The role of play in developing higher psychological functioning

Generally, the graph in this blog shows what I've mainly grasped from the reading of Vygotsky's 'Tool and symbol in child development'. What strikingly revealed to me is the significant role of play in developing children's higher psychological functioning. As Vygotsky demonstrated that play facilitates the integration of action and speech, which formulates higher psychological functioning. It seems that tools, symbols, and signs are designed automatically by children for fulfilling the purpose of play. When I recall my childhood, I could vividly remember those moments when I played with my friends and brother. We designed games and created stuff entirely by ourselves with endless energy. The conversation happens when we need to communicate with each other so as to obtain fun from the games. From Vygotsky's point of view, those are spontaneous actions rather than responsive ones. However, when I entered high school, playful activities with other classmates began to decrease sharply. I'm not sure whether this is a common phenomenon for other people or not. I feel like high school students become very silent in class from my personal experiences and observation as a teacher later on. Classroom communication happens in a very responsive way rather than a spontaneous one. Is that related to students' psychological development or general school environment? 

From Vygotsky's discussion, learning without voluntary attention might be harmful to students' psychological functioning. When I taught a 7 years old girl to learn arithmetics, I could see how quickly she learned through creating virtual shopping experiences. By drawing various stores that she loves, she could manipulate artificial coins very intelligently in order to exchange products with me and talk with me consistently. However, her mom persistently told me that she was very slow at learning and not good at expressing her thoughts through speech. But what I've realized is that she just couldn't find suitable social activities for her to engage in. Meanwhile, parents and teachers also could hardly see the value of children's games and playful activities. Under the pressure of examinations in school, currently, lots of children suffer a lot from school work which is highly deprived of enjoyable senses. From Vygotsky's perspective, lack of play would probably deprive children's higher psychological functioning significantly. As he illustrated, 'play constitutes the main avenue of the child's cultural development and, in particular, of the development of the chid's symbolic activity.' 

In order to figure out the significances of play and how it relates to higher psychological functioning, I've been thinking what's the relationship between perception and play. Since in the previous section of the reading, Vygotsky discussed how people liberate their perception from the direct sensory field, looking at the present moment from the past and future perspective. As he illustrated: 

'If perception, connected with speech, began to function not according to the laws of the sensory field, but to those of the organized system of attention; if the meeting of the symbolic operation with the use of tools resulted in new forms of indirect control of the object, with the preliminary organization of the child's own behavior -- then in this case we must speak of a certain general law of psychological development and formation of higher psychological functions.' 

Therefore, the question to my mind is what's the role of play in developing speech and perception? And what might happen if people stop engaging in playful activities? Would they begin to lost higher psychological functioning?  




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