WEBVTT - From the Vault: Pretend Play, Part 5 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:08.760 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.800 --> 0:00:11.680 is Robert Lamb. Pretend Play Part five is coming at you, 0:00:11.760 --> 0:00:15.319 Part five of five. This one originally published one twenty three, 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:17.560 twenty twenty five. Let's have it. 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:24.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.040 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:33.760 is Robert. 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.280 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And we're back with 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.279 the fifth and for now the final part in our 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:43.440 series on pretend Play. Now, sometimes when we do a 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:46.159 longer series like this, we say, you know, devour in 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:48.800 whatever order you like, but this really is one series 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.159 where we do recommend listening in order, because today we're 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:54.960 going to build on and refer back to stuff we 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.880 talked about in some earlier episodes from this series, but 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.360 to refresh break in those earlier parts, we talked about 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:07.119 definitions and subdivisions of pretend play, play that involves non 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:11.640 literal action and understanding. We talked about which aspects of 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:14.959 pretend play appear to be universal and which appear to 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:18.240 be culturally variable. For example, the evidence is pretty strong 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:21.840 that all children around the world engage in pretending, even 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:25.800 in environments where it is actively discouraged, and it emerges 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.880 on a pretty consistent developmental schedule, though there is wide 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:34.360 variation across cultures and within cultures across like home conditions 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.639 and different types of parental influence in how much time 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.280 children spend on pretend play and in what its themes 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:44.600 and contents are. Some cultures have more fantasy themes, like 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:48.320 talking animals, others are more realism bound in their pretend 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:51.440 games and so forth. We also talked about the specific 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:55.280 issue of imaginary companions, where those come from, how they 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:59.720 usually work, what patterns manifest within and across cultures. We 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:04.080 talk about possible links between pretend play and complex cognitive 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:08.880 skills like symbolic understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and theory of mind, 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.800 whether pretend to play may help children develop these capabilities, 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.919 or whether it makes use of common neural structures with them. 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:19.720 We talked about the idea of the paracosm, which is 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.560 an extension of the idea of an imaginary friend or 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:27.120 imaginary companion into a whole imaginary world, maybe even with 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:31.520 its own geography, inhabitants, its own history and rules and customs, 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:35.359 and we looked at how paracosms develop and whether they're 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:38.200 associated with other things later in life, like an adult 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.799 capacity for creativity. And then finally, we also talked about 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:44.799 ways in which imaginative play could be said to carry 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.120 on into adult life, often in different guises. 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:51.440 That's right, and we're going to continue on in this 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:56.440 episode to roll out discussion on some of these themes. 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:58.680 But I guess we should stress that there is so 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:02.520 much out there, and there's so much ongoing research into 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:07.120 not only pretend play and but also you know, childhood imagination, 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:10.120 adult imagination and so forth. This is really one of 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:13.040 those series where we could just keep going and going 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.239 and find new angles, new studies to discuss each time. 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:19.160 Yeah, that's right. I mean, we've just come across so 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:23.000 many interesting things. I keep finding new, fascinating stuff I 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:25.080 wasn't even aware of when I first decided I wanted 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:27.160 to do this topic on the show. So it just 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:30.119 keeps unfolding and there's more and more, and the more 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:30.680 and more. 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:31.120 Is so good. 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:33.040 But we are going to have to cut it off 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:35.480 after today. Maybe we'll return to this topic in some 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:38.920 form in the future. But one thing I wanted to 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:42.640 come back to in today's episode, now that we've looked 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:45.800 at a lot of the different cultural environments and varieties 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:51.040 of play expression. Is the question of the biological basis 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:57.440 for pretend play? Is pretend to play a culturally contingent activity, 0:03:57.520 --> 0:03:59.800 you know, something that we just kind of like made up, 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:02.480 didn't have to be a part of what human life is, 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:04.720 something like I don't know, parades. You know a lot 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:07.720 of different cultures have parades, but that's probably not a 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:13.880 biologically mandated behavior, that's just something culture made up. Or 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:18.680 is pretend play actually biologically mandated? Is it biologically programmed 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.760 in the human animal? And if it is the latter, 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:25.279 that sort of implies that it confers a survival or 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:29.760 reproduction advantage. So what would that be? So for this question, 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:32.960 I wanted to look at a really really interesting paper 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:36.560 published in twenty seventeen in the journal Trends in Cognitive 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:41.560 Sciences called Why do the Children Pretend Play? By an 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.919 author named Angeline S. Lillard, who is a professor of 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:48.320 psychology at the University of Virginia and she runs a 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:52.800 research center there called the Early Development Laboratory. I'm not 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:55.839 going to cover everything Lillard gets into in this paper, 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:57.320 but I wanted to give kind of a sketch of 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:00.360 her main argument and pick some interesting things to pull 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:03.480 out and talk about. So at the beginning of this article, 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:06.080 Lillard reviews a lot of the same evidence we've already 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:09.360 looked at earlier in the series, pointing to a pretty 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:14.240 standard schedule for development of pretend play in childhood, saying 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.880 pretend play usually begins by around eighteen months of age, 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:21.080 often with object substitution, though in the last episode we 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:23.760 looked at a few kind of very specific types of 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:27.480 pretend play that are often observed to pre date object substitution, 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:31.159 but object substitution is a big early milestone, usually occurring 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:34.440 by around one and a half years old. And then 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:37.479 talking about how pretend play seems to peak around the 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:41.360 age of three to five and most often stops around 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.159 the age of eleven. I think in the last episode 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:46.560 we cited a researcher who said it's around nine or 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:49.680 ten when it starts to wane. Lillard says around the 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:53.520 age of eleven is when it usually ceases, though the 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:56.760 question of whether it actually ceases is also debatable. In 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.520 some cases, kids keep pretending longer, and you can make 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:03.760 argument that activities sustained into adulthood are actually continued types 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:07.039 of pretend play, maybe sort of in disguise or not 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:11.200 so much in disguise. Now, Lillard makes the argument that 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:17.120 because pretend play of some form is culturally universal and 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:22.640 its development schedule is fairly regular and predictable, it's probably 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:26.719 an evolved biological trait and not just a contingent behavior 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.360 that we happen to create through culture. And I think 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:32.640 I would agree that this seems likely based on that information. 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.080 So Lillard asks the question that I brought up a 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:39.400 minute ago. If it is a biological trait of our species, 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:42.760 and if it's not just an epiphenomenal byproduct of some 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:49.400 other capacity like symbolic thinking, what evolutionary advantage does pretending provide? 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:53.960 As an aside, we already looked at some possible answers 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:57.240 to this question in that twenty fifteen paper by Weisberg 0:06:57.240 --> 0:06:59.360 that we talked about in earlier parts of the series. 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:03.040 So it was brought up that maybe pretend play helps 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:07.279 facilitate the development of counterfactual reasoning, symbolic understanding, and theory 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:11.160 of mind. Though, as you'll recall, Weisberg highlighted that these 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:14.800 correlations are difficult to study in a way that's practical 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:19.440 rigorous and ethical. So while some studies do provide hints 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.080 in support of all three of these links, the evidence 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:27.400 is fairly weak. It's mostly just establishing correlations. Lillard's paper 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:31.240 also notes how difficult this is to study and the 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:34.600 indirect quality of much of the evidence available to us. 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:40.160 We have some indications, specifically, like from tragic examples of 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:44.800 children who suffered social isolation and infancy, that early deprivation 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:49.320 of normal interaction with human caregivers can lead to noticeable 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:52.760 deficits in pretend play later in childhood. So like children 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:57.360 who don't have enough human social interaction when their babies 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:01.440 tend to play pretend much less and they're older, suggesting 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:05.720 some kind of link between pretend play and socialization. However, 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:10.000 Lillard's paper makes use of a very interesting, totally separate 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:12.920 line of evidence for the biological function of pretend play, 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.120 and that is the analogy of non human animals. 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:21.040 Yes, yes, whether animals play This is probably a question 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.080 that has already been bouncing around people's minds as they 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:25.160 listen to these episodes. 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.400 Yeah, well, and so specifically it'd be the question of 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:33.640 whether animals play pretend Because I think it's pretty widely 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:38.000 agreed by researchers in the relevant fields that animals do play. 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:42.080 In this paper, Lillard refers to one particular definition of 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:45.439 play that has been popular used in a lot of research, 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:50.199 and it comes from a psychologist named Gordon Berghart. And 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:53.800 Burghart's criteria for play, I think he had five of them. 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:57.320 The criteria or that one we've already talked about this 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:01.160 that it's not functional, meaning that it's it's not activity 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:04.360 that is necessary for survival in any direct way. So 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:07.320 even if you enjoy chopping wood, chopping wood is not 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:12.679 considered play. To use Lillard's summary quote, is voluntary and pleasurable. 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:15.800 It differs in form or some other way from the 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:19.680 functional expression. It is repeated, and it tends to occur 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:24.120 under conditions of abundance not stress. Now, if you look 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:27.120 at those criteria, I think it's widely agreed that many 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:30.640 species of non human animals, especially a lot of vertebrates 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:36.280 and mammals, engage in play. But do these animals play pretend? 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.200 This is more controversial, but Lillard makes the case that 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:43.200 at least some forms of animal play should be considered 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:47.680 examples of pretense. And both of these are fortunately going 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:49.840 to be familiar to us and to listeners because we 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:53.480 can see them in our pets. I think, in fact, 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:57.360 it's maybe not even a coincidence that play would be 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:01.280 especially common among the animals that we happened to make 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:06.840 our domestic companions. So first example is playing with inanimate 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:09.720 objects as if they were live prey. You can see 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:13.920 this in cats, you can see this in dogs. I'm 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:15.920 sure you've seen plenty of this in your home, Rob. 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.679 You know, a cat will often any little furry thing, 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:22.280 or maybe doesn't in some cases, maybe doesn't even have 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:24.640 to be all that furry. It could be an aluminum ball, 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:26.600 or it could be a piece of string or something 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.400 like that. They will play with it and treat it 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:31.760 as if it were a mouse or some other kind 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.240 of prey animal. They will bat it around, they will 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:36.240 bite it, they will chase it, and so forth. 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:39.400 Yes, yeah, we see this all the time. Yeah, ranging 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:43.400 from what we call the most dangerous game of finger mouse. 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:45.640 This is where you move your finger underneath the blanket. 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:49.760 Not recommended because it's an easy way to get your 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.760 finger scratched in or bitten. But yeah, all manner of toys, 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:55.400 laser beams, you name it. 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:57.960 Oh, I didn't even think of the laser pointer. Yeah, 0:10:58.000 --> 0:10:59.440 but I used to do the same thing when I 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:01.840 had cats. You know, you move your hand or your 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:06.480 toes around underneath the blanket. Yeah, and it drives absolutely nuts. 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:10.880 Yeah. And my cat does not need any encouragement to 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.920 attack body parts. She attacks my feet all the time. 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:20.280 Now, there's an interesting finding that Lillard notes, which is that, apparently, 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:24.080 in like formal studies of this type of play behavior 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:29.280 in cats, apparently as cats become older, on average, the 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:34.280 object needs to be increasingly similar to an actual prey 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:37.920 animal to induce the playing response. This will obviously vary 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.920 from cat to cat, but on average, more often a 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:44.000 kitten will attack anything you know. It will play with string, 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:46.679 will play with aluminum balls, whatever you know. It's all 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:49.319 a mouse to the kitten. But an older cat, as 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:53.560 it matures, will increasingly only be enticed into this type 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:57.480 of game by something that resembles in some way an 0:11:57.520 --> 0:11:58.720 actual prey animal. 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.040 Well, my cat, I can safely say, is not average. 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:06.440 She's quite old at this point, but her she still 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:10.560 plays and some of her favorite items just recently have 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:14.040 been things like a plastic milk cap like off of 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:17.360 an oat milk jug. How if she had a great 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:22.080 time with that, buttons things like that, anything she can 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:25.160 get her claws on, so it doesn't seem to necessary. 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:28.480 We have other toys that do resemble rodents or birds 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:31.600 or whatever, and she's into those as well. But otherwise 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:35.720 she doesn't seem to discriminate. Now, not making this an 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:38.720 episode about cats, but I think obviously there's something to 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:43.200 be said here too about the domestic, like in house cat, 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:45.560 like a fully indoor cat versus a cat that's going 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.320 indoors and outdoors. This is a fully indoor cat, and 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:52.600 I know there have been various observations made about like 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:55.200 what that does. Does that keep a cat in more 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.360 sort of a semi permanent stage of kitten hood to 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:02.280 some degree, maybe has an effect on how they associate 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:06.439 with toys. Maybe you see more of this average situation 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.480 that's laid out here. If the cat actually has physical 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:13.199 access to normal prey animals on a regular. 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:15.480 Basis, yeah, that seems quite plausible to me. 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:15.840 Though. 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:18.920 An interesting thing that Lillard notes here is that there 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:22.640 is the opposite observation in humans that as children get older, 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:25.920 it's usually less important for the play object to resemble 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:28.360 the real object. In order for them to play pretend 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:31.720 with it. And so because of differences like this, Lillard 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:35.560 thinks that the treating and inanimate object as life prey 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:38.840 is not a great analogy for human play. However, there's 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:42.680 another thing observed in animals which she thinks is maybe 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:45.640 a good analogy for human pretend play, and that is 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:49.880 play fighting. We've probably all seen this before in dogs, 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.600 but in the scientific literature, play fighting is characterized as 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:59.640 a social locomotive play activity where animals try to gain 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.920 temper very physical advantage over one another in a way 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:07.319 that somewhat resembles the behavior of those same animals as 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:11.280 adults in violent competition, but is different in that the 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:15.720 animals typically take turns being the aggressor and that the 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:19.560 fight behaviors are truncated. So the dog might in a 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.920 play fight, it might put its jaws around the other 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:25.800 dog's body, maybe put the jaws around the neck, but 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:28.480 it does not bite down, or it doesn't usually, and 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:31.280 if it does, that's a you know, that's clearly not 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:35.880 what the behavior is intended to produce. Lillard argues that 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:39.920 play fighting could be viewed as an analog for pretend 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:43.200 play in humans and gives a number of reasons. For example, 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:46.280 both of these activities, pretend to play in humans and 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:50.600 play fighting involve creating an as if scenario where the 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:55.280 play activity appears to be a modified representation of a 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:58.400 real activity, but with limits put on it. Like the 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:01.600 play fighting stops for the bite pressure is too much, 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:06.560 and so forth, Lillard writes quote. As Baitsen also pointed out, 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:09.800 an animal that is engaged in play fighting must read 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:13.720 a behavior as denoting a behavior different from the behavior 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:16.680 it resembles. And then the sub quote of baits In 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.280 here quote the playful nip denotes the bite, but it 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:23.640 does not denote what would be denoted by the bite. 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:27.480 In other words, the playful nip is a pretend bite, 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:30.520 just as a child can pretend talk into a pretend 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:34.400 phone to symbolize really talking into a real phone. In 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:38.520 this way, both pretend play and play fighting behaviors are symbolic. 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:42.880 They mean something other than what they are. She also 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:46.600 calls attention to the fact that both pretend play in 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:51.040 humans and play fighting in other mammals rely on the 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:57.680 exchange of specific ritualized gestures and indicators that the activity 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:01.480 is play and not real. And I don't think I 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:02.960 was aware of a lot of this. For example, she 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:06.440 talks about a bunch of observations in rats that when 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:10.000 rats playfight, and apparently they do this a lot. Rats playfight. 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:14.320 She says, when they play fight, they don't bite at 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.960 or target the same areas of the body that they 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:21.560 do when rats are actually fighting in real violent competition. 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:25.960 So when they're playfighting, she says, they target a nuzzle 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.400 like the nape of the neck, whereas real fighting and 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:34.240 tends to involve attacks on the flanks and the lower back. 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:39.960 And apparently they also emit high pitched ultrasonic vibrations when 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.600 they're play fighting, which other rats can hear, which seems 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:47.040 to help the rats avoid mistaking a bid for a 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:50.640 playfight with the threat of a real fight. Now, understanding 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:54.240 those kinds of gestures and social communication and rats might 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:57.160 not be very intuitive to us, but we can easily 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:00.640 see the same kind of thing in dogs with the 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:03.960 famous play bow. Now, if you've ever seen dogs doing 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.760 play fighting, you will quite frequently, often at the beginning 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:10.800 of the encounter, and then at certain moments throughout the 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:13.880 play fighting session, the dogs will kind of back up 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:16.200 and then they will bow the front of the body 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:18.840 down and spread their paws apart and put their head 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:21.840 down with the back of the body up with the 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:27.119 haunches the butt raised up. And I've got a picture 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:28.639 here for you to look at, Rob, though I'm sure 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:30.359 you're familiar with this on your own as well. 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:32.320 Well, I mean, now that it's pointed out to me, 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:36.280 I have seen dogs doing this, and I guess I'm 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:38.399 realizing for the first time that this must be why 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:42.399 we call the pose and yoga down dog, because we 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:45.919 are creating a pose that looks like this. I always 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:49.040 just thought like, well, okay, it's just I'm on all fours. 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:50.800 I'm sort of like a dog right now. But I 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:51.960 guess this is the name thing. 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:54.520 So in yoga it's the butt is up, the head 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:55.600 is down, correct. 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:59.240 Yeah, okay, though usually in the picture you're showing here 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:03.800 the dogs four pause forearms are on the ground, and yeah, 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:06.119 that's usually not the case with down dog. There are 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:08.560 versions of down dog where you do have four arms down. 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:11.960 I guess it's more gets inded like dolphin and so forth. 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:14.840 But anyway, enough animals. We're talking about dogs, right. 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:19.639 So studies show that playbows are they really are used 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:22.879 for social communication. Like you can see that they're most 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:27.399 common right after a candid play fight has sort of 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:31.399 pushed the limits or has for some reason become ambiguous. So, 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:35.119 for instance, when a play bite just got pretty rough, 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:37.480 you know, like a dog. They're playing, but one bit 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:40.200 the other kind of hard, it seems, then the playbow 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:43.639 would be deployed. It's used to regulate the shared understanding 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:47.400 of the activity and to signal kind of sorry about that, 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:49.720 we're still in play mode. This is not a real fight. 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:52.480 And in this way this would be considered a form 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:57.480 of meta communication, allowing all the participants in an activity 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:02.040 to continually understand the correct in which the shared activity 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:05.919 should be interpreted. It's the signal this is play this 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:09.640 is not real. And it turns out that with pretend 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:13.560 play humans do this too. There are specific kinds of 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:17.520 gestures and signals that have been observed within human play fighting, 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:20.359 but even outside the realm of play fighting and just 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.320 in pretend play that the kinds we've been talking about 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:25.800 in this series so far. Maybe cooking in a play kitchen, 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:29.040 or using a banana as a telephone, or using a 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.199 little block as a car, you know, an object substitution 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:36.679 enactment play any of these things. The signals used to 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:40.879 communicate pretend to play might be more culturally variable in 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:45.080 humans than in dogs. But for example, research in the 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:49.320 United States has particularly found that when mothers play pretend 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:54.160 with young children, they use specific body language cues such 0:19:54.240 --> 0:20:00.880 as strong eye contact, mistimed movements, and a smile immediately 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:05.280 following the pretend behavior. And so like, I can imagine 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.000 all these kind of things kind of like exaggerated weird 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:11.280 movements and kind of looking at the child, making eye 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:16.200 contact and then smiling after you say, like here's the phone. Also, 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:18.880 this is not mentioned in the study, but I really 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:21.920 thought about like using a different voice. You know, we've 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:26.480 talked about about parental voice modulation on the show before. 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:29.159 I think we did whole episodes on this of like 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:31.480 the you know, the baby voice, the way parents tend 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:33.959 to speak to children, and like what kind of purpose 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.520 that serves where it comes from. But I think there's 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:38.800 a version of this with pretend to play too. Like 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.480 I notice when we start taking on a pretense, I 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:46.320 kind of sound different. I'm doing something with the timing 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:49.040 of my speaking and the pitch of my voice and 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:51.440 stuff that I'm not normally doing when I'm just playing 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:52.080 with my daughter. 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:55.080 Yeah, and that makes sense. Yeah, I mean we often 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:57.240 don't think about it, but we are sort of conveying that. Okay, 0:20:57.240 --> 0:20:59.240 we're shifting over one degree to the left or the 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:02.520 right here into the imagination space. 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:07.520 Yeah. Oh this book is a boat now. Yeah. Yeah, 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:09.879 And so you can think about different reasons for this 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:14.920 meta communication within the play itself. So like in play fighting, 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:19.359 meta communication is important for physical safety, you know, like 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:21.159 you don't want the fight to you don't want the 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:24.280 play fight to escalate to a real fight. So meta 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:29.040 communication literally helps dogs and rats and humans avoid hurting 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:32.800 one another. But with pretend to play in human children, 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:36.359 it strikes me that it's probably important for something we 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:40.560 talked about earlier in the series information quarantining, to prevent 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:45.200 children from drawing incorrect lessons about reality from a game 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:47.479 of pretend, you know, so the child does not end 0:21:47.560 --> 0:21:50.719 up thinking that a remote control can actually place phone calls. 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:55.320 We're showing this is play, so the child doesn't learn 0:21:55.400 --> 0:22:08.680 something that's wrong. So in this paper, Lillard looks at 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:12.760 studies of play fighting in animals to see what, if anything, 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:17.119 can be established about its survival and reproduction value, what 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:21.080 does it do for the animals? This section involves a 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:24.360 lot of discussion of the difficulties and limitations in designing 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:27.280 these experiments, and the paper is worth a read if 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:29.640 you want to learn more about that. But to mention 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:34.159 one prominent example type of experiment she brings up. It 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:37.200 is an experiment where you take a baby rat and 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:40.600 pair it in its enclosure only with a single adult 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:45.560 female rat and no littermates. Now, with other littermates present, 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.600 a baby rat will typically engage in play fighting as 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:52.080 it matures, but when it is paired only with an 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:56.840 adult female rat, the baby rat will receive socialization from 0:22:56.880 --> 0:23:00.000 the adults, so it's not like total social isolation or deprivent. 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:06.120 But adult female rats specifically will not engage in play fighting, 0:23:06.760 --> 0:23:11.639 so this seems to reasonably well isolate and remove play 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:14.480 fighting on its own. But it's important to note that 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:17.240 this is not a perfect isolation of the variable, because 0:23:17.280 --> 0:23:19.720 having littermates is the norm for baby rats, so this 0:23:19.800 --> 0:23:22.240 is not just like a perfectly normal baby rat with 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:25.000 only play fighting taken away. It's just getting as close 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:28.840 to that as researchers can are. There any differences in 0:23:29.040 --> 0:23:33.280 rat development from this setup. Oh yes, a few examples. 0:23:33.880 --> 0:23:37.960 Rats that grow up with socialization but without play fighting 0:23:38.440 --> 0:23:42.960 have trouble interpreting social signals later in life. For instance, 0:23:43.080 --> 0:23:46.840 later if another rat tries to initiate play fighting, the 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:50.639 deprived rat will often misinterpret it as a bid for 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:54.439