Symbolic Play The term ‘symbolic play’ conjures up numerous thoughts related to what we consider play to be and what we mean when we refer to symbols. Gregory (1998) defines a symbol as something that represents something else, adhering closely to the English Dictionary’s description. It is considerably harder to find a concise explanation of the word ‘play’ which illustrates a problem for psychology, that is the difficulty in studying something that has not been clearly operationalised. Harris (2000) states that in childhood play isn’t distortion of the real world but exploration of possible ones. Play seems to manifest as escape from life in adulthood, in the sense that most adults use their leisure time to try and take their minds off the demands of life and work, turning their minds to ‘fun’ activities such as paintballing, reading and even television. Harris and Butterworth (2002) explain that early symbolic play involves the child as an agent, pretending to do things, which reiterates a key topic in this discussion: pretence, the false representation of something as something else, in other words symbolism. The purpose of this essay will be to use a video graphic source of evidence as a stimulus for a review of some of the main ideas of Vygotsky, a Soviet linguist and those of Piaget the Swiss biologist and philosopher paying close attention to their views on symbolic play. In the video Matthew, aged 2, plays distinctly with 3 sets of toys whilst his mother records his behaviour. This essay will guide the reader through the noteworthy, observable play that occurs with an analysis of the differences that can be seen in terms of the intensity of play and verbal activity, linking throughout with the theoretical explanations of Vygotsky and Piaget. The evolution of symbolism during the developmental period known as infancy, between the ages of 0 to 2, was documented mainly by Jean Piaget (1896-1980) and Lev Semeonovich Vygotsky (18961934). The separate accounts from Vygotsky and Piaget show some considerable overlap and in many respects they compliment rather than contradict each other. Vygotsky placed greater emphasis than Piaget on the relationship between language and thought and the formative role of culture on development, specifying that development got transmitted through social interaction and speech. Vygotsky saw leading activities, like playing games in early childhood, as the best method for understanding how the child developed rather than a stage like theory, as Piaget proposed, with the assessment of the level of cognitive functioning at particular ages (Durkin, 1995). Sensory-motor to preoperational cognition during early childhood is of specific interest to this discussion, in Piagetian terms. Vygotsky (1981) thought that the adult’s verbal interaction with the child later became mental functions, primarily on a social plane, between people as an inter-psychological category and then within the child as an intra-psychological category. Piaget was much more negative towards how the child developed and saw pretend play as primitive, maladaptive and temporary. Symbolic play to Piaget, lead children to twist and rework reality in light of their own schemas instead of adapting to it. Piaget saw the child as a ‘mini scientist’ learning about the world by acting on it whilst Vygotsky saw the interaction with the world and its people as the source of developmental change with the child as an ‘apprentice’ (Durkin, 1995). In the beginning of the video, Matthew is at a table with cups, saucers, a spoon, teapot and doll. It is evident that Matthew isn’t overwhelmed with excitement at these toys, as he appears to pay more attention to his mother and the video camera. The predominant aspect of play that occurs in this first segment is imitative play as Matthew pretends to have a tea party with his mother. Vygotsky considered imitation as a source of instruction for the child to escalate to a higher intellectual level of development through collaboration thus moving from what they have to what they don’t (Reiber & Carton). This ties in very closely with one of Vygotsky’s most famous theories, his ‘Zone of Proximal Development’ (ZPD), which can be understood by thinking that what the child can do today with the aid of a teacher they will be able to do tomorrow on their own (Vygotsky, 1962). In the video Matthew repetitively fills his cup with pretend tea from the empty teapot and stirs it with his spoon before sucking the pretend tea off the spoon. At age 2, Matthew probably doesn’t make tea as it involves boiling water and heavy equipment so it can be confidently assumed that he has learnt this routine from his parents and is imitating them by referring to his memory and Vygotsky would say that the child is raising himself from a lower to higher intellectual level through this use of symbolism. For Piaget, the capacity to
represent reality by using distinct signifiers has it roots in imitation (Inhelder & Chipman, 1976). Piaget’s theory is more complex and in his collaboration with Inhelder (1971) he separates and defines symbolism into objects to be symbolised, ‘significates’ like the tea in Matthew’s teapot, and the things that symbolise them, ‘signifiers’ such as words. Matthew does speak in the tea-set segment saying: “It tea”. This brings the issue of verbal play into inspection. Aside from the 2 morpheme utterance of ‘it tea’ there is no language used by Matthew at this point but there are uses of idiosyncratic sounds such as slurping the tea and sucking the spoon. Piaget and Inhelder (1971) would say this involved the child’s schematisation of the situation where some of the characteristics are eliminated (existence/heat of the tea), whilst others are maintained (noise of drinking tea) and others distorted (volume/duration of the noise of drinking tea). The result of these imagined pseudo-conservations is a stylisation of the act and this can been seen as symbolic. Vygotsky considered speech as the process of transforming thought into word (Reiber & Carton 1987), which is a different perspective to Piaget’s but one that can be supported by interpreting Matthew’s utterance. He presumably thinks about what he is doing and labels the key thing as the ‘tea’, he uses a word to symbolise his thoughts verbally and socially. It is interesting to notice here that this seemingly spontaneous label actually follows a dialogue with his mother where he asks her what things are. This is Vygotsky’s ZPD in action because Matthew is feeding off his mothers comments to form some of his own, without his mother he would likely not be saying anything. The penultimate part of the video involves Matthew being handed a brush and comb with which he brushes his hair, proceeds to brush the doll’s hair then throws the doll on the floor with a loud ‘NO!’ He repeats the word several times and adds a particularly amusing waggle of his index finger as if to imitate his mother when she tells him off. There are so many interesting things to look into regarding this behaviour; gender identity, sex typing, sex-role stereotypes, but sadly neither Vygotsky nor Piaget tackled these issues with their theories. Nevertheless Harris and Butterworth (2002) suggests that symbolic play helps with the acquisition of gender identity and we can see in the video that the play Matthew really enjoys, reflects current social norms with regard to what toys boys and girls should play with. The language use in this example (“NO!”) would serve to inhibit activity according to Vygotsky and this is consistent with evidence to show that the first use of the word ‘No’ is when the child rejects or refuses something (Harris & Butterworth, 2002). The way Matthew moves his fingers is a good way to describe Piaget’s (1945/1962) account of how the infant manages to imitate people by mentally representing themselves in memory and establishing a correspondence between other peoples’ body parts (hands) and their own using their visual system. The level of play is difficult to assess from this clip because Matthew spends very little time with the doll and the brush. He does display an advanced ability to project what you do with a brush from himself and his hair to the doll and the doll’s hair but there is nothing to suggest this isn’t again just imitation. In 1936/1952 Piaget developed a stage theory of symbolic play and from Matthew’s projection of his schema for brushing hair, onto the doll he can be placed at stage 1.2 where independent prop play and delayed imitation are all acquired but invention of composite friends or animals is not! In the final extract from the video Matthew is engrossed with a tractor, trailer, man and logs. It is not surprising that he finds more pleasure from this typically masculine toy than he does from the typically feminine doll and brush or neutral tea set. Vygotsky perhaps thought this when he stated that the nature of development changes from a biological to socio-historical one in 1962. There is a marked increase in babbling and speech in this part of the video, which backs up Piaget’s claim in 1962 that play and language are closely intertwined during development, he saw language and symbolic play as having the same roots and function in the 2nd year of life, referring to language as a special kind of symbolic representation and communication. Amongst the utterances Matthew speaks, “Man sit there”, “Man mend it” and “Me mend it” are the longest, each containing 3 morphemes but what is intriguing is that at one point Matthew seems to almost change what he has said to fit what he has done. He says ‘man fix it’ but fixes it himself and seems to almost inadvertently correct himself and say ‘me fix it’! This is a prime example of how Vygotsky saw speech at this age, an active form of verbal probing, intertwined with the practical probing in attempting to solve a problem. He believed speech has an objective role in helping the child reflect on the situation, analyse it and plan future action (Reiber &
Carton). It is language-guiding action that occurs in Vygotsky’s view, supporting his claim that the child tends to think in words (Harris, 2000) and not language being acquired through the auspices of symbolic function, which is what Piaget thought (Flavell, 1963). In conclusion it is clear that an assessment of Matthew’s level of play and language is difficult to obtain from such varying observations. He got progressively more vocal as the video went on, there is nothing to say he would not carry on becoming more and more vocal with better grasp of syntax and a less telegraphic quality to what he said. The overall brevity of his utterances indicate that Matthew is an average 2 year old with average linguistic abilities using the ‘Mean Length of Utterance’ measurement, but the observations from each set of toys cannot be relied on to imply his overall level of play. It can be seen that Matthew moves from being agent in the beginning, acting out what he wants to do (pretending to drink tea), to using the toys as agents later on (man mending the tractor) and this would support Piaget’s stage theory and that Matthew had successfully transitioned from sensory-motor functioning to preoperational thought (Goswami, 1997). Familiarity may have played a large part in Matthew’s observed intensity of interest with toys he was more familiar with providing more or less reinforcement depending on whether he was bored of them or not. The methodological flaws in such a manipulated environment are tantamount to making all observations void but as it was not an experiment the behaviour can be seen as indicative to some degree of Matthew’s developmental stage with regards to symbolic play and this has already been plotted on Piaget’s stage theory as 1.2. Symbolic play in my view is one aspect of the complex way in which children display their level of development, it is however of crucial importance in children’s development and is often cited as the ‘thing’ missing with regard to such developmentally disastrous disorders as autism and downs syndrome (Atkinson et al., 1985). There is obviously a strong link between language and symbolic play as we saw both becoming more sophisticated with the later extracts of the video and with the toys Matthew would probably be more inclined to play with. Finally, this discussion has hopefully shed some light on the one thing Piaget and Vygotsky overtly agreed upon; the symbolic function is a critical stepping-stone in child development into the realm of adult cognition. Atkinson, R. L., Atkinson, R. C., Smith, E. E., Ben, D. J. & Hilgard, E. R. (1990). Introduction to psychology (10th ed.). Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Durkin, K. (1995). Developmental social psychology from infancy to old age. Cambridge: T. J. Press Ltd. Flavell, J. H. (1963). The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. Canada: D. Van Nostrad Company, Ltd. Goswami, U. (1997). Cognition in children. Hove: Psychology Press. Gregory, R. L. (Ed.) (1998). The Oxford companion to the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harris, P. L. (2000). The work of the imagination. Oxford: TJ International. Harris, M. & Butterworth, G. (2002). Developmental psychology a students handbook. Hove: Psychology Press Ltd. Inhelder, B. & Chipman, H. H. (Eds.) (1976). Piaget and his school. New York: Springer-Verlag. Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. New York: Harcourt Brace. (Original work published 1936). Piaget, J. (1962). Play dreams and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton. (Original work published 1945). Piaget, J. & Inhelder, H. H. (1971). Mental imagery in the child. London: The Camelot Press Ltd. Reiber, R. W. & Carton, A. S. (Eds.) (1987). The completed works of L. S. Vygotsky, vol. 1. Problems of general psychology. New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1981). The genesis of higher mental functions. In Wertsch, J. V. (Ed.), The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology. Armonk, New York: Sharpe. Cited in Durkin (1995).