Play makes you a good citizen

It's (apparently) true. I'm not sure this can be directly extrapolated to playing videogames, mind, but this is a wonderful read: The Science of Fun.

But the best argument for fun and play happens when you take it away.

Deny play to young mammals and the consequences are colossal. This has been demonstrated powerfully in rats, with some of the most significant new science coming out of Canada.

"What's been shown repeatedly," said University of Lethbridge neuroscientist Sergio Pellis, author of The Playful Brain, "if you prevent juvenile rats from engaging in rough and tumble play, you get animals who have cognitive problems, emotional problems and they're socially incompetent. "

 

In short, stop rats from horsing around and you get socially-awkward, troubled, dumbo rats. Worse still, male rats who never play become bad lovers.

Read on. It gets better. 

Fun is the brain's workshop.

"If you look at countries with the lowest amount of recess time, and scholastic achievement, there's almost an exact correlation," says Pellis. "The U.S., which has the lowest recess rates, often does the worst" in scholastic achievement.

It might even be the brains of children grow more at recess than in the classroom.

I'm not in the least bit surprised by that last bit! 

Now I am actually really curious as to whether the brain can extrapolate out to fun like (heh) co-op L4D, or teamplay in MMOs. Is it the physical interaction that counts more, or the social interaction - or both equally? Does physical interaction extend to "mirror neuron" stuff, so that what happens to your avatar is effectively also happening to you? So many questions. I'd better buy that book.

Comments

[racy_rick]

Socializing and doing playful activities with other children is one of the main reasons against homeschooling. They don't get to interact with their peers and I find that to be a huge hole in their education.

[Cait]

Lasat year I read a thing about a semi-experimental form of learning what was going on in a particular state UK school involving big bursts on one subject, with enforced breaks which were filled with kinetic learning... er, as in 'play'. Juggling, messing about - zennish type activities. As well as there being regular breaks. The recall from that learning technique was amazing, even if it was them left for ages whilst the next block was done.
I'm sure that's related to this. I'm also struck by some footage on 'Life' today showing stoats playing when juveniles, then using those skills in fighting later on. See also otters - althoughg you could argue that it's anthropomorphism, I'll bet there's similar life-skill-giving-play in chimpanzee / gorilla communities.

[Cait]

Aha - found it. So, not playing as such but definitely in similar territory:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/13/gcses-teaching