Meaningful play

Meaningful play are actions or activities built with either a designed or inherent intent, such as data collection or therapy.

Meaning is defined as the underlying purpose of the topic or subject at hand, while play itself is defined as a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment.

Inherent meaningful play would be defined as an activity where the purpose is built directly into the activity. An example of this is that sports have the inherent meaning of being fun and full of physical activity to promote wellness.

Designed meaningful play is defined as an activity where another purpose is also integrated into the activity, by the creator of the activity, to either acquire knowledge or promote another purpose within the activity. For example, games in developmental psychology have the designed meaning of gathering data about many functions such as how executive function develops. The designed meaning does not have to be built into the activity from the beginning. In considering recess, it was created to give children time to exercise and socialize, but researchers at a later time have inferred meaning from the activities that children participate in during this time, adding a designed meaning to the activity of recess.

Meaningful play is discussed in the disciplines of psychology, education, counselling and law. It is also utilized in the fields of video games. While there appears to be no exact moment when the term was created, it first started to appear in the field of video games with the book "rules of play" (talked about in the video game section below), and was further adapted into other fields such as psychology soon after with a modified definition.

Meaningful play has grown and become more influential over the years. As researchers discovered many of the various uses for play (For example, cleaning up excess brain cells during play) as well as discovered how many various forms of play there are. Advocates of meaningful play and play in general have even voiced their recommendation that playing be placed above testing in young grades like kindergarten. As well there are studies branching out to different age groups seeing if meaningful play can help the elderly with cognitive and physical functioning.

While all play can be considered meaningful due to the inherent nature of play to have some sort of meaning of either competition or enjoyment, meaningful play is also about the designed meaning taken from play.

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Wikipedia