How we work
Play: making surprises on purpose
In shortPlay is making small surprises on purpose, with the child in charge of how big they are.
The idea
Play is making, on purpose, small surprises that can be resolved: hiding and finding, building and knocking down, pretending to be someone else. The child controls the size of the uncertainty, so they can try out what would be too much elsewhere. This is how new predictions are practised at no cost: in a game, mistakes do not count. When life is unpredictable, play tends to become more repetitive and more controlled, which is information too.
What to try
- Let the child decide the size of the surprise: they choose where to hide, how long it takes, who wins.
- Use play to rehearse what is hard: playing schools, doctors, mornings.
- Notice what changes in play when life changes: more repetition or more control tells you something.
The common mistake
Turning play into training with targets and corrections, which takes away what makes it work.
Want to know more?
Start here
Short, plain pieces by the researchers and good writers.
Books
How the predictive brain shapes what we see, feel and do, with many everyday examples.
See on Amazon ›Amazon links are affiliate links: if you buy, Bounded Uncertainty receives a small commission at no cost to you.
The science behind itHow strong the evidence is, the model, videos and references.
How strong the evidence is
Promising Good studies, but little tested with children at home or school, or the step to daily life is our interpretation.
Andersen, Kiverstein, Miller and Roepstorff (2023) propose that play is creating and resolving uncertainty on purpose, in a zone where error can be reduced faster than expected, which is rewarding in itself. This links play to curiosity (see ‘The right amount of new’) and to the protected exploration of childhood (Gopnik, 2020). Pretend play allows policies and perspectives to be rehearsed without consequences in the world. In assessment: observe who controls the game, how much variation the child tolerates and whether play becomes more rigid in periods of greater uncertainty.
References
- Andersen, M. M., Kiverstein, J., Miller, M., & Roepstorff, A. (2023). Play in predictive minds: A cognitive theory of play. Psychological Review, 130(2), 462–479.
- Gopnik, A. (2020). Childhood as a solution to explore–exploit tensions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1803), 20190502.
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