschewing fantasy. She concludes with a discussion of research on the outcomes of Montessori education and on pretend-play research, clarifying how Montessori education relates to playful learning. Key words: didactic education: Montessori education: playful learning; preschool; pretend playIn recent years, educators have begun using the didactic teaching methods appropriate for older children in preschool settings (Zigler and Bishop-Josef 2004). Increasingly, we see children ages three to five expected to sit and listen to lessons without interacting (Hamre and Pianta 2007). Such an approach to learning belies the principles of constructivism that much research on human learning shows to be effective. In fact, many educators now call for one constructivist approach in particular, playful learning, as a developmentally appropriate alternative to didactic instruction (Fisher et al. 2011)-as a way to help preschoolers learn in the ways they naturally learn. Along a line running from free play (in which children play independently), through guided play (where an adult oversees and gently directs-or scaffolds-their play), to didactic instruction (where a teacher directly instructs children), playful learning occupies the span between free play and guided play.As described by Fisher et al., free play includes object play, pretend and sociodramatic play, and rough-and-tumble play, in all of which children engage without close adult oversight or control. Free play is fun, flexible, active, and voluntary (i.e. without extrinsic reward). Free play also often includes elements of make-believe and also often involves peers. Guided play occurs when an adult aims a child towards specific knowledge in a playful, fun, and relaxed way. Guided play often involves specific toys with which a child can interact to gain knowledge. A supervising adult observes the child closely and asks questions to help the child learn but, as with free play, respects the child's own interests and pacing. In contrast, didactic instruction is teacher centered and teacher paced and more likely to involve listening to words rather than working with objects. We commonly associate didactic instruction with school, although today's teachereducation courses seldom extol its methods.Again, playful learning spans both free play and guided play. Playful learning is child centered, constructivist, affectively positive, and hands-on. It can involve fantasy but does not necessarily do so. At the guided-play end of the playful-learning span, "teachers might enhance children's exploration and learning by commenting on their discoveries, co-playing along with the children, asking open-ended questions about what children are finding, or exploring the materials in ways that children might not have thought to do" (Weisberg, Hirsch-Pasek, and Golinkoff, in press). Recent meta-analyses suggests that more directed forms of "discovery learning" are optimal (relative to pure discovery learning and didactic instruction) and consistent with the idea that playful learning is an excellent approach for helping children (Alfieri et al. 2010).Although some researchers cite Montessori education as a prime example of playful learning (Diamond and Lee 2011; Elkind 2007; Hirsh-Pasek et al. 2009), others have noted that founder Maria Montessori thought play "developmentally irrelevant" (Rubin, Fein, and Vandenberg 1983, 694). This article, focusing particularly on Maria Montessori's views about pretend play, discusses how Montessori education resembles and does not resemble playful learning. The article then reviews the research on the results of the Montessori style of playful learning. …

The Function of Play in the Development of the Social Brain.

Abstract: Rough-and-tumble play, or play fighting, is common in the young of many mammals. Research on play fighting among rats shows that there are many levels of neural control over this behavior: subcortical mechanisms mediate the motivation and behavior of such play, and the cortex provides mechanisms by which the play changes with age and context. The cortical mechanisms help to explain the advantages playing offers the brain. The cortically induced modulations of the content of play with age ensure that exposure to particular kinds of experiences are enhanced during the critical juvenile period. These experiences, in turn, modify the development of other areas of the cortex. Such cortical changes appear to mediate the effects of play on the refinement of social skills. As a result, rats that play as juveniles are more socially competent as adults. This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.