Play is a child’s natural innate way of exploring the world around them through their senses; their desire to explore is guided through play and real life interaction. Many psychologists agree that play is crucial in childhood too gain higher levels of cognitive, emotional, social and academic development and without play development could be delayed. Research shows there is a strong link between play and developing socially, emotionally, and cognitively and also for language development.
(Baron-Cohen 1987) identified that pretend play is a ‘key milestone in childhood development’. This is supported by the UK Education system as it is well reflected in the curriculum (Lantz et al 2004). (Smith 2010), said that the most widely held view of play is that play is beneficial to all round development this is referred to as ‘play …show more content…
There is on going research to prove that video games are suggestively damaging to development in children. Consequently, this form of play can lead to children becoming disconnected and performing aggressive acts during play (Anderson and Bushman 2001). We cannot assume however that every child that was to play an aggressive video game would become aggressive and have their development disrupted.
Whether the child is passive or active can also have an effect on how crucial development would be we can argue that a passive child is a child who’s development would be shaped by the environment around them, and this would effect their development; in contrast to an active child who influences his or her own development. If the active child, an organismic view, is just observing either adults or other children they may still be learning and developing but yet they are not playing. This highlights that there are other ways for children to develop other than play