Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Pretend Play Part five is coming at you,
Speaker 1: Part five of five. This one originally published one twenty three,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. Let's have it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And we're back with
Speaker 3: the fifth and for now the final part in our
Speaker 3: series on pretend Play. Now, sometimes when we do a
Speaker 3: longer series like this, we say, you know, devour in
Speaker 3: whatever order you like, but this really is one series
Speaker 3: where we do recommend listening in order, because today we're
Speaker 3: going to build on and refer back to stuff we
Speaker 3: talked about in some earlier episodes from this series, but
Speaker 3: to refresh break in those earlier parts, we talked about
Speaker 3: definitions and subdivisions of pretend play, play that involves non
Speaker 3: literal action and understanding. We talked about which aspects of
Speaker 3: pretend play appear to be universal and which appear to
Speaker 3: be culturally variable. For example, the evidence is pretty strong
Speaker 3: that all children around the world engage in pretending, even
Speaker 3: in environments where it is actively discouraged, and it emerges
Speaker 3: on a pretty consistent developmental schedule, though there is wide
Speaker 3: variation across cultures and within cultures across like home conditions
Speaker 3: and different types of parental influence in how much time
Speaker 3: children spend on pretend play and in what its themes
Speaker 3: and contents are. Some cultures have more fantasy themes, like
Speaker 3: talking animals, others are more realism bound in their pretend
Speaker 3: games and so forth. We also talked about the specific
Speaker 3: issue of imaginary companions, where those come from, how they
Speaker 3: usually work, what patterns manifest within and across cultures. We
Speaker 3: talk about possible links between pretend play and complex cognitive
Speaker 3: skills like symbolic understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and theory of mind,
Speaker 3: whether pretend to play may help children develop these capabilities,
Speaker 3: or whether it makes use of common neural structures with them.
Speaker 3: We talked about the idea of the paracosm, which is
Speaker 3: an extension of the idea of an imaginary friend or
Speaker 3: imaginary companion into a whole imaginary world, maybe even with
Speaker 3: its own geography, inhabitants, its own history and rules and customs,
Speaker 3: and we looked at how paracosms develop and whether they're
Speaker 3: associated with other things later in life, like an adult
Speaker 3: capacity for creativity. And then finally, we also talked about
Speaker 3: ways in which imaginative play could be said to carry
Speaker 3: on into adult life, often in different guises.
Speaker 1: That's right, and we're going to continue on in this
Speaker 1: episode to roll out discussion on some of these themes.
Speaker 1: But I guess we should stress that there is so
Speaker 1: much out there, and there's so much ongoing research into
Speaker 1: not only pretend play and but also you know, childhood imagination,
Speaker 1: adult imagination and so forth. This is really one of
Speaker 1: those series where we could just keep going and going
Speaker 1: and find new angles, new studies to discuss each time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I mean, we've just come across so
Speaker 3: many interesting things. I keep finding new, fascinating stuff I
Speaker 3: wasn't even aware of when I first decided I wanted
Speaker 3: to do this topic on the show. So it just
Speaker 3: keeps unfolding and there's more and more, and the more
Speaker 3: and more.
Speaker 1: Is so good.
Speaker 3: But we are going to have to cut it off
Speaker 3: after today. Maybe we'll return to this topic in some
Speaker 3: form in the future. But one thing I wanted to
Speaker 3: come back to in today's episode, now that we've looked
Speaker 3: at a lot of the different cultural environments and varieties
Speaker 3: of play expression. Is the question of the biological basis
Speaker 3: for pretend play? Is pretend to play a culturally contingent activity,
Speaker 3: you know, something that we just kind of like made up,
Speaker 3: didn't have to be a part of what human life is,
Speaker 3: something like I don't know, parades. You know a lot
Speaker 3: of different cultures have parades, but that's probably not a
Speaker 3: biologically mandated behavior, that's just something culture made up. Or
Speaker 3: is pretend play actually biologically mandated? Is it biologically programmed
Speaker 3: in the human animal? And if it is the latter,
Speaker 3: that sort of implies that it confers a survival or
Speaker 3: reproduction advantage. So what would that be? So for this question,
Speaker 3: I wanted to look at a really really interesting paper
Speaker 3: published in twenty seventeen in the journal Trends in Cognitive
Speaker 3: Sciences called Why do the Children Pretend Play? By an
Speaker 3: author named Angeline S. Lillard, who is a professor of
Speaker 3: psychology at the University of Virginia and she runs a
Speaker 3: research center there called the Early Development Laboratory. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to cover everything Lillard gets into in this paper,
Speaker 3: but I wanted to give kind of a sketch of
Speaker 3: her main argument and pick some interesting things to pull
Speaker 3: out and talk about. So at the beginning of this article,
Speaker 3: Lillard reviews a lot of the same evidence we've already
Speaker 3: looked at earlier in the series, pointing to a pretty
Speaker 3: standard schedule for development of pretend play in childhood, saying
Speaker 3: pretend play usually begins by around eighteen months of age,
Speaker 3: often with object substitution, though in the last episode we
Speaker 3: looked at a few kind of very specific types of
Speaker 3: pretend play that are often observed to pre date object substitution,
Speaker 3: but object substitution is a big early milestone, usually occurring
Speaker 3: by around one and a half years old. And then
Speaker 3: talking about how pretend play seems to peak around the
Speaker 3: age of three to five and most often stops around
Speaker 3: the age of eleven. I think in the last episode
Speaker 3: we cited a researcher who said it's around nine or
Speaker 3: ten when it starts to wane. Lillard says around the
Speaker 3: age of eleven is when it usually ceases, though the
Speaker 3: question of whether it actually ceases is also debatable. In
Speaker 3: some cases, kids keep pretending longer, and you can make
Speaker 3: argument that activities sustained into adulthood are actually continued types
Speaker 3: of pretend play, maybe sort of in disguise or not
Speaker 3: so much in disguise. Now, Lillard makes the argument that
Speaker 3: because pretend play of some form is culturally universal and
Speaker 3: its development schedule is fairly regular and predictable, it's probably
Speaker 3: an evolved biological trait and not just a contingent behavior
Speaker 3: that we happen to create through culture. And I think
Speaker 3: I would agree that this seems likely based on that information.
Speaker 3: So Lillard asks the question that I brought up a
Speaker 3: minute ago. If it is a biological trait of our species,
Speaker 3: and if it's not just an epiphenomenal byproduct of some
Speaker 3: other capacity like symbolic thinking, what evolutionary advantage does pretending provide?
Speaker 3: As an aside, we already looked at some possible answers
Speaker 3: to this question in that twenty fifteen paper by Weisberg
Speaker 3: that we talked about in earlier parts of the series.
Speaker 3: So it was brought up that maybe pretend play helps
Speaker 3: facilitate the development of counterfactual reasoning, symbolic understanding, and theory
Speaker 3: of mind. Though, as you'll recall, Weisberg highlighted that these
Speaker 3: correlations are difficult to study in a way that's practical
Speaker 3: rigorous and ethical. So while some studies do provide hints
Speaker 3: in support of all three of these links, the evidence
Speaker 3: is fairly weak. It's mostly just establishing correlations. Lillard's paper
Speaker 3: also notes how difficult this is to study and the
Speaker 3: indirect quality of much of the evidence available to us.
Speaker 3: We have some indications, specifically, like from tragic examples of
Speaker 3: children who suffered social isolation and infancy, that early deprivation
Speaker 3: of normal interaction with human caregivers can lead to noticeable
Speaker 3: deficits in pretend play later in childhood. So like children
Speaker 3: who don't have enough human social interaction when their babies
Speaker 3: tend to play pretend much less and they're older, suggesting
Speaker 3: some kind of link between pretend play and socialization. However,
Speaker 3: Lillard's paper makes use of a very interesting, totally separate
Speaker 3: line of evidence for the biological function of pretend play,
Speaker 3: and that is the analogy of non human animals.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, whether animals play This is probably a question
Speaker 1: that has already been bouncing around people's minds as they
Speaker 1: listen to these episodes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and so specifically it'd be the question of
Speaker 3: whether animals play pretend Because I think it's pretty widely
Speaker 3: agreed by researchers in the relevant fields that animals do play.
Speaker 3: In this paper, Lillard refers to one particular definition of
Speaker 3: play that has been popular used in a lot of research,
Speaker 3: and it comes from a psychologist named Gordon Berghart. And
Speaker 3: Burghart's criteria for play, I think he had five of them.
Speaker 3: The criteria or that one we've already talked about this
Speaker 3: that it's not functional, meaning that it's it's not activity
Speaker 3: that is necessary for survival in any direct way. So
Speaker 3: even if you enjoy chopping wood, chopping wood is not
Speaker 3: considered play. To use Lillard's summary quote, is voluntary and pleasurable.
Speaker 3: It differs in form or some other way from the
Speaker 3: functional expression. It is repeated, and it tends to occur
Speaker 3: under conditions of abundance not stress. Now, if you look
Speaker 3: at those criteria, I think it's widely agreed that many
Speaker 3: species of non human animals, especially a lot of vertebrates
Speaker 3: and mammals, engage in play. But do these animals play pretend?
Speaker 3: This is more controversial, but Lillard makes the case that
Speaker 3: at least some forms of animal play should be considered
Speaker 3: examples of pretense. And both of these are fortunately going
Speaker 3: to be familiar to us and to listeners because we
Speaker 3: can see them in our pets. I think, in fact,
Speaker 3: it's maybe not even a coincidence that play would be
Speaker 3: especially common among the animals that we happened to make
Speaker 3: our domestic companions. So first example is playing with inanimate
Speaker 3: objects as if they were live prey. You can see
Speaker 3: this in cats, you can see this in dogs. I'm
Speaker 3: sure you've seen plenty of this in your home, Rob.
Speaker 3: You know, a cat will often any little furry thing,
Speaker 3: or maybe doesn't in some cases, maybe doesn't even have
Speaker 3: to be all that furry. It could be an aluminum ball,
Speaker 3: or it could be a piece of string or something
Speaker 3: like that. They will play with it and treat it
Speaker 3: as if it were a mouse or some other kind
Speaker 3: of prey animal. They will bat it around, they will
Speaker 3: bite it, they will chase it, and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, we see this all the time. Yeah, ranging
Speaker 1: from what we call the most dangerous game of finger mouse.
Speaker 1: This is where you move your finger underneath the blanket.
Speaker 1: Not recommended because it's an easy way to get your
Speaker 1: finger scratched in or bitten. But yeah, all manner of toys,
Speaker 1: laser beams, you name it.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't even think of the laser pointer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I used to do the same thing when I
Speaker 3: had cats. You know, you move your hand or your
Speaker 3: toes around underneath the blanket. Yeah, and it drives absolutely nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And my cat does not need any encouragement to
Speaker 1: attack body parts. She attacks my feet all the time.
Speaker 3: Now, there's an interesting finding that Lillard notes, which is that, apparently,
Speaker 3: in like formal studies of this type of play behavior
Speaker 3: in cats, apparently as cats become older, on average, the
Speaker 3: object needs to be increasingly similar to an actual prey
Speaker 3: animal to induce the playing response. This will obviously vary
Speaker 3: from cat to cat, but on average, more often a
Speaker 3: kitten will attack anything you know. It will play with string,
Speaker 3: will play with aluminum balls, whatever you know. It's all
Speaker 3: a mouse to the kitten. But an older cat, as
Speaker 3: it matures, will increasingly only be enticed into this type
Speaker 3: of game by something that resembles in some way an
Speaker 3: actual prey animal.
Speaker 1: Well, my cat, I can safely say, is not average.
Speaker 1: She's quite old at this point, but her she still
Speaker 1: plays and some of her favorite items just recently have
Speaker 1: been things like a plastic milk cap like off of
Speaker 1: an oat milk jug. How if she had a great
Speaker 1: time with that, buttons things like that, anything she can
Speaker 1: get her claws on, so it doesn't seem to necessary.
Speaker 1: We have other toys that do resemble rodents or birds
Speaker 1: or whatever, and she's into those as well. But otherwise
Speaker 1: she doesn't seem to discriminate. Now, not making this an
Speaker 1: episode about cats, but I think obviously there's something to
Speaker 1: be said here too about the domestic, like in house cat,
Speaker 1: like a fully indoor cat versus a cat that's going
Speaker 1: indoors and outdoors. This is a fully indoor cat, and
Speaker 1: I know there have been various observations made about like
Speaker 1: what that does. Does that keep a cat in more
Speaker 1: sort of a semi permanent stage of kitten hood to
Speaker 1: some degree, maybe has an effect on how they associate
Speaker 1: with toys. Maybe you see more of this average situation
Speaker 1: that's laid out here. If the cat actually has physical
Speaker 1: access to normal prey animals on a regular.
Speaker 3: Basis, yeah, that seems quite plausible to me.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 3: An interesting thing that Lillard notes here is that there
Speaker 3: is the opposite observation in humans that as children get older,
Speaker 3: it's usually less important for the play object to resemble
Speaker 3: the real object. In order for them to play pretend
Speaker 3: with it. And so because of differences like this, Lillard
Speaker 3: thinks that the treating and inanimate object as life prey
Speaker 3: is not a great analogy for human play. However, there's
Speaker 3: another thing observed in animals which she thinks is maybe
Speaker 3: a good analogy for human pretend play, and that is
Speaker 3: play fighting. We've probably all seen this before in dogs,
Speaker 3: but in the scientific literature, play fighting is characterized as
Speaker 3: a social locomotive play activity where animals try to gain
Speaker 3: temper very physical advantage over one another in a way
Speaker 3: that somewhat resembles the behavior of those same animals as
Speaker 3: adults in violent competition, but is different in that the
Speaker 3: animals typically take turns being the aggressor and that the
Speaker 3: fight behaviors are truncated. So the dog might in a
Speaker 3: play fight, it might put its jaws around the other
Speaker 3: dog's body, maybe put the jaws around the neck, but
Speaker 3: it does not bite down, or it doesn't usually, and
Speaker 3: if it does, that's a you know, that's clearly not
Speaker 3: what the behavior is intended to produce. Lillard argues that
Speaker 3: play fighting could be viewed as an analog for pretend
Speaker 3: play in humans and gives a number of reasons. For example,
Speaker 3: both of these activities, pretend to play in humans and
Speaker 3: play fighting involve creating an as if scenario where the
Speaker 3: play activity appears to be a modified representation of a
Speaker 3: real activity, but with limits put on it. Like the
Speaker 3: play fighting stops for the bite pressure is too much,
Speaker 3: and so forth, Lillard writes quote. As Baitsen also pointed out,
Speaker 3: an animal that is engaged in play fighting must read
Speaker 3: a behavior as denoting a behavior different from the behavior
Speaker 3: it resembles. And then the sub quote of baits In
Speaker 3: here quote the playful nip denotes the bite, but it
Speaker 3: does not denote what would be denoted by the bite.
Speaker 3: In other words, the playful nip is a pretend bite,
Speaker 3: just as a child can pretend talk into a pretend
Speaker 3: phone to symbolize really talking into a real phone. In
Speaker 3: this way, both pretend play and play fighting behaviors are symbolic.
Speaker 3: They mean something other than what they are. She also
Speaker 3: calls attention to the fact that both pretend play in
Speaker 3: humans and play fighting in other mammals rely on the
Speaker 3: exchange of specific ritualized gestures and indicators that the activity
Speaker 3: is play and not real. And I don't think I
Speaker 3: was aware of a lot of this. For example, she
Speaker 3: talks about a bunch of observations in rats that when
Speaker 3: rats playfight, and apparently they do this a lot. Rats playfight.
Speaker 3: She says, when they play fight, they don't bite at
Speaker 3: or target the same areas of the body that they
Speaker 3: do when rats are actually fighting in real violent competition.
Speaker 3: So when they're playfighting, she says, they target a nuzzle
Speaker 3: like the nape of the neck, whereas real fighting and
Speaker 3: tends to involve attacks on the flanks and the lower back.
Speaker 3: And apparently they also emit high pitched ultrasonic vibrations when
Speaker 3: they're play fighting, which other rats can hear, which seems
Speaker 3: to help the rats avoid mistaking a bid for a
Speaker 3: playfight with the threat of a real fight. Now, understanding
Speaker 3: those kinds of gestures and social communication and rats might
Speaker 3: not be very intuitive to us, but we can easily
Speaker 3: see the same kind of thing in dogs with the
Speaker 3: famous play bow. Now, if you've ever seen dogs doing
Speaker 3: play fighting, you will quite frequently, often at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the encounter, and then at certain moments throughout the
Speaker 3: play fighting session, the dogs will kind of back up
Speaker 3: and then they will bow the front of the body
Speaker 3: down and spread their paws apart and put their head
Speaker 3: down with the back of the body up with the
Speaker 3: haunches the butt raised up. And I've got a picture
Speaker 3: here for you to look at, Rob, though I'm sure
Speaker 3: you're familiar with this on your own as well.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, now that it's pointed out to me,
Speaker 1: I have seen dogs doing this, and I guess I'm
Speaker 1: realizing for the first time that this must be why
Speaker 1: we call the pose and yoga down dog, because we
Speaker 1: are creating a pose that looks like this. I always
Speaker 1: just thought like, well, okay, it's just I'm on all fours.
Speaker 1: I'm sort of like a dog right now. But I
Speaker 1: guess this is the name thing.
Speaker 3: So in yoga it's the butt is up, the head
Speaker 3: is down, correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, though usually in the picture you're showing here
Speaker 1: the dogs four pause forearms are on the ground, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's usually not the case with down dog. There are
Speaker 1: versions of down dog where you do have four arms down.
Speaker 1: I guess it's more gets inded like dolphin and so forth.
Speaker 1: But anyway, enough animals. We're talking about dogs, right.
Speaker 3: So studies show that playbows are they really are used
Speaker 3: for social communication. Like you can see that they're most
Speaker 3: common right after a candid play fight has sort of
Speaker 3: pushed the limits or has for some reason become ambiguous. So,
Speaker 3: for instance, when a play bite just got pretty rough,
Speaker 3: you know, like a dog. They're playing, but one bit
Speaker 3: the other kind of hard, it seems, then the playbow
Speaker 3: would be deployed. It's used to regulate the shared understanding
Speaker 3: of the activity and to signal kind of sorry about that,
Speaker 3: we're still in play mode. This is not a real fight.
Speaker 3: And in this way this would be considered a form
Speaker 3: of meta communication, allowing all the participants in an activity
Speaker 3: to continually understand the correct in which the shared activity
Speaker 3: should be interpreted. It's the signal this is play this
Speaker 3: is not real. And it turns out that with pretend
Speaker 3: play humans do this too. There are specific kinds of
Speaker 3: gestures and signals that have been observed within human play fighting,
Speaker 3: but even outside the realm of play fighting and just
Speaker 3: in pretend play that the kinds we've been talking about
Speaker 3: in this series so far. Maybe cooking in a play kitchen,
Speaker 3: or using a banana as a telephone, or using a
Speaker 3: little block as a car, you know, an object substitution
Speaker 3: enactment play any of these things. The signals used to
Speaker 3: communicate pretend to play might be more culturally variable in
Speaker 3: humans than in dogs. But for example, research in the
Speaker 3: United States has particularly found that when mothers play pretend
Speaker 3: with young children, they use specific body language cues such
Speaker 3: as strong eye contact, mistimed movements, and a smile immediately
Speaker 3: following the pretend behavior. And so like, I can imagine
Speaker 3: all these kind of things kind of like exaggerated weird
Speaker 3: movements and kind of looking at the child, making eye
Speaker 3: contact and then smiling after you say, like here's the phone. Also,
Speaker 3: this is not mentioned in the study, but I really
Speaker 3: thought about like using a different voice. You know, we've
Speaker 3: talked about about parental voice modulation on the show before.
Speaker 3: I think we did whole episodes on this of like
Speaker 3: the you know, the baby voice, the way parents tend
Speaker 3: to speak to children, and like what kind of purpose
Speaker 3: that serves where it comes from. But I think there's
Speaker 3: a version of this with pretend to play too. Like
Speaker 3: I notice when we start taking on a pretense, I
Speaker 3: kind of sound different. I'm doing something with the timing
Speaker 3: of my speaking and the pitch of my voice and
Speaker 3: stuff that I'm not normally doing when I'm just playing
Speaker 3: with my daughter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that makes sense. Yeah, I mean we often
Speaker 1: don't think about it, but we are sort of conveying that. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're shifting over one degree to the left or the
Speaker 1: right here into the imagination space.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh this book is a boat now. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And so you can think about different reasons for this
Speaker 3: meta communication within the play itself. So like in play fighting,
Speaker 3: meta communication is important for physical safety, you know, like
Speaker 3: you don't want the fight to you don't want the
Speaker 3: play fight to escalate to a real fight. So meta
Speaker 3: communication literally helps dogs and rats and humans avoid hurting
Speaker 3: one another. But with pretend to play in human children,
Speaker 3: it strikes me that it's probably important for something we
Speaker 3: talked about earlier in the series information quarantining, to prevent
Speaker 3: children from drawing incorrect lessons about reality from a game
Speaker 3: of pretend, you know, so the child does not end
Speaker 3: up thinking that a remote control can actually place phone calls.
Speaker 3: We're showing this is play, so the child doesn't learn
Speaker 3: something that's wrong. So in this paper, Lillard looks at
Speaker 3: studies of play fighting in animals to see what, if anything,
Speaker 3: can be established about its survival and reproduction value, what
Speaker 3: does it do for the animals? This section involves a
Speaker 3: lot of discussion of the difficulties and limitations in designing
Speaker 3: these experiments, and the paper is worth a read if
Speaker 3: you want to learn more about that. But to mention
Speaker 3: one prominent example type of experiment she brings up. It
Speaker 3: is an experiment where you take a baby rat and
Speaker 3: pair it in its enclosure only with a single adult
Speaker 3: female rat and no littermates. Now, with other littermates present,
Speaker 3: a baby rat will typically engage in play fighting as
Speaker 3: it matures, but when it is paired only with an
Speaker 3: adult female rat, the baby rat will receive socialization from
Speaker 3: the adults, so it's not like total social isolation or deprivent.
Speaker 3: But adult female rats specifically will not engage in play fighting,
Speaker 3: so this seems to reasonably well isolate and remove play
Speaker 3: fighting on its own. But it's important to note that
Speaker 3: this is not a perfect isolation of the variable, because
Speaker 3: having littermates is the norm for baby rats, so this
Speaker 3: is not just like a perfectly normal baby rat with
Speaker 3: only play fighting taken away. It's just getting as close
Speaker 3: to that as researchers can are. There any differences in
Speaker 3: rat development from this setup. Oh yes, a few examples.
Speaker 3: Rats that grow up with socialization but without play fighting
Speaker 3: have trouble interpreting social signals later in life. For instance,
Speaker 3: later if another rat tries to initiate play fighting, the
Speaker 3: deprived rat will often misinterpret it as a bid for
Speaker 3: real fighting. They also have difficulties with other types of
Speaker 3: social communication. They have difficulties with mating and with copulation,
Speaker 3: and it seems that across multiple domains, rats that don't
Speaker 3: have experience with play fighting just have trouble reading social
Speaker 3: signals from other rats. Also, the lack of juvenile experience
Speaker 3: with play fighting seems to change the development of the
Speaker 3: medial prefrontal cortex in a rat's brain, and the behavioral
Speaker 3: result of this is a difficulty with the inhibition of impulses.
Speaker 3: And I thought this part was really interesting. Lillard infers
Speaker 3: that play fighting helps develop a rat's inhibition skills because
Speaker 3: play fighting is an exercise in inhibition. You are sort
Speaker 3: of fighting, but you're not really going all the way
Speaker 3: you have to. In fact, one of the key skills
Speaker 3: of play fighting is to stop yourself from really biting
Speaker 3: the other rat hard. So, counterintuitively, when we see, you know,
Speaker 3: animals or children play fighting. We often think think of
Speaker 3: this as like, you know, you might have feelings like, oh,
Speaker 3: are they developing aggression? I mean, it's possible that that
Speaker 3: could be happening too, But counterintuitively, playfighting seems to be
Speaker 3: a way to get experience holding back aggression.
Speaker 1: This is also a topic that may tie into some
Speaker 1: things I've read about domestic cats and whether, like to
Speaker 1: what extent a given cat has been exposed to other cats.
Speaker 1: I'm to understand this can have an impact on, say,
Speaker 1: how likely they are to bite if they are perturbed
Speaker 1: or wishing to express something like, you know, have they
Speaker 1: had enough of I guess the feline equivalency of the
Speaker 1: play fighting model.
Speaker 3: Wow, I've never heard of that. But if I'm understanding
Speaker 3: you right, you're saying it's the idea that if a
Speaker 3: cat has grown up around other cats, they are more
Speaker 3: likely to inhibit or hold back the expression of aggression
Speaker 3: with say, humans in the household.
Speaker 1: That is what I've heard. Now. I did not go
Speaker 1: into research on this for this episode, so it's entirely possible.
Speaker 1: Sometimes when I get it the most wrong, it's in
Speaker 1: cases like this where it's nothing I researched. It's just
Speaker 1: something floating around in my head. So I would say,
Speaker 1: don't take that to the bank. But it's out there
Speaker 1: at least in the form of like cat owner folk wisdom,
Speaker 1: and it may have scientific underpinnings as well. Well.
Speaker 3: I feel like if that's true, that would line up
Speaker 3: exactly with these findings, and that would be really interesting.
Speaker 1: My cat is here, but she's asleep, so I can't
Speaker 1: I can't get any foul to asker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyway, in the conclusion of this section, Lillard says,
Speaker 3: quote taking turns at being dominant also involves inhibition. You
Speaker 3: think about it that way, So it's not just like,
Speaker 3: you know, when you get the better of another animal
Speaker 3: in play fighting and you bite down on them, but
Speaker 3: you don't really bite down all the way. That's inhibition.
Speaker 3: You have to have the executive function to hold back.
Speaker 3: But also taking turns involves a type of holding back.
Speaker 3: I would imagine. I haven't done research on this either,
Speaker 3: but I would imagine just in general in the human analogy,
Speaker 3: like any kind of sharing or relinquishing power over something
Speaker 3: within a game involves a type of inhibition control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense, So Lillard.
Speaker 3: Says, maybe play fighting is really important for strengthening the
Speaker 3: neural circuitry behind inhibition, and if you don't have play
Speaker 3: fighting in these animals where it's common that circuitry for
Speaker 3: inhibition doesn't really develop fully. So looking over all this
Speaker 3: research in rats, Lillard says that that playfighting is probably
Speaker 3: important for the development of a rat's ability to read
Speaker 3: social signals from other rats, to coordinate social activity with
Speaker 3: other rats, to regulate stress, and exercise inhibition or holding
Speaker 3: back behaviors. Now the question is, of course, could pretend
Speaker 3: to play serve similar functions in human development. Lillard argues yes,
Speaker 3: though she's cautious to say, you know, we shouldn't conclude
Speaker 3: too much on the basis of analogies with other animals,
Speaker 3: but in the absence of stronger experimental designs on humans,
Speaker 3: which are probably not going to be forthcoming for very
Speaker 3: understandable reasons, this is a really interesting, if only partial
Speaker 3: piece of the picture. So essentially her idea is that
Speaker 3: pretend play in humans might be important for understanding social
Speaker 3: signals and for emotion regulation. I mentioned earlier that pretend
Speaker 3: to play in humans involves a lot of reading of
Speaker 3: social information or metacommunication between parents and children or at
Speaker 3: older ages between children and other children. So we had
Speaker 3: those things like the strong eye contact, the smile after
Speaker 3: the pretend action. You know, we alluded to the kind
Speaker 3: of pretend play voice. These signals let the child know
Speaker 3: that what is taking place is play and it is
Speaker 3: not to be taken literally.
Speaker 1: This also reminds me of some of the research we've
Speaker 1: discussed in the past concerning laughter. Laughter is a social cue.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, potentially to let other individuals know that there
Speaker 1: is not a risk and so forth.
Speaker 3: Totally, I think they could fit right in the suite there.
Speaker 3: So anyway, from here, Lillard goes on to analyze a
Speaker 3: number of other experiments that have tried to establish links
Speaker 3: of this sort between early pretend to play and specifically
Speaker 3: with theory of mind, which is heavily involved in social
Speaker 3: communication and understanding. So there's some big overlap there, and
Speaker 3: Lillard proposes a possible causal model that goes something like this,
Speaker 3: So early pretend to play sensitizes a child to social signals.
Speaker 3: This is the meta communication that goes on when you're
Speaker 3: playing pretend. All the little eye contact cues and the
Speaker 3: changes of voice and the little things you do to
Speaker 3: let the child know that the banana is not really
Speaker 3: a phone. We're playing a game right now. This is
Speaker 3: a separate reality, and so that makes the child sensitive
Speaker 3: to those social signals. This sensitivity in part helps a
Speaker 3: child develop the capacity for symbolic understanding, Lillard writes, quote
Speaker 3: Yet this sensitivity alone would not develop the symbolic function. Rather,
Speaker 3: it is the sensitivity in concert with the fact that
Speaker 3: the parent is presenting reality at two levels to the child,
Speaker 3: where one level serves as a symbol for the other. Thus,
Speaker 3: both parental pretend and the child's sensitivity to social signals
Speaker 3: are postulated to undergird the symbolic function, which is also
Speaker 3: used in language and the interpretation of other symbols. And then, finally,
Speaker 3: after this, the symbolic understanding in turn helps the child
Speaker 3: with theory of mind. Now, how would symbolic understanding lead
Speaker 3: to theory of mind? Lillard says that it is crucially
Speaker 3: quote learning that reality can exist at two levels, the
Speaker 3: nip and the bite, the banana and the telephone, the
Speaker 3: false belief and the reality. So this ties into the
Speaker 3: theory of mind. So like the symbolic understanding that there
Speaker 3: can be two different realities, like what I know to
Speaker 3: be true versus what I know sally incorrectly thinks to
Speaker 3: be true. It is this ability to think at multiple
Speaker 3: levels of reality that leads to typical adult social functioning,
Speaker 3: in large part through theory of mind. So Lillard writes
Speaker 3: about this in the end quote there might be continuity
Speaker 3: then with pretend to play and play fighting. In both cases,
Speaker 3: metacommunication is key and fundamental in humans. This ties into
Speaker 3: a symbolic capacity that is not well developed in other species,
Speaker 3: but a common root is reading social signals indicating that
Speaker 3: a behavior is to be interpreted at other than face value.
Speaker 3: And then finally, also Lillard goes on to have another
Speaker 3: section about the connection between between pretend play and self
Speaker 3: regulation or inhibitory control, like we already talked about, and
Speaker 3: that one also seems plausible too, because the very act
Speaker 3: of pretending is in a way an exercise in holding back.
Speaker 3: It could be in play fighting holding back aggression. But
Speaker 3: in the case of just say, like playing pretend, playing
Speaker 3: in a play kitchen, or playing bananas telephone, you are
Speaker 3: holding back the exercise of what you know to be
Speaker 3: really the case. It's an inhibition type of impulse that
Speaker 3: allows you to say, actually, I will not act on
Speaker 3: what I know to be reality. Instead, I will act
Speaker 3: on this secondary pretense scenario. So anyway, I found this
Speaker 3: model very interesting, and especially in the way that I
Speaker 3: don't know, it highlights just how convoluted human development can be.
Speaker 3: Like if Lillard is correct about this, say about the
Speaker 3: pathway that sort of starts with a child being sensitized
Speaker 3: to social signals and communication through pretend to play in
Speaker 3: the same way that animals probably are through play fighting,
Speaker 3: and that's somehow leading to like all of these complicated
Speaker 3: adult capacities through the mediating capacity of symbolic understanding. I
Speaker 3: don't know, it's fascinating to imagine just how unpredictable the
Speaker 3: development process of a human mind could be, that you
Speaker 3: wouldn't necessarily make that connection without having all of these
Speaker 3: pieces of evidence to establish in between make that connection
Speaker 3: between you know, like reading gestures and body language in
Speaker 3: pretend play to the final conclusion of adult socialization and
Speaker 3: theory of mind.
Speaker 1: I think one of the really interesting takes on pretend
Speaker 1: play and creativity in general that we've been looking at
Speaker 1: is this idea that you know, you can sort of
Speaker 1: look at it as this scaffolding that is used to
Speaker 1: sort of struck the mature psyche, you know, and our
Speaker 1: sort of semi completed adult forms. And yet the other
Speaker 1: interesting side of the coin is to look at ways
Speaker 1: in which we continue to engage in creative endeavors, including
Speaker 1: pretend play, and the possibility that, okay, all that scaffolding
Speaker 1: is still there and perhaps it can be reutilized to
Speaker 1: help us with problems and challenges that we face as adults.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I talked more broadly about creativity in
Speaker 1: general and pretend play specifically in adults. In the last
Speaker 1: episode we touched on some examples such as Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: a tabletop role playing game. I imagine most people listening
Speaker 1: to the show know at Dungeons and Dragons, says, we
Speaker 1: didn't stop to describe it, but of course it is
Speaker 1: you know, pen and paper, sometimes miniatures, books of rules,
Speaker 1: and of course sometimes it has digital components. But at
Speaker 1: the core, it is a scenario that's taking place within
Speaker 1: the heads of the players. It is a shared storytelling
Speaker 1: creative endeavor. And so that is frequently brought up as
Speaker 1: an example of pretend play that kids engage in and
Speaker 1: adolescents engage in, but also plenty of adults do we
Speaker 1: also have the example of improv theater as a big
Speaker 1: one that lines up with pretend play in a number
Speaker 1: of ways. And then we also touch briefly on Graveside
Speaker 1: conversations with the Debt as an example of adult humans
Speaker 1: speaking to an imagined mind state, something that you could
Speaker 1: almost compare to speaking with an imaginary friend with all
Speaker 1: the caveats that we discussed in that last episode. So
Speaker 1: today I wanted to follow up on all of that
Speaker 1: with a look at some additional literature that gets a
Speaker 1: little more in depth about the benefits of adult pretend play.
Speaker 1: But I do want to drive home again that this
Speaker 1: is certainly an example where there's so much material out
Speaker 1: there and our understanding of how imagination play and creativity
Speaker 1: factors into adult lives and what the benefits are. You know,
Speaker 1: this continues to develop. So I've had a really helpful
Speaker 1: article by Alyssamwison titled do grown Ups Pretend Play? Or
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, do grown Ups Play Pretend? And her primary
Speaker 1: focus professionally is on mental childhood development, but in this
Speaker 1: she also lines things up with the adult experience of
Speaker 1: engaging and pretend play, and she explores different imaginative adult
Speaker 1: activities that arguably match up with the idea of pretend play.
Speaker 1: She brings up D and D of course, she brings
Speaker 1: up cosplay, which we briefly touched on. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that you might dress up as a favorite
Speaker 1: fictional character and to certain extents, act as that fictional
Speaker 1: character her at say, some sort of a convention. She
Speaker 1: brings up LARPing live action role playing, which also crosses
Speaker 1: over into the realm of play fighting of course, you know,
Speaker 1: on stage fighting and so forth, which is interesting. You're
Speaker 1: not actually trying to kill somebody with a LARPing sword.
Speaker 3: Hopefully not. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then she also brought up an example that I
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought of that much in terms of pretend play,
Speaker 1: but engagement with fictional media, especially books, but also movies
Speaker 1: and TV shows. And I think that this is something
Speaker 1: that might not line up with every definition of pretend play,
Speaker 1: but it's food for thought, especially so far as written
Speaker 1: fiction goes. I was thinking about this, and we might
Speaker 1: we might throw non visual works in there as well,
Speaker 1: audio books, podcasts certainly, and also I think low five
Speaker 1: visual storytelling as well. Like I'm thinking, you know that
Speaker 1: sweet spot of like retro role playing games where the
Speaker 1: visuals on the screen gave you a representation of what
Speaker 1: things were and where they are, but then you might
Speaker 1: have this additional mental image and a mental version of
Speaker 1: what was happening. It's more akin to say, engaging with
Speaker 1: a book.
Speaker 3: And do you make this distinction, because something like engaging
Speaker 3: with a book is more of a participatory imaginative action
Speaker 3: than say, passive media like watching a TV show.
Speaker 1: By and large, But at the same level, I have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that even like it's easy to say be
Speaker 1: dismissive of cinema and say, well, the movie is giving
Speaker 1: you everything you need, is giving you the visuals, the sound,
Speaker 1: and then it doesn't leave anything to the imagination. But
Speaker 1: certainly not every scene is laying it all out there.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of moments where we as the viewer
Speaker 1: have to imagine what is being seen by the protagonist.
Speaker 1: We imagine the monster that's been glimpsed, or we imagine
Speaker 1: the monster in full and when we only see its feet,
Speaker 1: or you know, various scenes where characters are describing something
Speaker 1: and we don't see it. They're just telling a story.
Speaker 1: It's essentially more of an odd audio based storytelling situation.
Speaker 1: But certainly with a work of written fiction. You know, okay,
Speaker 1: it's it's going to tell its story, it's going to
Speaker 1: describe thoughts and action, and it's going to guide you
Speaker 1: along its course. It's going to plant its seeds. But
Speaker 1: the author, sometimes from beyond the grave, is of course,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking thoughts directly into your active mind, or
Speaker 1: not directly via the book. But but you know, reading
Speaker 1: is a social work. It's you know, it's not an
Speaker 1: entirely devoid of personal imagination or even imaginative choices. I
Speaker 1: imagine many of you have this, have had this experience
Speaker 1: where you make a like a mental note of what
Speaker 1: a character looks like, or you even decide how you
Speaker 1: will cast them in your imagination. I used to do
Speaker 1: this a lot when I was a younger reader, and
Speaker 1: I'll occasionally lean on this technique if I'm reading something
Speaker 1: that has a confusing cast of characters, or I'm having
Speaker 1: a trouble keeping track of everyone. I'm like, Okay, what's
Speaker 1: this person's last name? And then I'm like, okay, you're
Speaker 1: Harry Dane Stanton. We're just gonna we're just gonna try
Speaker 1: and streamline this a little bit. And I imagine various
Speaker 1: folks engage in varying degrees of this, though you know
Speaker 1: it's not always the case. But even if you don't
Speaker 1: actively decide how you're going to interpret something visually, when
Speaker 1: you're reading, your your mind is still visualizing the information
Speaker 1: that has been conveyed to you, like via your your
Speaker 1: own mind. You know, it's working off the various models,
Speaker 1: the various people you've you've seen and encountered. So there
Speaker 1: is still this like creative endeavor to that's entirely a
Speaker 1: product of your mind as a particular story is coming
Speaker 1: to life in your head. Now, some of that is
Speaker 1: me just spitballing there. But she argues that adults engage
Speaker 1: in such activities as these for many different reasons, and
Speaker 1: these reasons generally line up with some of the reasons
Speaker 1: that children engage in imagination play. To learn, to have
Speaker 1: the experience of traveling somewhere, to have various experiences you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have in your normal life, to laugh, and all
Speaker 1: of these experiences can be empathetic, they can be personally empowering,
Speaker 1: and much more. Now, Mewison mentions the importance of mastery
Speaker 1: and psychological distance in play for children. We see both
Speaker 1: of these. Of course, children tend to pretend to be older,
Speaker 1: more experienced individuals when they're playing. There are, of course
Speaker 1: counterexamples to that, but she refers to something that has
Speaker 1: been dubbed the Batman effect, where children will stick to
Speaker 1: a task longer if they're pretending to be someone else,
Speaker 1: generally someone with a greater degree of mastery. In this term,
Speaker 1: the Batman effect stems from a twenty seventeen study by
Speaker 1: White at All published in Child Development Batman Effect improvingance
Speaker 1: in young children. You can probably guess what this consistent of.
Speaker 3: I've heard of this, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So they in this study, they looked at six and
Speaker 1: four year olds and they found, quote, children who impersonated
Speaker 1: an exemplar other, in this case, a character such as Batman,
Speaker 1: spent the most time working, followed by children who took
Speaker 1: a third person perspective of the cell on the self,
Speaker 1: or finally a first person perspective, so, you know, creating
Speaker 1: that psychological distance and embodying like a person of mastery,
Speaker 1: the extreme of course being Batman.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, this makes me think about the nature of
Speaker 3: enjoyment in an activity and flow states and such. You know,
Speaker 3: it's often said that you are essentially in a flow
Speaker 3: state when you are engaging in an activity that's sort
Speaker 3: of maximally challenging but also still within your ability to do,
Speaker 3: and you're getting consistent feedback that you are doing it correctly.
Speaker 3: So like an activity that's too easy can be boring,
Speaker 3: an activity that is too hard, if you feel like
Speaker 3: you're just failing at it over and over, it becomes frustrating.
Speaker 3: And so I wonder if assuming a kind of exemplar
Speaker 3: character mind state allows you to simulate flow even if,
Speaker 3: like for you, this activity you neither you maybe don't
Speaker 3: have actual mastery of it. You are continually making mistakes,
Speaker 3: but it's part of the game to just not acknowledge
Speaker 3: that and say like, I'm doing it perfectly or maybe
Speaker 3: around the maybe on the other side, maybe it makes
Speaker 3: it more exciting an activity that would otherwise be so
Speaker 3: easy that it's boring.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Or I mean you're just you're becoming Batman. You're
Speaker 1: taking on grim determination to finish a task. Like would
Speaker 1: Batman stop sweeping the floor halfway through? No, he would
Speaker 1: buckle down and finish the job, because that's how Batman
Speaker 1: does it.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: You never see Batman finish the job. It always cuts
Speaker 3: away right after the most exciting part. Do you see
Speaker 3: Batman like making the hand off to the police and
Speaker 3: all the I guess occasionally.
Speaker 1: He often leaves them right hanging by battering in an alley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so interesting to think about, and I would, of course,
Speaker 1: I would be gained to hear any examples of the
Speaker 1: Batman effect from anyone's lives or the lives of children
Speaker 1: in someone's life. But the question then emerges, do adults
Speaker 1: do this as well? Well? Muissen mentions an acquaintance of
Speaker 1: hers who she says channeled something she's dubbing the Buffy effect.
Speaker 1: So this individual was preparing for childbirth and channeled Buffy
Speaker 1: the vampire Slayer just sort of find the like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, to get in the zone for what was
Speaker 1: to come. So that's and that's that's interesting, and I
Speaker 1: would love to hear from any listeners out there who
Speaker 1: have some version of this, Like if you ever embodied
Speaker 1: or you know, pretend played to some extent a fictional
Speaker 1: character in order to make it through some you know,
Speaker 1: big or small trial in your life. Maybe it's sweeping
Speaker 1: the floors, maybe it's childbirth, very different endeavors, but you
Speaker 1: can imagine where Yeah, you can sort of like psych
Speaker 1: yourself into it a little bit, like it reminds me
Speaker 1: of This is a much, I guess, more casual version
Speaker 1: of this. But you hear people talking about like engaging
Speaker 1: in beast mode or something, you know, to sort of
Speaker 1: like beast through a particular challenge or a workout, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean, on one level, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just a saying, but is it, Like you know, language
Speaker 1: is powerful, and if we're engaging in beast mode, are
Speaker 1: on some level are we engaging in some sort of imaginablecanthropy,
Speaker 1: some imagined a hulking out in order to complete a task.
Speaker 3: I can speak from personal experience that sometimes a difficult
Speaker 3: like workout, physical workout task is easier if you make
Speaker 3: the kinds of noises that are not polite to make
Speaker 3: at the gym, you know, if you like really roar
Speaker 3: or grunt. I mean, I understand why Jim's would prefer
Speaker 3: people not do that, but it kind of does help.
Speaker 1: I kind of forgot that there's like a no grunting,
Speaker 1: no sound effects rule in some gems.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they all have that, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I think someplaces they're like, please, please don't scream at
Speaker 3: your you know, the person on the machine next to you.
Speaker 3: But no, I think it does kind of help. And
Speaker 3: I wonder, I don't know, maybe there's a totally different
Speaker 3: mechanism at play there, but one could see how it
Speaker 3: could also just be part of like imagining yourself in
Speaker 3: some more dramatic kind of scenario than you actually are. Like,
Speaker 3: you're not just doing a workout, you are, you know,
Speaker 3: you're crossing some incredible hurdle in some kind of dramatic scenario.
Speaker 1: Well, even if you are not, like on any level,
Speaker 1: pretend playing that you were a beast during your workout,
Speaker 1: you still might be entering into like a slightly different
Speaker 1: mindset and a slightly different version of yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: like like and you're not just gym now your workout Jim,
Speaker 1: you know, or workout Jane or you or whatever the
Speaker 1: case may be. You know, And I think that makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. You know, we we often think
Speaker 1: of a cohesive self, but we know that under close scrutiny,
Speaker 1: this doesn't you know, completely pan out. We the person
Speaker 1: we are changes over time, and there are often sort
Speaker 1: of like different versions of ourselves depending on what our
Speaker 1: environment is, you know what time of day it is,
Speaker 1: and so forth. So you know, you may have a
Speaker 1: you know, a workout self that is, you know, a
Speaker 1: little bit to the left or the right of who
Speaker 1: you were before you came into that workout, and then
Speaker 1: hopefully the person after the workout has yet another person
Speaker 1: that is maybe a couple of degrees removed from your
Speaker 1: starting point. Ewison also mentions in passing the fake it
Speaker 1: till You Make it mantra, I believe she kicked off
Speaker 1: the article sort of bringing this up, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of like, hey, is this imagination play? And I think
Speaker 1: maybe there is something to go on there as well,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of you know, generally, when people
Speaker 1: were talking about faking it till you make it, they're
Speaker 1: talking about I guess it's not unlike the Batman idea.
Speaker 1: It's like you're not saying I'm going to be Batman.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be you know, the professional that I
Speaker 1: think I should be in the situation, or that the
Speaker 1: parent I think I should be, the spouse I think
Speaker 1: I should be, and so forth, and engaging in that
Speaker 1: until on some level that becomes more than norm.
Speaker 3: Why do I have a negative feeling about that phrase.
Speaker 3: I guess it's perfectly fine in some scenarios. For some reason,
Speaker 3: I'm associating it with like engaging in fraud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there has been You do see pushback against that
Speaker 1: turn of phrase, in part because it can be interpreted,
Speaker 1: I think, to sort of discount hard work and actual
Speaker 1: striving for change in your life and the idea that
Speaker 1: I would just fake it and you'll eventually you know,
Speaker 1: it's I don't think we should maybe take it too literally.
Speaker 3: The charitably interpreted version of it is fine. Yeah, that's good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now again, the Batman effect entails a certain amount of
Speaker 1: psychological distance, and Muisen also points out that we see
Speaker 1: element of this an adult imaginative choices. She says that,
Speaker 1: you know, one may wish to engage with media that
Speaker 1: offers a subjectively preferred level of psychological distance from whatever
Speaker 1: your reality might be. The example she gives is that
Speaker 1: of parents wishing to avoid media in which children are
Speaker 1: in danger. You know, I can speak to that, you know,
Speaker 1: especially when I had a young child, I was like,
Speaker 1: what was the movie The Babba Duke that came out?
Speaker 1: I think my child was very long. I was like, no,
Speaker 1: thank you, I'm not going to skip on the Babba Duke,
Speaker 1: and I still haven't gotten around to seeing.
Speaker 3: Oh it's really good, but yeah, I saw it. But
Speaker 3: before I had a child, I can absolutely speak to this, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, becoming a parent completely changed what my sensitivities
Speaker 3: in media and storytelling were, and like certain types of
Speaker 3: things that wouldn't really have bothered me before, like children
Speaker 3: in danger suddenly became very difficult to watch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, an example that came to my mind reading this
Speaker 1: article was, of course the height of the pandemic. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of us may be chose not to
Speaker 1: watch plague oriented media, you know, like it seems like
Speaker 1: maybe a time to skip on the zombie apocalypse scenarios
Speaker 1: and so forth. So I think there are different levels
Speaker 1: of this depending on you know, highly subjective, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever's going on in your world and more importantly in
Speaker 1: your life, because there could be things going on in
Speaker 1: your world that are just not weighing, particularly on your
Speaker 1: your psyche, or you're not aware of. And then she
Speaker 1: stresses mastering control in both adult and child models here,
Speaker 1: and I think this is this is pretty straightforward. You know,
Speaker 1: there's so much in our lives as adults that feel
Speaker 1: out of our control, and it may just be objectively
Speaker 1: out of our control, and yet you know, we have
Speaker 1: these responsibilities and you want to at least have this
Speaker 1: feeling of control, and so you sometimes find it in
Speaker 1: large acts, but often in small acts. And also these
Speaker 1: are the things you can find via involvement in various
Speaker 1: imaginative games. I think many video games fit this, and
Speaker 1: I believe that some of the most frequent examples, though,
Speaker 1: concerned tabletop gaming and especially tabletop role playing games like
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons. A hallmark of some of these experiences
Speaker 1: that I've seen discussed in past papers that I've read
Speaker 1: is the idea of too of a fixed, small scale universe,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, you think of so many different
Speaker 1: sandbox video games. There is the corner to the screen,
Speaker 1: like there is a limit to the world, and so
Speaker 1: you feel like you can master it in a way
Speaker 1: that you cannot be a master of reality.
Speaker 3: I think that's a really insightful point. When people talk
Speaker 3: about like video games or RPGs being I don't know,
Speaker 3: freeing or empowering in a way, I think they're usually
Speaker 3: focusing on the on the power of the characters played
Speaker 3: like that it can be an empowerment fantasy in that
Speaker 3: you play as someone who is very capable and can
Speaker 3: do a lot of things. And I'm sure that is
Speaker 3: part of it as well, but I think it's absolutely right.
Speaker 3: Maybe what is maybe even more important is that within
Speaker 3: video games or within a tabletop RPG, you can understand
Speaker 3: what all the rules are. You can and that's never
Speaker 3: true in reality and in life. We're all living our
Speaker 3: lives playing a massive game, a massive RPG where the
Speaker 3: rules are not clear and maybe they're changing.
Speaker 1: And you know, very often in our video games and
Speaker 1: our imaginative media, there is often a very clear line
Speaker 1: between good and evil. You know, it's it's it's zombies
Speaker 1: or invading robots or aliens, whatever the case may be. Like,
Speaker 1: there's a clear distinction, at least on some level in
Speaker 1: terms of how you're supposed to tackle adversity and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are clear ways to know how to play,
Speaker 3: which in reality it's confusing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, transitioning out of Muissen here, she does mention
Speaker 1: embassing in therapeutic use of tabletop roleplaying games, and she
Speaker 1: references a twenty twenty two Wired article by Cam Burns
Speaker 1: Health therapists. You're using tabletop games to help people. And
Speaker 1: I was looking at that article. The author of this
Speaker 1: Burns speaks with clinical psychiatrist Raphael Bokemazo, and in this
Speaker 1: conversation it's stressed that tabletop roleplaying games, and I think
Speaker 1: this is important to note, they're not therapy in and
Speaker 1: of themselves, and you know you can't, like realistically look
Speaker 1: at your own Dungeons and Dragons night and say I
Speaker 1: am going to therapy. Rather, they can be used as
Speaker 1: a tool in therapy by trained professionals, opening spaces for
Speaker 1: patients to explore things like identity, mortality, gender, social skills,
Speaker 1: overcoming social anxiety, and so forth. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think in the same way that like sports
Speaker 3: are not therapy, but could in some scenarios be therapeutic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and could you tap into some of those therapeutic
Speaker 1: effects on your own most certainly, but not to the
Speaker 1: degree that a trained professional would be able to utilize
Speaker 1: it with specific games with the right patients. Now, there's
Speaker 1: been quite a lot written on the possibility of using
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop role playing games for
Speaker 1: therapeutic purposes. I was looking at one paper from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four by Wayne d. Blackmun titled Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 1: The use of a fantasy game in the psychotherapeutic treatment
Speaker 1: of a young adult. The adult in question had schizoid
Speaker 1: personality disorder, and more recently you see this rolled out
Speaker 1: as a tool in specially aimed therapy groups. I found
Speaker 1: a nice article on Johns Hopkins University's website by Claire
Speaker 1: Gudreau titled tabletop Therapy, How Dungeons and Dragons can improve
Speaker 1: mental health. This is from twenty twenty three, and it
Speaker 1: highlights a session in which players engage. This is not
Speaker 1: like you know, this is just one example of how
Speaker 1: one particular therapy group handles it. But you might have
Speaker 1: sixty to ninety minutes of OURPG time. Granted that's you're
Speaker 1: packing a lot in, but I trust the professionals. Here
Speaker 1: followed by a session in which quote the players take
Speaker 1: a step back to reflect on the session and see
Speaker 1: how it relates to their own lives. And I thought
Speaker 1: this was interesting because it reminded me of the pivotal
Speaker 1: integration step in some models for psychedelic assisted therapy, where
Speaker 1: you engage in some sort of an altered state and
Speaker 1: then you top it off with therapist assisted reflection.
Speaker 3: I can see that comparison as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so engaging in this imaginative pretend play gaming scenario,
Speaker 1: but then you know, couching it in a discussion of
Speaker 1: how this relates to where you are in your life
Speaker 1: and whatever your current obstacles might be. The other big
Speaker 1: thing that of course is stressed in this article and
Speaker 1: in other places as well, is the goal is also
Speaker 1: making therapy fun and approachable for target patients, so generally
Speaker 1: that that is part of the scenario as well. Like
Speaker 1: perhaps someone is a little adverse to a therapy environment,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of like a great icebreaker. Well, we're
Speaker 1: not going to just get in and start talking about
Speaker 1: our feelings or our problems. We're going to play a game.
Speaker 1: And you know, you'll find multiple examples of this where,
Speaker 1: if not tabletop role playing games, sometimes just other games,
Speaker 1: card games, board games, and so forth are used to
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, break that ice down a little bit.
Speaker 3: I wonder how this interacts with Robert. I'm sure you
Speaker 3: know what I'm talking about here that at least in
Speaker 3: my limited experience with tabletop RPGs, there is kind of
Speaker 3: a difficulty adults have taking it too seriously and so
Speaker 3: there's often a lot of joking involved where like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's not like we're embarrassed to be playing D and D,
Speaker 3: but you know, we all came here for fun. This
Speaker 3: is what we like to do. But there is a
Speaker 3: kind of ongoing like rhythm of being in the game
Speaker 3: and then moments of stepping back and kind of meta
Speaker 3: commentary and joking about what's going on and then changing
Speaker 3: the subject and talking about something in the real world
Speaker 3: and then getting back to the game. And at least
Speaker 3: that's my experience, and I wonder if that's there's just
Speaker 3: a difficulty I think for a lot of adults to
Speaker 3: engage and sustained pretend to play like like a tabletop
Speaker 3: RPG in the way that kids can, where kids can
Speaker 3: just you know, like really take it seriously, stay in
Speaker 3: character and keep it going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been it's been my experience that this is
Speaker 1: very hard to come by with adults, even if you
Speaker 1: kind of like set a goal for yourself. And I
Speaker 1: mean I would also stress just you know, casually, whatever
Speaker 1: your gaming environment is. Yeah, it's like, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't want to force anything on your group. Maybe your
Speaker 1: group is doz Lean more serious, maybe it's a bunch
Speaker 1: of goofballs. If it's a bunch of goofballs, maybe don't
Speaker 1: go for that super grim dark serious scenario unless I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think sometimes you can find a nice
Speaker 1: balance though, where like, for instance, when I recently ran
Speaker 1: Alien RPG stuff with my group, we're generally more on
Speaker 1: the goofball spectrum, but for some reason we were able
Speaker 1: to do that one in a way which felt appropriately serious,
Speaker 1: but we still had a lot of like goofball moments
Speaker 1: doing it. And maybe there was a certain maybe to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, it had to do with like distance
Speaker 1: from the character. So it's almost like you were watching
Speaker 1: a movie play out and you could you could have
Speaker 1: these laughs while still engaging in the seriousness of the story.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I mean to be clear, I wasn't trying to say
Speaker 3: people should do it one way or the other. It's
Speaker 3: just my observation of how these things usually go is
Speaker 3: there's a lot of kind of a lot of stepping
Speaker 3: back and almost almost maybe deliberate kind of signals of
Speaker 3: we're not taking this too seriously. We're joking now. Haha.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean getting it. It's like play fighting, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because you are often dealing with these themes of mortality
Speaker 1: and failure, you know, rolling a natural one, missing your
Speaker 1: shot and then getting run through by a goblin sword
Speaker 1: or something, and you know, and if you're not careful,
Speaker 1: you can let emotions run run high in those those situations. Now,
Speaker 1: I've seen other studies that highlight the potential for tabletop
Speaker 1: role playing game assisted therapy with autistic adults to help
Speaker 1: with social cognition. Like I say, this is kind of
Speaker 1: a it seems like a rich area of therapy where
Speaker 1: folks are exploring different potential uses. On one hand, play
Speaker 1: seems to certainly be that spoonful of sugar that can
Speaker 1: help the medicine go down, like, you know, let's make
Speaker 1: therapy fun and approachable, but it also seems to have
Speaker 1: unique properties undo itself, you know, again kind of comparing
Speaker 1: it to some degree with the idea of engaging in
Speaker 1: a psychedelic experience and then having a therapist help you
Speaker 1: integrate that into your life, you know, like, let's use
Speaker 1: some of that mental scaffolding that we talked about earlier
Speaker 1: and see how we can get to where we're looking
Speaker 1: to go with therapy. Now, I mentioned improv as well.
Speaker 1: I looked at a pair of studies from twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: to twenty seventeen. There is a Comedic improv Therapy for
Speaker 1: the Treatment of Social Anxiety Disorder by Sheili at All
Speaker 1: Journal of Creativity and Mental Health, and the other one
Speaker 1: is Theraprov a pilot study of improv used to treat
Speaker 1: anxiety and depression Kruger at All Journal of Mental Health.
Speaker 1: The former highlighted quote a novel treatment for social anxiety
Speaker 1: disorder by harnessing the following therapeutic elements group, cohesiveness, play, exposure,
Speaker 1: and humor, while the latter article explored a brief therapeutic
Speaker 1: group based intervention model for patients with symptoms of anxiety
Speaker 1: and depression. So I'm not going to get into all
Speaker 1: the beats of these two studies, but both articles expressed
Speaker 1: a great deal of optimism for the use of these
Speaker 1: techniques alongside other treatments, other treatment methods and tools. I've
Speaker 1: also looked at papers exploring the potential for integrative play
Speaker 1: therapy already used for children more in adult situations, and
Speaker 1: of course there are other play based therapy tools that
Speaker 1: are used with adults as well, including a big one
Speaker 1: that that I completely spaced on and that is art therapy.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm aware that exists, but I don't really know
Speaker 3: anything about.
Speaker 1: It, right right, I mean I don't. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things where I'm mostly familiar with it from seeing
Speaker 1: it in passing in films like, for instance, there's a
Speaker 1: at some point in Stranger Things, there's a scene where
Speaker 1: you see people engaging in art therapy, and or you know,
Speaker 1: you'll I've watched TV shows where the characters involved do
Speaker 1: something with art therapy. But yeah, you can definitely loop
Speaker 1: art therapy in with other play based therapy models, you know.
Speaker 1: So perhaps this is a topic we could come back
Speaker 1: to at some point, the idea of play based therapy,
Speaker 1: or more specifically art based therapy, because it's been around
Speaker 1: since in some form or another since at least the
Speaker 1: mid twentieth century, and there have been a number of
Speaker 1: studies regarding how it can be used to help with
Speaker 1: various conditions and ailments. Well, you know, as we close
Speaker 1: out this five episode look at pretend play, I do
Speaker 1: feel like I have a more well rounded understanding of
Speaker 1: what children are doing when they engage and pretend play,
Speaker 1: as well as to the extent to what extent we're
Speaker 1: continuing to engage and pretend play throughout our adult lives.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah, it really makes me think about when
Speaker 3: we see these games children play that seem so funny
Speaker 3: that I think sometimes adults are tempted to think of
Speaker 3: play as frivolous, or to think of pretend play as
Speaker 3: especially frivolous. You know, these like silly scenarios that kids
Speaker 3: are making up is something that's just sort of, you know,
Speaker 3: not an important human activity, And it seems to me
Speaker 3: that that couldn't be further from the truth that play
Speaker 3: really is like the important work of childhood, and pretend
Speaker 3: to play is maybe the most important kind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, children's play is serious. It's building the person they
Speaker 1: will become. And then like the scaffolding is just not
Speaker 1: just abandoned after that, you know, like we're still using
Speaker 1: it to varying degrees, sometimes kind of invisibly to ourselves
Speaker 1: as we go through our daily life as adults.
Speaker 3: Yeah, play is building minds.
Speaker 1: There you go, that would look great on a bumper
Speaker 1: sticker T shirt what have you.
Speaker 3: But all right, I guess that does do it for
Speaker 3: the series for now.
Speaker 1: That's right. Again, we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 1: We're getting some great feedback from listeners. I'm sure we're
Speaker 1: going to have a listener mail in the very near
Speaker 1: future where we begin to roll through some of this
Speaker 1: examples of imaginary friends and paracosms and so forth. So yeah,
Speaker 1: right in, we'd love to hear your thoughts on all
Speaker 1: of this, either from your own personal experience as a
Speaker 1: pretender or observations you've made of children in your life
Speaker 1: that are pretending, or animals. Certainly we already mentioned dogs cats.
Speaker 1: Write in about your dogs and cats and their possible
Speaker 1: pretend play and play in general. Just a reminder that
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 1: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We
Speaker 1: do a little short form episode on Wednesdays, and on
Speaker 1: Fridays we set us on most serious concerns to just
Speaker 1: talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our regular audio producer JJ Posway,
Speaker 3: but also big thanks today to our guest audio producer
Speaker 3: Andrew Howard.
Speaker 1: Thanks Andrew.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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