HDE 103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Knucklebones, Demographic Transition, Social Intelligence
11 Jun 2018
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I. Lecture 9: Work and Play the Days of Children’s Lives (May 21, 2018)
A. Partial definitions:
1. Ultimate vs proximate explanation:
a. Ultimate: WHY; functional arguments?
b. Proximate: HOW a thing happens; mechanistic, cognitive, explanation; typically how
psychology/social sciences answer
2. Object’s form vs function?
B. If play’s not important, why do I keep talking about it?
1. High human fertility is facilitated by the child’s relatively rapid transition from wholly dependent to semi-
dependent status
2. Kids will learn because they have the biases and cognitive capacities to pay attention to high status (adults)
a. People will adapt to certain scarcities (drought, famine, etc.) and their future babies will also be
calibrated to those scarcities and it shows in their development
3. Childhood is unique to humans
a. Allows the child to develop slowly with minimal investment: (both ultimate & proximate explanation)
i. Learn complexities of culture
ii. Calibrate brain and physiology to current context
b. Frees mom up to have more children (both ultimate & proximate explanation)
4. Given the right inputs (Safety, Peers, Objects, Time, Sustenance), mixed with children’s innate and learned
motivation to understand and feel acceptance, children will play
C. WEIRD
1. In the WEIRD World, the opinion is turning into…
a. Play is too critical a learning medium to be left to children
i. Parent-directed and parent-managed, or adult-structured play can lead to suppression of play as
play is understood currently
2. Historically, and across many other contemporary contexts, games, songs, folktales, and stories children are
constantly exposed to teach: morals, behaviors, emotional control and intelligence, cognitive abilities
a. (Intelligence is mostly social in nature – what do you think?)
i. Social intelligence allows you to navigate situations
D. Marbles (proximate explanation)
1. Human Adults are tool users: Human children are object manipulators
2. In its basic form, i.e., removing all locally adapted rules, marbles help:
a. Develop fine-motor skills and digital finesses essential for tool use
b. Learn tough emotional lessons of fairness, equity, power through games-ship
c. Teach basic rules qua rules, i.e., rules about being rules
E. History of Marbles
1. Romans used “knucklebones” similar to dice to try and dislodge stationary targets
a. Because the Romans did it and they like conquering people, and didn’t necessarily suppress their
culture, it is safe to assume the structural idea of marbles is very old
2. Making a sphere/orb is tough to manufacture, but animal vertebrae are a great substitute in the world
F. Play as Folklore
1. Opies’ ~Children’s Games with Things
a. Length documentation of marbles among other games
b. They not three variations, but the rules are staggeringly broad and complex across cultures
2. To navigate the rules within any context requires all developmental faculties that regulate social behavior to
be on point
a. Marbles is legislative in nature
3. “Keepsies” or “Lendsies” – “clearsies” “kicks” “changeys”
a. The complex philosophical things (rules that children create)
b. Children create childese words to help them understand complex concepts
4. Piaget argued that marbles was a rich clue/window into children’s moral development
G. Piaget’s Conceptuon of Moral Development
1. In his view:
a. First, the child must understand that society is governed by rules
i. Then understand that those rules are often arbitrary, anachronistic (out of place), and changeable
b. Second, must be able to attend/focus/juggle two concepts at the same time
i. Then, read the nuances in a situation that led the application of one of two perspectives of the rule
c. Third, the child must understand that new rules can be invented to apply to situations that haven’t
occurred
d. Fourth, all rules are negotiated with the group and a consensus is reached or the game dissolves
2. Piaget felt, “children’s games…marbles…contain an extremely complex system of rules, a code of laws, a
jurisprudence of its own”
3. Everything a child interacts with is preparing them to socialize with other people
H. Development through Marbles
1. Young children are incapable of most of Piaget’s steps in moral development (children younger than four)
a. Why? – Theory of Mind (not quite structured yet)
2. At age four and beyond, children can play the game, can make the right moves physically, and can follow
the rules
a. As such, the child’s interest in the activity is no longer “psycho-motor” but “social” but they lack the
capacity to form a strategy with tactics
b. What else happens at four that helps aid this transition? – the child has been introduced to other peers
(preschool, going to Grandma’s house, more socialization)
3. At seven, children focus on winning, although their understanding of the rules are still vague
a. What else happens at seven? – more socialization, in schools (Western), there is a stronger
competitiveness; understand nuancing dynamics in your mind (Ex: “I like this sometimes, but not this
other times”)
4. By 11, children get it, but they still understand rules qua rules as something “older children impose on
younger”
5. By 13, children understand that rules are malleable
I. Comparing Marbles
1. In the WEIRD age-demarcated (separated) groups of children in preschool and school settings, children
rarely observe children outside their developmental proximity
a. And thus learn the “rules” with other naïve individuals
2. However, where this demarcated structures is not normative
a. Children observe older children play
b. Then, they replicate play mimicking what they see
c. They try to join and get rebuffed by older children
d. They are allowed into the group, and “forgiven” rule violations
i. Older children often “self-handicap”
e. Play never stops, so the child learns “on-the-job”
3. Take a snapshot of any village and you find children “scavenging” through scraps and waste
a. While also looking for food often, they also find toys, and other objects of play
J. Play with Objects
1. Early in infancy, children want to grasp objects, mouth them, shake them, throw them, and examine them
a. Children’s changing relationship with their physical world is the foundation of Piaget’s theory of
cognitive development
2. Primates with objects, and primates use tools
a. Most other animals do not play with objects
3. Children explored with all objects throughout history, including “dangerous” objects
a. As societies became more complex (read: parents spent less time at home monitoring) toy objects
were designed “safely” for children
4. We design objects to facilitate the specific kinds of cognitive development expected
5. We provide lots of objects, of various kinds that are mostly safe, and well regulated
6. We sometimes intervene to “teach” or show a more complex pattern of play
a. These observations are rare, if not unknown, in traditional societies
i. Suggesting that perhaps these observations are relatively new and a consequence of the
demographic transition, and “modernity” more generally
b. Types of society that are more likely to have structured play: neontocracy (beliefs that “neonates are
the most important thing” “all resources go to them”)
7. Micro-management of play is likely caused by formal schooling requirements (Ex: testing, etc.)
8. Because WEIRD environments are child “proofed” and full of objects, object play is observed frequently
a. You can confirm this
9. In less industrialized societies, safe objects are rare objects are broken and object play is observed less
frequently
a. You can confirm this too, with a drive, or a plane ticket (to other countries: China, Tanzania, etc.)
10. However, physical play…
a. Big open spaces
b. Many others in proximity
c. No rules or sanctions against rough-and-tumble – any village will have children swarming
K. Why do children play?
1. Many theories can be summed up into:
a. Surplus of energy
b. Relaxation
c. Release of pressure from cognitive demands
d. Amplify exploration for cognitive scaffolding
e. Reconciliation of learning
f. Training and practice for adult roles
g. Ego identity formation
h. Personality formation
i. They’ve got nothings else to do…
j. *More likely a mix of each
2. It is vital to think about the forms and functions of social behaviors both concurrently and long-term
a. A form is what a behavior looks like phenomenologically (means)
b. A function is what the behavior serves noumenally (ends)
c. Concurrently, means costs and benefits are relative for right now, long-term means pay costs now with
deferred benefits.
d. All aspects should aid evolutionary fitness
L. Children are active
1. Early researchers had trouble reconciling the purposeless nature of play with its ubiquity
a. Ask a child what they are doing: “nothin’” is often the response
2. When play is most common, 3-7 is when the child is in rapid development
a. Some capacities accelerate faster than others for different kids at different times in different ways
b. You could say development is probable, you either know where the child is (stage) or where they are
going in relation to others (continuous)
M. Boys are active*
1. Many scholars apply a practice theory to play (i.e., it preps the child for necessary adult activity)
a. Males are generally more active than females of the same age across species because it will give the
boys advantages in male-male competition in later adult stages
i. Modern society isn’t so much built for this explanation
ii. Evolutionary Psychology will still apply it, yet we know the brain calibrates currently – so, not
likely a sufficient explanation
2. Not focusing on long-term benefits others note: “If fat juveniles are more easily caught by predators, then
the extent that play behavior facilitates the loss of energy that would otherwise be stored as fat, it will be
preserved by natural selection” ~Barber
N. Children are cultural usurpers
1. Adults, in general, tend to grow more cautious and conservative with age:
a. Guarding lives; guarding culture; guarding traditions, rules, norms
2. Children explore, question, experiment, and “take risks” since they are more expendable (i.e., changelings)
a. *If you calculate investment as accumulation of resources consumed compared to potential children
are easily discarded (i.e., not cherubs)
3. Jane Goodall note, that young chimps take greater risks in play for a few reasons, namely:
a. They are learning the boundaries of their environment and their development within
b. They can heal from a fall or injury
O. Play and Plasticity
1. The ontogenetic (i.e., developmental) timing of play coincides with periods of maximal physiological (e.g.,
the brain, PNS, SNS, etc.) plasticity and responsiveness to experience (i.e., sensitivity)
2. Children everywhere climb – whether it be trees or jungle gyms
a. Physiologically this is important for muscle, tendon, bone growth, etc.
Document Summary
Learn complexities of culture: calibrate brain and physiology to current context. Frees mom up to have more children (both ultimate & proximate explanation: given the right inputs (safety, peers, objects, time, sustenance), mixed with children"s innate and learned motivation to understand and feel acceptance, children will play, weird. In the weird world, the opinion is turning into . Play is too critical a learning medium to be left to children. Social intelligence allows you to navigate situations: marbles (proximate explanation, human adults are tool users: human children are object manipulators. Keepsies or lendsies clearsies kicks changeys : the complex philosophical things (rules that children create, children create childese words to help them understand complex concepts. Piaget argued that marbles was a rich clue/window into children"s moral development: piaget"s conceptuon of moral development. First, the child must understand that society is governed by rules. Second, must be able to attend/focus/juggle two concepts at the same time.
