Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: 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 briefly, 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 games,
Speaker 3: and so forth. We also talked about the specific issue
Speaker 3: of imaginary companions, where those come from, how they usually work,
Speaker 3: what patterns manifest within and across cultures. We talked about
Speaker 3: possible links between pretend to play and complex cognitive skills
Speaker 3: like symbolic understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and theory of mind, whether
Speaker 3: pretend to play may help children develop these capabilities, or
Speaker 3: 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 2: That's right, and we're going to continue on in this
Speaker 2: episode to roll out discussion on some of these themes.
Speaker 2: But I guess we should stress that there is so
Speaker 2: much out there, and there's so much ongoing research into
Speaker 2: not only pretend play, but also childhood imagination, adult imagination,
Speaker 2: and so forth. This is really one of those series
Speaker 2: where we could just keep going and going and find
Speaker 2: 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 is so good. But we are going to
Speaker 3: have to cut it off after today. Maybe we'll return
Speaker 3: to this topic in some form in the future. But
Speaker 3: one thing I wanted to come back to in today's episode,
Speaker 3: now that we've looked at a lot of the different
Speaker 3: cultural environments and varieties of play expression, is the question
Speaker 3: of the biological basis for pretend play? Is pretend play
Speaker 3: a culturally contingent activity?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Something that we just kind of like made up and
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, and
Speaker 3: in some cases kids keep pretending longer, and you can
Speaker 3: make arguments that activities sustained into adulthood are actually continued
Speaker 3: types of pretend play, maybe sort of in disguise or
Speaker 3: not so much in disguise. Now, Lillard makes the argument
Speaker 3: that because pretend play of some form is culturally universal
Speaker 3: and it's development schedule is fairly regular and predictable. It's
Speaker 3: probably an evolved biological trait and not just a contingent
Speaker 3: behavior that we happen to create through culture, and I
Speaker 3: think I would agree that this seems likely based on
Speaker 3: that information. So Lillard asks the question that I brought
Speaker 3: up a minute ago. If it is a biological trait
Speaker 3: of our species, and if it's not just an epiphenomenal
Speaker 3: byproduct of some other capacity like symbolic thinking, what evolutionary
Speaker 3: advantage does pretending provide? As an aside, we already looked
Speaker 3: at some possible answers to this question in that twenty
Speaker 3: fifteen paper by Weisberg that we talked about in earlier
Speaker 3: parts of the series. So it was brought up that
Speaker 3: maybe pretend play helps facilitate the development of counterfactual reasoning,
Speaker 3: symbolic understanding, and theory of mind. Though, as you'll recall,
Speaker 3: Weisberg highlighted that these correlations are difficult to study in
Speaker 3: a way that's practical, rigorous, and ethical. So while some
Speaker 3: studies do provide hints in support of all three of
Speaker 3: these links, the evidence is fairly weak. It's mostly just
Speaker 3: establishing correlations. Lillard's paper also notes how difficult this is
Speaker 3: to study and the indirect quality of much of the
Speaker 3: evidence available to us. We have some indications, specifically, like
Speaker 3: from tragic examples of children who suffered social isolation and infancy,
Speaker 3: that early deprivation of normal interaction with human caregivers can
Speaker 3: lead to noticeable deficits in pretend play later in childhood.
Speaker 3: So like children who don't have enough human social interaction
Speaker 3: when their babies tend to play pretend much less when
Speaker 3: they're older, suggesting some kind of link between pretend play
Speaker 3: and socialization. However, Lillard's paper makes use of a very interesting,
Speaker 3: totally separate line of evidence for the biological function of
Speaker 3: pretend play, and that is the analogy of non human animals.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, whether animals play this is probably a question
Speaker 2: that has already been bouncing around people's minds as they
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 3: research and It comes from a psychologist named Gordon Berghart,
Speaker 3: and Burghart's criteria for play I think he had five
Speaker 3: of them. The criteria or that one we've already talked
Speaker 3: about this that it's not functional, meaning that it's not
Speaker 3: activity that is necessary for survival in any direct way.
Speaker 3: So even if you enjoy chopping wood, chopping wood is
Speaker 3: not considered play. To use Lillard's summary quote, is voluntary
Speaker 3: and pleasurable. It differs in form or some other way
Speaker 3: from the functional expression. It is repeat and it tends
Speaker 3: to occur under conditions of abundance not stress. Now, if
Speaker 3: you look at those criteria, I think it's widely agreed
Speaker 3: that many species of non human animals, especially a lot
Speaker 3: of vertebrates in mammals, engage in play. But do these
Speaker 3: animals play pretend? This is more controversial, but Lillard makes
Speaker 3: the case that at least some forms of animal play
Speaker 3: should be considered examples of pretense. And both of these
Speaker 3: are fortunately going to be familiar to us and to
Speaker 3: listeners because we can see them in our pets. I think,
Speaker 3: in fact, it's maybe not even a coincidence that play
Speaker 3: would be especially common among the animals that we happened
Speaker 3: to make our domestic companions. So first example is playing
Speaker 3: with inanimate objects as if they were live prey. You
Speaker 3: can see this in cats, you can see this in dogs.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you've seen plenty of this in your home.
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yes, yeah, we see this all the time. Yeah, ranging
Speaker 2: from what we call the most dangerous game of finger mouse.
Speaker 2: This is where you move your finger underneath the blanket.
Speaker 2: Not recommended because it's an easy way to get your
Speaker 2: finger scratched in or bitten. But yeah, all manner of toys,
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, and then my cat does not need any encouragement
Speaker 2: to attack body parts. She attacks my feet all the time.
Speaker 3: Now, there's an interesting finding that Lillards, 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 2: Well, my cat, I can safely say, is not average.
Speaker 2: She's quite old at this point, but she still plays.
Speaker 2: And some of her favorite items just recently have been
Speaker 2: things like a plastic milk cap like off of an
Speaker 2: oat milk jug. How if she had a great time
Speaker 2: with that, buttons things like that, anything she can get
Speaker 2: her claws on, so it doesn't seem to necessary. We
Speaker 2: have other toys that do resemble rodents or birds or whatever,
Speaker 2: and she's into those as well, But otherwise she doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to discriminate. Now, not making this an episode about cats,
Speaker 2: but I think obviously there's something to be said here
Speaker 2: too about the domestic in house cat, like a fully
Speaker 2: indoor cat versus a cat that's going indoors and outdoors.
Speaker 2: This is a fully indoor cat, and I know there
Speaker 2: have been various observations made about like what that does.
Speaker 2: Does that keep a cat in more sort of a
Speaker 2: semi permanent stage of kitten hood to some degree? Maybe
Speaker 2: that has an effect on how they associate with toys.
Speaker 2: Maybe you see more of this average situation that's laid
Speaker 2: out here. If the cat actually has physical access to
Speaker 2: normal prey animals on a regular basis.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that seems quite plausible to me.
Speaker 2: 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: temporary physical advantage over one another in a way that
Speaker 3: somewhat resembles the behavior of those same animals as adults
Speaker 3: in violent competition, but is different in that the animals
Speaker 3: typically take turns being the aggressor and that the fight
Speaker 3: behaviors are truncated. The dog might in a play fight,
Speaker 3: it might put its jaws around the other dog's body,
Speaker 3: maybe put the jaws around the neck, but it does
Speaker 3: not bite down, or it doesn't usually, and if it does,
Speaker 3: that's a you know, that's clearly not what the behavior
Speaker 3: is intended to produce. Lillard argues that play fighting could
Speaker 3: be viewed as an analog for pretend play in humans
Speaker 3: and gives a number of reasons. For example, both of
Speaker 3: these activities pretend to play in humans and play fighting
Speaker 3: involve creating an as if scenario where the play activity
Speaker 3: appears to be a modified representation of a real activity,
Speaker 3: but with limits put on it, like the play fighting
Speaker 3: stops before the bite pressure is too much, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Lillard writes quote as Baitsen also pointed out, an animal
Speaker 3: that is engaged in play fighting must read a behavior
Speaker 3: as denoting a behavior different from the behavior it resembles.
Speaker 3: And then the sub quote of baits in here quote
Speaker 3: the play f denotes the bite, but it does not
Speaker 3: denote what would be denoted by the bite. In other words,
Speaker 3: the playful nip is a pretend bite, just as a
Speaker 3: child can pretend talk into a pretend phone to symbolize
Speaker 3: really talking into a real phone. In this way, both
Speaker 3: pretend play and play fighting behaviors are symbolic. They mean
Speaker 3: something other than what they are. She also calls attention
Speaker 3: to the fact that both pretend play in humans and
Speaker 3: play fighting in other mammals rely on the exchange of
Speaker 3: specific ritualized gestures and indicators that the activity is play
Speaker 3: and not real. And I don't think I was aware
Speaker 3: of a lot of this. For example, she talks about
Speaker 3: a bunch of observations in rats that when rats playfight,
Speaker 3: and apparently they do this a lot. Rats playfight. She says,
Speaker 3: when they playfight they don't bite at or target the
Speaker 3: same areas of the body that they do when rats
Speaker 3: are actually fighting in real violent competition. So when they're
Speaker 3: play fighting, she says, they target a nuzzle like the
Speaker 3: nape of the neck, whereas real fighting and tends to
Speaker 3: involve attacks on the flanks and the lower back. And
Speaker 3: apparently they also emit high pitched ultrasonic vibrations when they're
Speaker 3: play fighting, which other rats can hear, which seems to
Speaker 3: help the rats avoid mistaking a bid for a play
Speaker 3: fight 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 and I've got a
Speaker 3: picture here for you to look at. Rob though I'm
Speaker 3: sure you're familiar with this on your own as well.
Speaker 2: Well. I mean, now that it's pointed out to me,
Speaker 2: I have seen dogs doing this, and I guess I'm
Speaker 2: realizing for the first time that this must be why
Speaker 2: we call the pose and yoga down dog, because we
Speaker 2: are creating a pose that looks like this. I always
Speaker 2: just thought like, well, okay, it's just I'm not all fours.
Speaker 2: I'm sort of like a dog right now. But I
Speaker 2: guess this is the name thing.
Speaker 3: So in yoga it's the butt is up, the head
Speaker 3: is down.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah, okay, though usually in the picture you're showing
Speaker 2: here the dogs four paws, four arms are on the ground,
Speaker 2: and yeah, that's usually not the case with down dog,
Speaker 2: though there are versions of down dog where you do
Speaker 2: have four arms down. I guess that's more gets sended
Speaker 2: like dolphin and so forth. But anyway, enough animals. We're
Speaker 2: 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 frame in which the shared
Speaker 3: activity should be interpreted. It's the signal this is play,
Speaker 3: this is not real. And it turns out that with
Speaker 3: pretend play humans do this too. There are specific kinds
Speaker 3: of gestures and signals that have been observed within human
Speaker 3: play fighting, but even out side the realm of play
Speaker 3: fighting and just in pretend play that the kinds we've
Speaker 3: been talking about in this series so far. Maybe cooking
Speaker 3: in a play kitchen, or using a banana as a telephone,
Speaker 3: or using a little block as a car, you know,
Speaker 3: an object substitution enactment play, any of these things. The
Speaker 3: signals used to communicate pretend to play might be more
Speaker 3: culturally variable in humans than in dogs. But for example,
Speaker 3: research in the United States has particularly found that when
Speaker 3: mothers play pretend with young children, they use specific body
Speaker 3: language cues such as strong eye contact, mistimed movements, and
Speaker 3: a smile immediately following the pretend behavior. And so like
Speaker 3: I can imagine all these kind of things kind of
Speaker 3: like exaggerated weird movements that kind of looking at the child,
Speaker 3: making eye contact and then smiling after you say, like
Speaker 3: here's the phone. Also, this is not mentioned in the
Speaker 3: the study, but I really thought about like using a
Speaker 3: different voice. You know, we've talked about about parental voice
Speaker 3: modulation on the show before. I think we did a
Speaker 3: whole episodes on this of like the you know, the
Speaker 3: baby voice, the way parents tend to speak to children,
Speaker 3: and like what kind of purpose that serves where it
Speaker 3: comes from. But I think there's a version of this
Speaker 3: with pretend to play too. Like I notice when we
Speaker 3: start taking on a pretense, I kind of sound different.
Speaker 3: I'm doing something with the timing of my speaking and
Speaker 3: the pitch of my voice and stuff that I'm not
Speaker 3: normally doing when I'm just playing with my daughter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that makes sense. Yeah, I mean we often
Speaker 2: don't think about it, but we're sort of conveying that. Okay,
Speaker 2: we're shifting over one degree to the left or the
Speaker 2: 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 that the child doesn't
Speaker 3: learn something that's wrong. So in this paper, Lillard looks
Speaker 3: at studies of play fighting in animals to see what,
Speaker 3: if anything, can be established about its survival and reproduction value.
Speaker 3: What does it do for or the animals. This section
Speaker 3: involves a lot of discussion of the difficulties and limitations
Speaker 3: in designing these experiments, and the paper is worth a
Speaker 3: read if you want to learn more about that. But
Speaker 3: to mention one prominent example type of experiment she brings up.
Speaker 3: It is an experiment where you take a baby rat
Speaker 3: and pair it in its enclosure only with a single
Speaker 3: adult 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 adult, so it's not like total social isolation or deprivation.
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 playfighting seems to change the development of the medial
Speaker 3: prefrontal cortex in a rat's brain, and the behavioral result
Speaker 3: 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 of this
Speaker 3: 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, play fighting seems to
Speaker 3: be a way to get experience holding back aggression.
Speaker 2: This is also a topic that may tie into some
Speaker 2: things I've read about domestic cats and whether, like to
Speaker 2: what extent a given cat has been exposed to other cats.
Speaker 2: I'm to understand this can have an impact on, say,
Speaker 2: how likely they are to bite if they are perturbed
Speaker 2: or wishing to express something like, you know, have they
Speaker 2: had enough of I guess the feline equivalency of the
Speaker 2: 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 2: That is what I've heard. Now, I did not go
Speaker 2: into research on this for this episode, so it's entirely possible.
Speaker 2: Sometimes when I get it the most wrong, it's in
Speaker 2: cases like this where it's nothing I researched. It's just
Speaker 2: something floating around in my head. So I would say,
Speaker 2: don't take that to the bank. But it's out there,
Speaker 2: at least in the form of owner folk wisdom, and
Speaker 2: 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 that would be really interesting.
Speaker 2: My cat is here, but she's asleep, so I can't
Speaker 2: I can't get any foul 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 and the human analogy,
Speaker 3: like any kind of sharing or relinquishing and relinquishing power
Speaker 3: over something within a game involves a type of inhibition control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So Lillard says, maybe play fighting is really important for
Speaker 3: strengthening the neural circuitry behind inhibition. And if you don't
Speaker 3: have play fighting in these animals where it's common, that
Speaker 3: circuitry for inhibition doesn't really develop fully. So looking over
Speaker 3: all this research in rats, Lillard says that that playfighting
Speaker 3: is probably important for the development of a rat's ability
Speaker 3: to read social signals from other rats, to coordinate social
Speaker 3: activity with other rats, to regulate stress, and exercise inhibition
Speaker 3: or holding back behaviors. Now the question is, of course,
Speaker 3: could pretend to play serve similar functions in human development.
Speaker 3: Lillard argues yes, And though she's cautious to say, you know,
Speaker 3: we shouldn't conclude too much on the basis of analogies
Speaker 3: with other animals, but in the absence of stronger experimental
Speaker 3: designs on humans, which are probably not going to be
Speaker 3: forthcoming for very understandable reasons, this is a really interesting,
Speaker 3: if only partial piece of the pick. Sure, So essentially
Speaker 3: her idea is that pretend play in humans might be
Speaker 3: important for understanding social signals and for emotion regulation. I
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier that pretend to play in humans involves a
Speaker 3: lot of reading of social information or metacommunication between parents
Speaker 3: and children, or at older ages, between children and other children.
Speaker 3: So we had those things like the strong eye contact,
Speaker 3: the smile after the pretend action. You know, we alluded
Speaker 3: to the kind of pretend play voice. These signals let
Speaker 3: the child know that what is taking place is play
Speaker 3: and it is not to be taken literally.
Speaker 2: This also reminds me of some of the research we've
Speaker 2: discussed in the past concerning laughter. Laughter is a social cue.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, potentially to let other individuals know that there
Speaker 2: 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 an
Speaker 3: number of other experiments that have tried to establish links
Speaker 3: of this sort between early pretend play and specifically with
Speaker 3: theory of mind, which is heavily involved in social communication
Speaker 3: and understanding. So there's some big overlap there, and Lillard
Speaker 3: proposes a possible causal model that goes something like this,
Speaker 3: So early pretend 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 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 banana as telephone, you
Speaker 3: are holding back the exercise of what you know to
Speaker 3: be really the case, it's an inhibition type of impulse
Speaker 3: that allows you to say, actually, I will not act
Speaker 3: on what I know to be reality. Instead, I will
Speaker 3: act on this secondary pretense scenario. So anyway, I found
Speaker 3: this model very interesting, and especially in the way that
Speaker 3: I don't know it highlights just how convoluted human development
Speaker 3: can be. Like if Lillard is correct about this, say
Speaker 3: about the pathway that sort of starts with a child
Speaker 3: being sensitized to social signals and metacommunication through pretend to
Speaker 3: play in the same way that animals probably are through
Speaker 3: play fighting, and that's somehow leading to like all of
Speaker 3: these complicated adult capacities through the mediating capacity of symbolic understanding.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's fascinating to imagine just how unpredictable
Speaker 3: the development process of a human mind could be. That
Speaker 3: you wouldn't necessarily make that connection without having all of
Speaker 3: these pieces of evidence to establish in between make that
Speaker 3: connection between you know, like reading gestures and body language
Speaker 3: in pretend play to the final conclusion of adult socialization
Speaker 3: and theory of mind.
Speaker 2: I think one of the really interesting takes on pretend
Speaker 2: play in creativity in general that we've been looking at
Speaker 2: is this idea that you know, you can sort of
Speaker 2: look at it as this scaffolding that is used to
Speaker 2: sort of construct the mature psyche, you know, and our
Speaker 2: sort of semi completed adult forms. And yet the other
Speaker 2: interesting side of the coin is to look at ways
Speaker 2: in which we continue to engage in creative endeavors, including
Speaker 2: pretend play, and the possibility that okay, all that scaffolding
Speaker 2: is still there and perhaps it can be reutilized to
Speaker 2: help us with problems and challenges that we face as adults.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, I talked more broadly about creativity in
Speaker 2: general and pretend play specifically in adults. In the last episode,
Speaker 2: we touched on some examples such as Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 2: a tabletop role playing game. I imagine most people listening to
Speaker 2: the show know a Dungeons and Dragons, says, we didn't
Speaker 2: stop to describe it, but of course it is pen
Speaker 2: and paper, sometimes miniatures, whole books of rules, and of
Speaker 2: course sometimes it has digital components. But at the core,
Speaker 2: it is a scenario that's taking place within the heads
Speaker 2: of the players. It is a shared storytelling creative endeavor.
Speaker 2: And so that is frequently brought up as an example
Speaker 2: of pretend play that you know, kids engage in and
Speaker 2: adolescents engage in, but also plenty of adults do. We
Speaker 2: also have the example of improv theater as a big
Speaker 2: one that has lines up with pretend play in a
Speaker 2: number of ways. And then we also touched briefly on
Speaker 2: Graveside conversations with the Debt as an example of adult
Speaker 2: humans speaking to an imagined mind state, something that you
Speaker 2: could almost compare to speaking with an imaginary friend, you know,
Speaker 2: with all the caveats that we discussed in that last episode.
Speaker 2: So today I wanted to follow up on all of
Speaker 2: that with a look at some additional literature that gets
Speaker 2: a little more in depth about the benefits of adult
Speaker 2: pretend play. But I do want to drive home again
Speaker 2: that this is certainly an example where there's so much
Speaker 2: material out there and our understanding of how imagination, play
Speaker 2: and creativity factors into adult lives and what the benefits are.
Speaker 2: You know, this continues to develop. So I've hand really
Speaker 2: helpful article by Alyssa Mwison titled Do grown Ups Pretend Play?
Speaker 2: Or I'm sorry, do grown Ups Play Pretend? And her
Speaker 2: primary focus professionally is on mental childhood development, but in
Speaker 2: this she also lines things up with the adult experience
Speaker 2: of engaging and pretend play, and she explores different imaginative
Speaker 2: adult activities that arguably match up with the idea of
Speaker 2: pretend play. She brings up D and D of course,
Speaker 2: she brings up cosplay, which we briefly touched on I think,
Speaker 2: you know, the idea that you might dress up as
Speaker 2: a favorite fictional character and to certain extents act as
Speaker 2: that fictional character at say some sort of a convention.
Speaker 2: She brings up LARPing live action role playing, which also
Speaker 2: crosses over into the realm of play fighting of course,
Speaker 2: you know, on stage fighting and so forth, which is interesting.
Speaker 2: You're not actually trying to kill some with a LARPing sword.
Speaker 3: Hopefully not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then she also brought up an example that
Speaker 2: I hadn't really thought of that much in terms of
Speaker 2: pretend play, but engagement with fictional media, especially books, but
Speaker 2: also movies and TV shows. And I think that this
Speaker 2: is something that might not line up with every definition
Speaker 2: of pretend play, but it's food for thought, especially so
Speaker 2: far as written fiction goes. I was thinking about this,
Speaker 2: and we might we might throw non visual works in
Speaker 2: there as well, audio books, podcasts certainly, and also I
Speaker 2: think low five visual storytelling as well. Like I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: you know that sweet spot of like retro role playing
Speaker 2: games where the visuals on the screen gave you a
Speaker 2: representation of what things were and where they are, But
Speaker 2: then you might have this additional mental image and a
Speaker 2: mental version of what was happening. That's more akin to say,
Speaker 2: engaging with 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 than say,
Speaker 3: passive media like watching a TV show.
Speaker 2: By and large, But at the same level, I have
Speaker 2: to acknowledge that even like it's easy to say be
Speaker 2: dismissive of cinema and say, well, the movie is giving
Speaker 2: you everything you need, is giving you the visuals, the sound,
Speaker 2: and then it doesn't leave anything to the imagination. But
Speaker 2: certainly not every scene is laying it all out there.
Speaker 2: There are plenty of moments where we as the viewer
Speaker 2: have to imagine what is being seen by the protagonist.
Speaker 2: We imagine the monster that's been glimpsed, or we imagine
Speaker 2: the monster in full than when we only see its feet,
Speaker 2: or you know, various scenes where characters are describing something
Speaker 2: and we don't see it. They're just telling a story.
Speaker 2: And it's essentially more of an odd audio based storytelling situation.
Speaker 2: But certainly with a work of written fiction, you know, okay,
Speaker 2: it's going to tell its story, it's going to describe
Speaker 2: thoughts and action and it's going to guide you along
Speaker 2: its course, it's going to plant its seeds. But the
Speaker 2: author some times from beyond the graves, of course, you know,
Speaker 2: thinking thoughts directly into your active mind, or not directly
Speaker 2: via the book, but but you know, reading the social work,
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's not an entirely devoid of personal
Speaker 2: imagination or even imaginative choices. I imagine many of you
Speaker 2: have this, have had this experience where you make a
Speaker 2: like a mental note of what a character looks like,
Speaker 2: or you even decide how you will cast them in
Speaker 2: your imagination. I used to do this a lot when
Speaker 2: I was a younger reader, and I'll occasionally lean on
Speaker 2: this technique if I'm reading something that has a confusing
Speaker 2: cast of characters, or I'm having a trouble keeping track
Speaker 2: of everyone. I'm like, Okay, what's this person's last name?
Speaker 2: And then I'm like, okay, you're Harry Dane. Stand. We're
Speaker 2: just gonna we're just gonna try and streamline this a
Speaker 2: little bit. And I imagine various folks engage in varying
Speaker 2: degrees of this, though you know it's not always the case.
Speaker 2: But even if you don't actively decide how you're going
Speaker 2: to interpret something visually. When you're reading, your mind is
Speaker 2: still visualizing the information that has been conveyed to you,
Speaker 2: like via your own mind. You know, it's working off
Speaker 2: the various models, the various people you've seen and encountered.
Speaker 2: So there is still this like creative endeavor to that's
Speaker 2: entirely a product of your mind as a particular story
Speaker 2: is coming to life in your head. Now, some of
Speaker 2: that is me just spitballing there. But she argues that
Speaker 2: adults engage in such activities as these for many different reasons,
Speaker 2: and that these reasons generally line up with some of
Speaker 2: the reasons that children engage in imagination play. To learn,
Speaker 2: to have the experience of traveling somewhere, to to have
Speaker 2: various experiences you wouldn't have in your normal life, to laugh.
Speaker 2: And then all of these experiences can be empathetic, they
Speaker 2: can be personally empowering, and much more. Now, Mewison mentions
Speaker 2: the importance of mastery and psychological distance in play for children.
Speaker 2: We see both of these. Of course, children tend to
Speaker 2: pretend to be older, more experienced individuals when they're playing.
Speaker 2: There are, of course counterexamples to that, but she refers
Speaker 2: to something that has been dubbed the Batman effect, where
Speaker 2: children will stick to a task longer if they're pretending
Speaker 2: to be someone else, generally someone with a greater degree
Speaker 2: of mastery. In this term, the Batman effect stems from
Speaker 2: a twenty seventeen study by White at All published in
Speaker 2: Child Development Batman Effect Improving perseverance in young children. You
Speaker 2: can probably guess what this consists of. I've heard of this, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So they in this study, they looked at six and
Speaker 2: four year olds and they found, quote, children who impersonated
Speaker 2: an exemplar other, in this case, a character such as Batman,
Speaker 2: spent the most time I'm working, followed by children who
Speaker 2: took a third person perspective of the cell on the self,
Speaker 2: or finally a first person perspective, so, you know, creating
Speaker 2: that psychological distance and embodying like a person of mastery,
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 3: do and you're getting consistent feedback that you are doing
Speaker 3: it correctly. So like an activity that's too easy can
Speaker 3: be boring, an activity that is too hard if you
Speaker 3: feel like you're just failing at it over and over,
Speaker 3: it becomes frustrating. And so I wonder if assuming a
Speaker 3: kind of exemplar character mind state allows you to simulate
Speaker 3: flow even if, like for you, this activity you neither
Speaker 3: you maybe don't have actual mastery of it. You are
Speaker 3: continually making mistakes, but it's part of the game to
Speaker 3: just not acknowledge that and say like, I'm doing it
Speaker 3: perfectly or maybe around the maybe on the other side,
Speaker 3: maybe it makes it more exciting and activity that would
Speaker 3: otherwise be so easy that it's boring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or I mean you're just you're becoming Batman. You're
Speaker 2: taking on grim determination to finish a task. Like would
Speaker 2: Batman stop sweeping the floor halfway through? No, he would
Speaker 2: buckle down and finish the job, because that's how Batman
Speaker 2: does it. Well.
Speaker 3: You never see Batman finish the job, do you, It
Speaker 3: always cuts away right after the most exciting part. Do
Speaker 3: you see Batman, like making the hand off to the
Speaker 3: police and all that. I guess occasionally he often leaves
Speaker 3: them right hanging by battering in an alley. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: interesting to think about, and I would, of course, I
Speaker 3: would be game to hear any examples of the man
Speaker 3: effect from anyone's lives or the lives of children in
Speaker 3: someone's life. But the question then emerges, do adults do
Speaker 3: this as well?
Speaker 2: Well? Muissen mentions an acquaintance of hers who she says
Speaker 2: channeled something she's dubbing the Buffy effect. So this individual
Speaker 2: was preparing for childbirth and channeled Buffy the vampire Slayer
Speaker 2: just sort of find the like I don't know, to
Speaker 2: get in the zone for what was to come. So
Speaker 2: that's and that's that's interesting, And I would love to
Speaker 2: hear from any listeners out there who have some version
Speaker 2: of this, Like if you ever embodied or you know,
Speaker 2: pretend played to some extent a fictional character in order
Speaker 2: to make it through some you know, big or small
Speaker 2: trial in your life. Maybe it's sweeping the floors, maybe
Speaker 2: it's childbirth, very different endeavors, but you can imagine where. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can sort of like psych yourself into it a
Speaker 2: little bit. Like it reminds me of this is a
Speaker 2: much I guess more casual version of this, But you
Speaker 2: hear people talking about like engaging in beast mode or something,
Speaker 2: you know, to sort of like beast through a particular
Speaker 2: challenge or a workout, et cetera. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: on one level, yeah, it's just a saying, but is it, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, language is powerful, and if we're engaging in
Speaker 2: beast mode, are on on some level? Are we engaging
Speaker 2: in some sort of imaginablecanthropy, some imagined a hulking out
Speaker 2: 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 gims would prefer
Speaker 3: people not do that, but it kind of does help.
Speaker 2: I kind of forgot that there's like a no grunting,
Speaker 2: no sound effects rule in some gems.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they all have that, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I think someplace 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.
Speaker 3: Like 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 2: Well, even if you are not like on any level,
Speaker 2: pretend playing that you were a beast during your workout,
Speaker 2: you still might be entering into like a slightly different
Speaker 2: mindset and a slightly different version of yourself, you know,
Speaker 2: like like and you're not just gym now your workout gym,
Speaker 2: you know, or workout Jane or whatever the case may be,
Speaker 2: you know, And I think that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: You know, we we often think of a cohesive self,
Speaker 2: but we know that under close scrutiny, this doesn't you know,
Speaker 2: completely pan out. We the person we are changes over time,
Speaker 2: and there are often sort of like different versions of
Speaker 2: ourselves depending on what our environment is, you know, what
Speaker 2: time of day it is and so forth. So you know,
Speaker 2: you may have a you know, a workout self that is,
Speaker 2: you know, a little bit to the left or the
Speaker 2: right of who you were before you came into that workout,
Speaker 2: and then hopefully the person after the workout has yet
Speaker 2: another person that is maybe a couple of degrees removed
Speaker 2: from your starting point. Mewison also mentions in passing the
Speaker 2: fake it till You Make it Mantra, I believe she
Speaker 2: kicked off the article sort of bringing this up, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of like, hey, is this imagination play? And I
Speaker 2: think maybe there is something to go on there as well,
Speaker 2: you know, the idea of you know, generally, when people
Speaker 2: were talking about faking it till you make it, they're
Speaker 2: talking about I guess it's it's not unlike the Batman idea.
Speaker 2: It's like you're not saying I'm going to be Batman.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be, you know, the professional that I
Speaker 2: think I should be in this situation, or that the
Speaker 2: parent I think I should be, the spouse I think
Speaker 2: I should be, and so forth, and engaging in that
Speaker 2: 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 2: But yeah, there has been. You do see pushback against
Speaker 2: that turn of phrase, in part because it can be interpreted,
Speaker 2: I think, to sort of discount hard work and actual
Speaker 2: striving for change in your life and the idea that
Speaker 2: I would just fake it and you'll eventually you know,
Speaker 2: 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 2: Now again, the Batman effect entails a certain amount of
Speaker 2: psychological distance, and Muisen also points out that we see
Speaker 2: elements of this in adult imaginative choices. She says that,
Speaker 2: you know, one may wish to engage with media that
Speaker 2: offers subjectively preferred level of psychological distance from whatever your
Speaker 2: reality might be. The example she gives is that of
Speaker 2: parents wishing to avoid media in which children are in danger.
Speaker 2: You know, I can speak to that, you know, especially
Speaker 2: when I had a young child. I was like, what
Speaker 2: was the movie The Babba Duke that came out? I
Speaker 2: think my child was And I was like, no, thank you,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to skip on the Babba Duke. And
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, an example that came to my mind reading this
Speaker 2: article was, of course, during the height of the pandemic.
Speaker 2: I know, a lot of us maybe chose not to
Speaker 2: watch plague oriented media, you know, like it seemed like
Speaker 2: maybe a time to skip on the zombie apocalypse scenarios
Speaker 2: and so forth. So I think there are different levels
Speaker 2: of this depending on you know, I was subjective, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever going on in your world and more importantly in
Speaker 2: your life, because there could be things going on in
Speaker 2: your world that are just not weighing, particularly on your
Speaker 2: your your psyche, or you're not aware of. And then
Speaker 2: she stresses mastering control in both adult and child models here,
Speaker 2: and I think this is this is pretty straightforward. You know,
Speaker 2: there's so much in our lives as adults that feel
Speaker 2: out of our control, and it may just be objectively
Speaker 2: out of our control, and yet you know, we we
Speaker 2: have these responsibilities and you want to at least have
Speaker 2: this feeling of control, and so you sometimes find it
Speaker 2: in large acts, but often in small acts. And also
Speaker 2: these are the things you can find via involvement in
Speaker 2: various imaginative games. I think many video games fit this
Speaker 2: uh and and I believe that some of the most
Speaker 2: frequent examples, though, concerned tabletop gaming and especially tabletop role
Speaker 2: playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. A hallmark of some
Speaker 2: of these experiences that that i've I've seen discussed in
Speaker 2: past papers of I've read is the idea of too
Speaker 2: of a fixed, small scale universe, you know, I mean
Speaker 2: you think of so many different sandbox video games. There
Speaker 2: is a corner to the screen, like there is a
Speaker 2: limit to the world, and so you feel like you
Speaker 2: can master it in a way that you cannot be
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, And you know, very often in our video games
Speaker 2: and our imaginative media, there is often a very clear
Speaker 2: line between good and evil. You know, it's zombies or
Speaker 2: invading robots or aliens, whatever the case may be. Like,
Speaker 2: there's a clear distinction, at least on some level in
Speaker 2: 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. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, transitioning out of Muissen here, she does mention embassa
Speaker 2: in therapeutic use of tabletop role playing games, and she
Speaker 2: references a twenty twenty two Wired article by Cam Burns
Speaker 2: how therapists you're using tabletop games to help people? And
Speaker 2: I was looking at that article. The author of this
Speaker 2: Burn speaks with clinical psychiatrists Raphael Bokemazo, and in this conversation,
Speaker 2: it's stressed that tabletop role playing games, and I think
Speaker 2: this is important, they're not therapy in and of themselves,
Speaker 2: and you know, you can't, like realistically look at your
Speaker 2: own Dungeons and Dragons night and say I am going
Speaker 2: to therapy. Rather, they can be used as a tool
Speaker 2: in therapy by trained professionals, opening spaces for patients to
Speaker 2: explore things like identity, mortality, gender, social skills, you know,
Speaker 2: overcoming social anxiety and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I think in the same way that like
Speaker 3: sports are not therapy, but could in some scenarios be therapeutic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and could you tap into some of those therapeutic
Speaker 2: effects on your own most certainly, but not to the
Speaker 2: degree that a trained professional would be able to utilize
Speaker 2: it with specific games with the right patients. Now, there's
Speaker 2: been quite a lot written on the possibility of using
Speaker 2: Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop role playing games for
Speaker 2: therapeutic purposes. I was looking at one paper from nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four by Wayne D. Blackmun titled Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 2: The Use of a fantasy game in the Psychotherapeutic treatment
Speaker 2: of a young adult. The adult in question had schizoid
Speaker 2: personality disorder, and more recently you see this rolled out
Speaker 2: as a tool in specially aimed therapy groups. I found
Speaker 2: a nice article on Johns Hopkins University's website by Claire
Speaker 2: Goudreau titled Tabletop Therapy, How Dungeons and Dragons can improve
Speaker 2: mental health. This was from twenty twenty three, and it
Speaker 2: highlights a session in which players engage. This is not
Speaker 2: like you know, this is just one example of how
Speaker 2: one particular therapy group handles it. But you might have
Speaker 2: sixty to ninety minutes of OURPG time. Granted that's you're
Speaker 2: packing a lot in but I trust the professionals. Here
Speaker 2: followed by a session in which quote the players take
Speaker 2: a step back to reflect on the session and see
Speaker 2: how it relates to their own lives. And I thought
Speaker 2: this was interesting because it reminded me of the pivotal
Speaker 2: integration step in some models for psychedelic assisted therapy, where
Speaker 2: you engage in some sort of an altered state and
Speaker 2: then you top it off with therapists assisted reflection.
Speaker 3: I can see that comparison as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so engaging in this imaginative pretend play gaming scenario,
Speaker 2: but then you know, couching it in a discussion of
Speaker 2: how this relates to where you are in your life
Speaker 2: and whatever your current obstacles might be.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other big thing that of course is stressed in
Speaker 2: this article and in other places as well, is the
Speaker 2: goal is also making therapy fun and approachable for target patients.
Speaker 2: So generally that is part of the scenario as well. Like,
Speaker 2: perhaps someone is a little adverse to a therapy environment,
Speaker 2: but it's kind of like a great icebreaker. Well, we're
Speaker 2: not going to just get in and start talking about
Speaker 2: our feelings or our problems. We're going to play a game.
Speaker 2: And you know, you'll find multiple examples of this where,
Speaker 2: if not tabletop roleplaying games, sometimes just other games, card games,
Speaker 2: board games, and so forth are used to sort of,
Speaker 2: 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. Heret 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 a tabletop RPG
Speaker 3: in the way that kids can, where kids can just
Speaker 3: you know, like really take it seriously, stay in character
Speaker 3: and keep it going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been it's been my experience that this is
Speaker 2: very hard to come by with adults, even if you
Speaker 2: kind of like set a goal for yourself. And I
Speaker 2: mean I would also stress just you know, casually, whatever
Speaker 2: your gaming environment is. Yeah, it's like, you know, you
Speaker 2: don't want to force anything on your group. Maybe your
Speaker 2: group is doz lean more serious. Maybe it's a bunch
Speaker 2: of goofballs. If it's a bunch of goofballs, maybe don't
Speaker 2: go for that super grim dark serious scenario unless I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think sometimes you can find a nice
Speaker 2: balance though, where like for instance, when I recently ran
Speaker 2: Alien RPG stuff with my group, we're generally more in
Speaker 2: the goofball spectrum, but for some reason we were able
Speaker 2: to do that one in a way which felt appropriately serious.
Speaker 2: But we still had a lot of like goofball moments
Speaker 2: doing it. And maybe there was a certain maybe to
Speaker 2: a certain extent, it had to do with like distance
Speaker 2: from the character. So it's almost like you were watching
Speaker 2: a movie play out and you could you could have
Speaker 2: these laughs while still engaging in the seriousness of the story.
Speaker 2: 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 2: Oh yeah, I mean getting it. It's like play fighting, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: because you are often dealing with these themes of mortality
Speaker 2: and failure, you know, rolling a natural one missing your
Speaker 2: shot and then getting run through by a goblin sword
Speaker 2: or something, and you know, and if if you're not careful,
Speaker 2: you can let emotions run run high in those those situations. Now,
Speaker 2: I've seen other studies that highlight the potent for tabletop
Speaker 2: role playing game assisted therapy with autistic adults to help
Speaker 2: with social cognition. Like I say, this is kind of
Speaker 2: a it seems like a rich area of therapy where
Speaker 2: folks are exploring different potential uses. On one hand, play
Speaker 2: seems to certainly be that spoonful of sugar that can
Speaker 2: help the medicine go down, like, you know, let's make
Speaker 2: therapy fun and approachable, but it also seems to have
Speaker 2: unique properties undo itself, you know. Again kind of comparing
Speaker 2: it to some degree with the idea of engaging in
Speaker 2: a psychedelic experience and then having a therapist help you
Speaker 2: integrate that into your life, you know, like, let's use
Speaker 2: some of that mental scaffolding that we talked about earlier
Speaker 2: and see how we can get to where we're looking
Speaker 2: to go with therapy. Now, I mentioned improv as well.
Speaker 2: I looked at a pair of studies from twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: to twenty seventeen. There is a comedic improv Therapy for
Speaker 2: the treatment of Social anxiety disorder by All Journal of
Speaker 2: Creativity and Mental Health, and the other one is theraprov
Speaker 2: a pilot study of improv used to treat anxiety and
Speaker 2: depression Kruger at ALL Journal of Mental Health. The former
Speaker 2: highlighted quote a novel treatment for social anxiety disorder by
Speaker 2: harnessing the following therapeutic elements group, cohesiveness, play, exposure, and humor,
Speaker 2: while the latter article explored a brief therapeutic group based
Speaker 2: intervention model for patients with symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to get into all the beats
Speaker 2: of these two studies, but both articles expressed a great
Speaker 2: deal of optimism for the use of these techniques alongside
Speaker 2: other treatments, other treatment methods and tools. I've also looked
Speaker 2: at some papers exploring the potential for integrative play therapy
Speaker 2: already used for children more in adult situations, And of
Speaker 2: course there are other play based therapy tools that are
Speaker 2: used with adults as well, including a big one that
Speaker 2: 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 it.
Speaker 2: Right right, I mean, I don't. It's one of those
Speaker 2: things where I'm mostly familiar with it from seeing it
Speaker 2: in passing in films like, for instance, there's a at
Speaker 2: some point in Stranger Things, there's a scene where you
Speaker 2: see people engaging in art therapy, and or you know,
Speaker 2: you'll I've watched TV shows where the characters involved do
Speaker 2: something with art therapy. But yeah, you can definitely loop
Speaker 2: art therapy in with other play based therapy models, you know.
Speaker 2: So perhaps this is a topic we could come back
Speaker 2: to at some point, the idea of play based therapy,
Speaker 2: or more specifically art based therapy, because it's been around
Speaker 2: since in some form or another since at least the
Speaker 2: mid twentieth century, and there have been a number of
Speaker 2: studies regarding how it can be used to help with
Speaker 2: various conditions and ailments. Well, you know, as we close
Speaker 2: out this five episode look at pretend play, I do
Speaker 2: feel like I have a more well rounded understanding of
Speaker 2: what children are doing when they engage in pretend play,
Speaker 2: as well as to the extent to what extent we're
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, children's play is serious. It's building the person they
Speaker 2: will become. And then like the scaffolding is just not
Speaker 2: just abandoned after that, you know, like we're still using
Speaker 2: it to varying degrees, sometimes kind of invisibly to ourselves
Speaker 2: as we go through our daily life as adults.
Speaker 3: Yeah, play is building minds.
Speaker 2: There you go, that would look great on a bumper
Speaker 2: 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 2: That's right. Again, we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 2: We're getting some great feedback from listeners. I'm sure we're
Speaker 2: going to have a listener mail in the very near
Speaker 2: future where we begin to roll through some of this
Speaker 2: examples of imaginary friends and paracosms and so forth. So yeah,
Speaker 2: right in. We'd love to hear your thoughts on all
Speaker 2: of this, either from your own personal experience as a
Speaker 2: pretender or observations you've made of children in your life
Speaker 2: that are pretending or animals. Certainly we already mentioned dogs
Speaker 2: and cats. Write in about your dogs and cats and
Speaker 2: their possible pretend play and play in general. Just a
Speaker 2: reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: We do a little short form episode on Wednesdays, and
Speaker 2: on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 2: 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. Thanks Andrew H. If you would like to
Speaker 3: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 3: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 3: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 3: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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