Four Types Of Cognitive Play

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Sara Smilansky is responsible for creating and distinguishing between four types of cognitive play. The four types of cognitive play are functional play, constructive play, dramatic play and formal games with rules. Smilansky distinguished these levels of play by their cognitive complexity. For example, functional play has less cognitive complexity than constructive play whereas formal games with rules has the greatest amount of cognitive complexity. Functional play can be described as the simplest of the four levels and it usually occurs during infancy. During functional play, the infant will practice a movement and or action such as throwing, rolling or kicking a ball. These actions will usually be repetitive. Constructive play is a step …show more content…

Each little girl is holding a cloth doll and they are playing with the cloth dolls in a wooden doll house. The little girl in the white sweatshirt and brown hair is actively moving the doll, making it walk, go upstairs and converse with the other doll. It seems as though the little girl mentioned is actively engaged in dramatic play. As stated before dramatic play is also known as fantasy play and or pretend play and involves fantasy situations. The little girl mentioned is using the cloth dolls and the wooden house to create a fantasy situation. She pretending that the dolls are real people, making them communicate and interact with one another. The young girl appears to also be engaged in cooperative or organized supplementary play because she is creating a fantasy situation and environment with the dolls but is doing it with another little girl. The girls are communicating with one another and taking on different roles because each of them is controlling a different doll. Gender plays an active role within the social realm of play of the two girls. The girls playing together demonstrates a more social focused play rather than boys who tend to prefer dominant play. If it were two boys playing together they would most likely be having sword fights, playing with hot wheels or Nerf guns rather than …show more content…

At the start of the video the children are standing together discussing the game and discussing the different rules. The girl in all pink and blonde hair seems to be the one that is determining the rules and telling the other children. The little girl is actively participating in formal games with rules because she is playing a game that involves rules and organization. The little girl also seems to be engaged in the social dimension of cooperative or organized supplementary play. She is playing with the other children and she has goals. Her goals are to chase the other children when she is “it” and run away from the other children when she is not. The little girl understands that when she is tagged she is “it” and when she tags one of the other children they become “it”. As stated in the textbook, cooperative or organized supplementary play is the most advanced and complex. Children at this age love to run and play and seem to have an endless amount of energy which may contribute to their eagerness to play with other

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