WEBVTT - Pretend Play, Part 5 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.800 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:14.960 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:15.600 is Robert. 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:18.200 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:21.239 the fifth and for now the final part in our 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:25.400 series on pretend play. Now, sometimes when we do a 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:28.080 longer series like this, we say, you know, devour in 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:30.760 whatever order you like, But this really is one series 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:34.080 where we do recommend listening in order, because today we're 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:36.879 going to build on and refer back to stuff we 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:40.800 talked about in some earlier episodes from this series, but 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:44.600 to refresh briefly, in those earlier parts, we talked about 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:49.040 definitions and subdivisions of pretend play, play that involves non 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:53.599 literal action and understanding. We talked about which aspects of 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:56.880 pretend play appear to be universal and which appear to 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:00.200 be culturally variable. For example, the evidence is pretty strong 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.760 that all children around the world engage in pretending, even 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.720 in environments where it is actively discouraged, and it emerges 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:11.839 on a pretty consistent developmental schedule, though there is wide 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:16.280 variation across cultures and within cultures, across like home conditions 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:19.559 and different types of parental influence in how much time 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:23.200 children spend on pretend play and in what its themes 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:26.520 and contents are. Some cultures have more fantasy themes like 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:30.600 talking animals, others are more realism bound in their pretend games, 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:33.800 and so forth. We also talked about the specific issue 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:38.000 of imaginary companions, where those come from, how they usually work, 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:42.280 what patterns manifest within and across cultures. We talked about 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:46.480 possible links between pretend to play and complex cognitive skills 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:51.640 like symbolic understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and theory of mind, whether 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:54.880 pretend to play may help children develop these capabilities, or 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:57.880 whether it makes use of common neural structures with them. 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:01.640 We talked about the idea of the paracosm, which is 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:04.440 an extension of the idea of an imaginary friend or 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:09.040 imaginary companion into a whole imaginary world, maybe even with 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:13.480 its own geography, inhabitants, its own history and rules and customs. 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:17.280 And we looked at how paracosms develop and whether they're 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.120 associated with other things later in life, like an adult 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:23.760 capacity for creativity. And then finally, we also talked about 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:26.760 ways in which imaginative play could be said to carry 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:30.040 on into adult life. Often in different guises. 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:33.360 That's right, and we're going to continue on in this 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:38.359 episode to roll out discussion on some of these themes. 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:40.600 But I guess we should stress that there is so 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:44.440 much out there, and there's so much ongoing research into 0:02:44.919 --> 0:02:50.320 not only pretend play, but also childhood imagination, adult imagination, 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:52.600 and so forth. This is really one of those series 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:55.720 where we could just keep going and going and find 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:58.160 new angles, new studies to discuss each time. 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:01.080 Yeah, that's right. I mean, We've just come across so 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:04.920 many interesting things. I keep finding new, fascinating stuff I 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:07.000 wasn't even aware of when I first decided I wanted 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:09.079 to do this topic on the show. So it just 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:12.040 keeps unfolding, and there's more and more, and the more 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:14.360 and more is so good. But we are going to 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:16.480 have to cut it off after today. Maybe we'll return 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.160 to this topic in some form in the future. But 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:23.400 one thing I wanted to come back to in today's episode, 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:25.600 now that we've looked at a lot of the different 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:30.639 cultural environments and varieties of play expression, is the question 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:36.440 of the biological basis for pretend play? Is pretend play 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:39.360 a culturally contingent activity? 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:39.600 You know? 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:41.960 Something that we just kind of like made up and 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:44.400 didn't have to be a part of what human life is. 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:46.680 Something like I don't know, parades. You know, a lot 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.600 of different cultures have parades, but that's probably not a 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:55.960 biologically mandated behavior. That's just something culture made up. Or 0:03:56.120 --> 0:04:00.640 is pretend play actually biologically mandated? Is it biologically programmed 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.680 in the human animal? And if it is the latter, 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:07.200 that sort of implies that it confers a survival or 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:11.720 reproduction advantage. So what would that be? So for this question, 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:14.880 I wanted to look at a really really interesting paper 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.479 published in twenty seventeen in the journal Trends in Cognitive 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:23.520 Sciences called why do the Children Pretend Play? By an 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:26.839 author named Angeline S. Lillard, who is a professor of 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:30.240 psychology at the University of Virginia and she runs a 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:34.719 research center there called the Early Development Laboratory. I'm not 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:37.760 going to cover everything Lillard gets into in this paper, 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:39.240 but I wanted to give kind of a sketch of 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.279 her main argument and pick some interesting things to pull 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:45.400 out and talk about. So at the beginning of this article, 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:48.040 Lillard reviews a lot of the same evidence we've already 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.279 looked at earlier in the series, pointing to a pretty 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:56.160 standard schedule for development of pretend play in childhood, saying 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:59.840 pretend play usually begins by around eighteen months of age, 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.000 often with object substitution, though in the last episode we 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:05.719 looked at a few kind of very specific types of 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:09.400 pretend play that are often observed to pre date object substitution, 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:13.080 but object substitution is a big early milestone, usually occurring 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:16.360 by around one and a half years old. And then 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:19.400 talking about how pretend play seems to peak around the 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:23.320 age of three to five and most often stops around 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:26.040 the age of eleven. I think in the last episode 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:28.520 we cited a researcher who said it's around nine or 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:31.640 ten when it starts to wane. Lillard says around the 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:35.440 age of eleven is when it usually ceases, though the 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:38.400 question of whether it actually ceases is also debatable, and 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:41.320 in some cases kids keep pretending longer, and you can 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:45.359 make arguments that activities sustained into adulthood are actually continued 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.800 types of pretend play, maybe sort of in disguise or 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:52.880 not so much in disguise. Now, Lillard makes the argument 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:58.440 that because pretend play of some form is culturally universal 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:04.000 and it's development schedule is fairly regular and predictable. It's 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:08.040 probably an evolved biological trait and not just a contingent 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:11.120 behavior that we happen to create through culture, and I 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:13.839 think I would agree that this seems likely based on 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.760 that information. So Lillard asks the question that I brought 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.440 up a minute ago. If it is a biological trait 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.599 of our species, and if it's not just an epiphenomenal 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:28.800 byproduct of some other capacity like symbolic thinking, what evolutionary 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:34.039 advantage does pretending provide? As an aside, we already looked 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:37.600 at some possible answers to this question in that twenty 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.440 fifteen paper by Weisberg that we talked about in earlier 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:43.200 parts of the series. So it was brought up that 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:47.560 maybe pretend play helps facilitate the development of counterfactual reasoning, 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:51.080 symbolic understanding, and theory of mind. Though, as you'll recall, 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:55.520 Weisberg highlighted that these correlations are difficult to study in 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:59.520 a way that's practical, rigorous, and ethical. So while some 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.520 studies do provide hints in support of all three of 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.919 these links, the evidence is fairly weak. It's mostly just 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:11.680 establishing correlations. Lillard's paper also notes how difficult this is 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:15.160 to study and the indirect quality of much of the 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:20.840 evidence available to us. We have some indications, specifically, like 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:24.840 from tragic examples of children who suffered social isolation and infancy, 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:30.000 that early deprivation of normal interaction with human caregivers can 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:33.920 lead to noticeable deficits in pretend play later in childhood. 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:37.920 So like children who don't have enough human social interaction 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:42.000 when their babies tend to play pretend much less when 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:45.640 they're older, suggesting some kind of link between pretend play 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:50.880 and socialization. However, Lillard's paper makes use of a very interesting, 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.120 totally separate line of evidence for the biological function of 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:58.040 pretend play, and that is the analogy of non human animals. 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:03.000 Yes, yeah, whether animals play this is probably a question 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:06.000 that has already been bouncing around people's minds as they 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:07.120 listen to these episodes. 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.360 Yeah. Well, and so specifically it'd be the question of 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:15.600 whether animals play pretend because I think it's pretty widely 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.960 agreed by researchers in the relevant fields that animals do play. 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:24.000 In this paper, Lillard refers to one particular definition of 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:26.960 play that has been popular used in a lot of 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:31.720 research and It comes from a psychologist named Gordon Berghart, 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:35.280 and Burghart's criteria for play I think he had five 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:38.920 of them. The criteria or that one we've already talked 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:42.280 about this that it's not functional, meaning that it's not 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:46.120 activity that is necessary for survival in any direct way. 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:49.160 So even if you enjoy chopping wood, chopping wood is 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:53.640 not considered play. To use Lillard's summary quote, is voluntary 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:57.400 and pleasurable. It differs in form or some other way 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:01.120 from the functional expression. It is repeat and it tends 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:05.800 to occur under conditions of abundance not stress. Now, if 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:08.400 you look at those criteria, I think it's widely agreed 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.839 that many species of non human animals, especially a lot 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:16.440 of vertebrates in mammals, engage in play. But do these 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:20.600 animals play pretend? This is more controversial, but Lillard makes 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:24.079 the case that at least some forms of animal play 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:27.920 should be considered examples of pretense. And both of these 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:30.920 are fortunately going to be familiar to us and to 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.960 listeners because we can see them in our pets. I think, 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:38.640 in fact, it's maybe not even a coincidence that play 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:42.640 would be especially common among the animals that we happened 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:47.800 to make our domestic companions. So first example is playing 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:51.240 with inanimate objects as if they were live prey. You 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:54.040 can see this in cats, you can see this in dogs. 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:57.560 I'm sure you've seen plenty of this in your home. 0:09:57.640 --> 0:09:57.880 Rob. 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.600 You know, a cat will often any little furry thing, 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:04.200 or maybe doesn't in some cases, maybe doesn't even have 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:06.600 to be all that furry. It could be an aluminum ball, 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:08.520 or it could be a piece of string or something 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:11.320 like that. They will play with it and treat it 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:13.719 as if it were a mouse or some other kind 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:16.160 of prey animal. They will bat it around, they will 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:18.200 bite it, they will chase it, and so forth. 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.320 Yes, yeah, we see this all the time. Yeah, ranging 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:25.319 from what we call the most dangerous game of finger mouse. 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:27.600 This is where you move your finger underneath the blanket. 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:31.679 Not recommended because it's an easy way to get your 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:35.680 finger scratched in or bitten. But yeah, all manner of toys, 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:37.320 laser beams, you name it. 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:39.880 Oh, I didn't even think of the laser pointer. Yeah, 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:41.360 but I used to do the same thing when I 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:43.800 had cats. You know, you move your hand or your 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:48.400 toes around underneath the blanket. Yeah, and it drives absolutely nuts. 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:52.640 Yeah, and then my cat does not need any encouragement 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:56.839 to attack body parts. She attacks my feet all the time. 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:02.240 Now, there's an interesting finding that Lillards, which is that apparently, 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:05.960 in like formal studies of this type of play behavior 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:11.200 in cats, apparently as cats become older, on average, the 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:16.200 object needs to be increasingly similar to an actual prey 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:19.840 animal to induce the playing response. This will obviously vary 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:22.839 from cat to cat, but on average, more often a 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:25.920 kitten will attack anything you know. It will play with string, 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:28.600 will play with aluminum balls, whatever you know. It's all 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:31.240 a mouse to the kitten. But an older cat, as 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:35.520 it matures, will increasingly only be enticed into this type 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:39.400 of game by something that resembles in some way an 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:40.679 actual prey animal. 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:44.079 Well, my cat, I can safely say, is not average. 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:48.800 She's quite old at this point, but she still plays. 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:52.679 And some of her favorite items just recently have been 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:56.160 things like a plastic milk cap like off of an 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:59.520 oat milk jug. How if she had a great time 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:04.199 with that, buttons things like that, anything she can get 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:07.160 her claws on, so it doesn't seem to necessary. We 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:10.880 have other toys that do resemble rodents or birds or whatever, 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:14.600 and she's into those as well, But otherwise she doesn't 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:18.680 seem to discriminate. Now, not making this an episode about cats, 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:21.360 but I think obviously there's something to be said here 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:25.760 too about the domestic in house cat, like a fully 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:28.439 indoor cat versus a cat that's going indoors and outdoors. 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.400 This is a fully indoor cat, and I know there 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:35.800 have been various observations made about like what that does. 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:37.760 Does that keep a cat in more sort of a 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:41.880 semi permanent stage of kitten hood to some degree? Maybe 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.640 that has an effect on how they associate with toys. 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:48.840 Maybe you see more of this average situation that's laid 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:52.240 out here. If the cat actually has physical access to 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:55.720 normal prey animals on a regular basis. 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:57.400 Yeah, that seems quite plausible to me. 0:12:57.520 --> 0:12:57.679 Though. 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:00.880 An interesting thing that Lillard notes here is that there 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.560 is the opposite observation in humans that as children get older, 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.880 it's usually less important for the play object to resemble 0:13:07.880 --> 0:13:10.280 the real object in order for them to play pretend 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:13.600 with it. And so because of differences like this, Lillard 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:17.520 thinks that the treating and inanimate object as life prey 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:20.800 is not a great analogy for human play However, there's 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.640 another thing observed in animals which she thinks is maybe 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:27.600 a good analogy for human pretend play, and that is 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.800 play fighting. We've probably all seen this before in dogs, 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.520 but in the scientific literature, play fighting is characterized as 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:41.600 a social locomotive play activity where animals try to gain 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:45.000 temporary physical advantage over one another in a way that 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:49.760 somewhat resembles the behavior of those same animals as adults 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.800 in violent competition, but is different in that the animals 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:58.000 typically take turns being the aggressor and that the fight 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:02.080 behaviors are truncated. The dog might in a play fight, 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:05.720 it might put its jaws around the other dog's body, 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:08.160 maybe put the jaws around the neck, but it does 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:11.040 not bite down, or it doesn't usually, and if it does, 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:14.319 that's a you know, that's clearly not what the behavior 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:19.320 is intended to produce. Lillard argues that play fighting could 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:22.880 be viewed as an analog for pretend play in humans 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.160 and gives a number of reasons. For example, both of 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:28.880 these activities pretend to play in humans and play fighting 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:33.440 involve creating an as if scenario where the play activity 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:38.119 appears to be a modified representation of a real activity, 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.280 but with limits put on it, like the play fighting 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:44.280 stops before the bite pressure is too much, and so forth. 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:49.160 Lillard writes quote as Baitsen also pointed out, an animal 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:52.560 that is engaged in play fighting must read a behavior 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:56.479 as denoting a behavior different from the behavior it resembles. 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:59.320 And then the sub quote of baits in here quote 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.680 the play f denotes the bite, but it does not 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:06.680 denote what would be denoted by the bite. In other words, 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:09.960 the playful nip is a pretend bite, just as a 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:14.040 child can pretend talk into a pretend phone to symbolize 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:17.040 really talking into a real phone. In this way, both 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:21.160 pretend play and play fighting behaviors are symbolic. They mean 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:25.600 something other than what they are. She also calls attention 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.400 to the fact that both pretend play in humans and 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:33.840 play fighting in other mammals rely on the exchange of 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:40.320 specific ritualized gestures and indicators that the activity is play 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.760 and not real. And I don't think I was aware 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:45.600 of a lot of this. For example, she talks about 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:49.560 a bunch of observations in rats that when rats playfight, 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:53.080 and apparently they do this a lot. Rats playfight. She says, 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:57.280 when they playfight they don't bite at or target the 0:15:57.320 --> 0:16:00.800 same areas of the body that they do when rats 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:04.680 are actually fighting in real violent competition. So when they're 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:09.320 play fighting, she says, they target a nuzzle like the 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:13.200 nape of the neck, whereas real fighting and tends to 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:17.040 involve attacks on the flanks and the lower back. And 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:22.080 apparently they also emit high pitched ultrasonic vibrations when they're 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:25.680 play fighting, which other rats can hear, which seems to 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.240 help the rats avoid mistaking a bid for a play 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:32.640 fight with the threat of a real fight. Now, understanding 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.200 those kinds of gestures and social communication and rats might 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:39.120 not be very intuitive to us, but we can easily 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:42.560 see the same kind of thing in dogs with the 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:45.880 famous play bow. Now, if you've ever seen dogs doing 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:49.760 play fighting, you will quite frequently, often at the beginning 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:52.720 of the encounter, and then at certain moments throughout the 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:55.840 play fighting session, the dogs will kind of back up, 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.160 and then they will bow the front of the body 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:00.800 down and spread their paws apart and put their head 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:03.800 down with the back of the body up with the 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:08.760 haunches the butt raised up, and and I've got a 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:10.240 picture here for you to look at. Rob though I'm 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:12.320 sure you're familiar with this on your own as well. 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:14.240 Well. I mean, now that it's pointed out to me, 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:18.200 I have seen dogs doing this, and I guess I'm 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:20.359 realizing for the first time that this must be why 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:24.320 we call the pose and yoga down dog, because we 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:27.800 are creating a pose that looks like this. I always 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:30.960 just thought like, well, okay, it's just I'm not all fours. 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:32.720 I'm sort of like a dog right now. But I 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:33.920 guess this is the name thing. 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:36.440 So in yoga it's the butt is up, the head 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:36.880 is down. 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:41.000 Correct. Yeah, okay, though usually in the picture you're showing 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:45.160 here the dogs four paws, four arms are on the ground, 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:47.560 and yeah, that's usually not the case with down dog, 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:49.639 though there are versions of down dog where you do 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:52.840 have four arms down. I guess that's more gets sended 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:55.520 like dolphin and so forth. But anyway, enough animals. We're 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:56.760 talking about dogs, right. 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:01.560 So studies show that playbows are they really are used 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:04.800 for social communication. Like you can see that they're most 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:09.320 common right after a candid play fight has sort of 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:13.320 pushed the limits or has for some reason become ambiguous. So, 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:17.040 for instance, when a play bite just got pretty rough, 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:19.440 you know, like a dog. They're playing, but one bit 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:22.120 the other kind of hard, it seems. Then the playbow 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:25.560 would be deployed. It's used to regulate the shared understanding 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:29.320 of the activity and to signal kind of sorry about that. 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:31.640 We're still in play mode. This is not a real fight. 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.399 And in this way this would be considered a form 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:39.400 of meta communication, allowing all the participants in an activity 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:43.480 to continually understand the correct frame in which the shared 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:47.719 activity should be interpreted. It's the signal this is play, 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:51.040 this is not real. And it turns out that with 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:55.360 pretend play humans do this too. There are specific kinds 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:58.639 of gestures and signals that have been observed within human 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.080 play fighting, but even out side the realm of play 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:04.560 fighting and just in pretend play that the kinds we've 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:06.840 been talking about in this series so far. Maybe cooking 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:10.040 in a play kitchen, or using a banana as a telephone, 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:12.720 or using a little block as a car, you know, 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:16.960 an object substitution enactment play, any of these things. The 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:21.080 signals used to communicate pretend to play might be more 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:26.080 culturally variable in humans than in dogs. But for example, 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:30.000 research in the United States has particularly found that when 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:34.399 mothers play pretend with young children, they use specific body 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:40.920 language cues such as strong eye contact, mistimed movements, and 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:46.399 a smile immediately following the pretend behavior. And so like 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:48.399 I can imagine all these kind of things kind of 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:52.639 like exaggerated weird movements that kind of looking at the child, 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:55.679 making eye contact and then smiling after you say, like 0:19:55.800 --> 0:20:00.080 here's the phone. Also, this is not mentioned in the 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.080 the study, but I really thought about like using a 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:07.119 different voice. You know, we've talked about about parental voice 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:08.920 modulation on the show before. I think we did a 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.600 whole episodes on this of like the you know, the 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.320 baby voice, the way parents tend to speak to children, 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:16.800 and like what kind of purpose that serves where it 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:19.199 comes from. But I think there's a version of this 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:22.360 with pretend to play too. Like I notice when we 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:26.280 start taking on a pretense, I kind of sound different. 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:29.280 I'm doing something with the timing of my speaking and 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:31.719 the pitch of my voice and stuff that I'm not 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:34.040 normally doing when I'm just playing with my daughter. 0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:37.000 Yeah, and that makes sense. Yeah, I mean we often 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:39.120 don't think about it, but we're sort of conveying that. Okay, 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:41.159 we're shifting over one degree to the left or the 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:44.439 right here into the imagination space. 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:49.520 Yeah. Oh, this book is a boat now, yeah. Yeah, 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:51.760 And so you can think about different reasons for this 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:56.879 meta communication within the play itself. So like in play fighting, 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:01.320 meta communication is important for physical safety, you know, like 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:03.080 you don't want the fight to you don't want the 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:06.200 play fight to escalate to a real fight. So meta 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:11.040 communication literally helps dogs and rats and humans avoid hurting 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:14.719 one another. But with pretend to play in human children, 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:18.320 it strikes me that it's probably important for something we 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:22.480 talked about earlier in the series information quarantining, to prevent 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:27.120 children from drawing incorrect lessons about reality from a game 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:29.439 of pretend, you know, so the child does not end 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.639 up thinking that a remote control can actually place phone calls. 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:36.879 We're showing this is play so that the child doesn't 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:50.399 learn something that's wrong. So in this paper, Lillard looks 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:53.560 at studies of play fighting in animals to see what, 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:58.919 if anything, can be established about its survival and reproduction value. 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:02.200 What does it do for or the animals. This section 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:05.680 involves a lot of discussion of the difficulties and limitations 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:08.800 in designing these experiments, and the paper is worth a 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:10.960 read if you want to learn more about that. But 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:15.280 to mention one prominent example type of experiment she brings up. 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:18.960 It is an experiment where you take a baby rat 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:21.919 and pair it in its enclosure only with a single 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:27.480 adult female rat and no littermates. Now, with other littermates present, 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:30.560 a baby rat will typically engage in play fighting as 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:34.000 it matures, but when it is paired only with an 0:22:34.040 --> 0:22:38.760 adult female rat, the baby rat will receive socialization from 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:42.160 the adult, so it's not like total social isolation or deprivation. 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:48.080 But adult female rats specifically will not engage in play fighting, 0:22:48.680 --> 0:22:53.560 so this seems to reasonably well isolate and remove play 0:22:53.600 --> 0:22:56.439 fighting on its own. But it's important to note that 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:59.159 this is not a perfect isolation of the variable because 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:01.639 having littermates is the norm for baby rats, so this 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:04.199 is not just like a perfectly normal baby rat with 0:23:04.320 --> 0:23:06.920 only play fighting taken away. It's just getting as close 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:10.760 to that as researchers can. Are there any differences in 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:15.240 rat development from this setup? Oh? Yes, a few examples. 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:19.880 Rats that grow up with socialization but without play fighting 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:24.920 have trouble interpreting social signals later in life. For instance, 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:28.760 later if another rat tries to initiate play fighting, the 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:32.560 deprived rat will often misinterpret it as a bid for 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:36.359 real fighting. They also have difficulties with other types of 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:40.520 social communication. They have difficulties with mating and with copulation, 0:23:41.119 --> 0:23:45.040