Towards Non-Representational Pretence:
!
!
!
!
the Effect of Props and Players on the
Development of Imaginative Play
Zuzanna Rucinska
University of Hertfordshire
KNEW 2013, Kazimierz Dolny, 22 August 2013
Outline
Part I: Stage-Setting
1. Pretence: Standard Story
2. Radical Enactivism
3. Opening up of logical space for REC account of basic pretence
4. Structure of the dialectic
Part II: Towards the Positive Account: what shapes/structures
pretend play?
1. Object affordances: role of play props
1.
Case of ’banana-phone’ play as imaginative transformation
2. Social affordances: role of play participants
3. Wider social context: role of narratives
2.
Case of playing ’bears’ and ’tea party’ as following social scripts
Conclusion
Part I: Stage-Setting
Pretence: Introduction
“Life begins in play, and play involves pretense, making things up,
fiction. Predatory mammals engage in pretend chase-and-kill
routines from almost as soon as they can move. From at least as
early as about 18 months, when their use of language is still
pretty primitive, human children engage in spontaneous
pretense, as fun (…): they pretend that a banana is a telephone
and that they are talking on it; (…) (cf. Leslie 1987). This behavior
seems likely to be the primitive precursor of the highly
sophisticated fictions that the word “fiction” naturally evokes...”
- Sainsbury 2010, p. 1 (emphasis added).
What is Pretence?
1) Special mental state
2) Myriad of activities: Object-substitution play, Role-play, Imaginary play, Acting,
Deception, …
• Children of age 1.5 engage in what looks like pretend play:
–
–
–
–
15m: cloth is a pillow while giggling (Piaget 1945/1962)
18m: play banana-phone (Leslie 1987)
28m: pour “tea” from empty teapot, feed a toy with “cereal” (Harris 2000)
2.5-4y: role-play, imaginary play, enact ‘being in a restaurant’(overview: Liao &
Gendler 2010)
– 9m: engage in teasing! (Reddy 2004, 3).
• Animals seem to engage in pretend play (e.g.) and deceptive behaviours (e.g.)
(Mitchell 2002)
• Distortion of reality: deficiency in children with ASD, excess in patients with
Schizophrenia (to be elaborated)
• Umbrella Term
Explananda and Explanans
What does pretending
entail?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Concepts
Double Knowledge
Imagination
Intentionality
Awareness
Mapping/following rules
Conditions of satisfaction
(Lillard 1998)
Mental Representations
on the constitutive level
How do we do it? (Spectrum)
1) Meta-representational
Theory (Leslie)
2) Behaviourist Theory
(Perner, Stich & Nichols,
Harris & Kavanaugh, Lillard)
3) Intentionalist (Searle,
Rakoczy)
Mental Representations on
the explanatory level
Pretence: Standard Story
- What is required for pretence?
- What makes pretence an intelligent action as opposed to “mere
thrashing about”?
“Acting on plans (as opposed to, say, merely behaving reflexively or just thrashing
about) requires being able to think about the world” (Fodor 2008, p. 13)
Leslie: stimulus (B)  thinking-as (conceptualising B as Ph)  response (“Ph”)
Currie: stimulus (B)  seeing-as (representing B as Ph)  response (“Ph”)
In both cases: inner mechanism that structures behaviour; representations
conceptualised as premises (Leslie 1987, Nichols and Stich 2000, 2003) or mental
images/maps
REC (Hutto & Myin 2013)
• Non-representational account of basic cognition
• Assumption: B-Ph play is a case of genuine mindful action
(pace Leslie, Sainsbury)
• Can it account for basic pretence?
– Tension with the Standard View:
Spaulding: “…pretending, an activity that children engage in
starting around age two, I think would be totally inexplicable by an
account based purely on primary and secondary intersubjectivity. It
remains to be seen how the Embodied Cognition account will
explain what is going on when a child pretends …” (2010, p. 130).
– Challenge: Opens up conceptual space
Logical Possibilities Table
Is Pretence Necessarily
Representational?
Young children
(non- or poor-language
users)
Option 1: Yes – Linguistic
representations
(Huttenlocher and Higgins,
Davidson)
Denies the possibility of pretence
(at best proto-pretence)
Option 2: Yes – Mental
representations
(Fodor, Piaget, Leslie, Perner,
Nichols & Stich, Harris &
Kavanaugh, Lillard, Currrie)
Allows for genuine pretence
Option 3: No
Allows for genuine pretence
(thinking as if, acting as if,
intentionally acting as if)
Is pretence
representational?
Structure
Constitutive – not
interesting
How can you treat
one thing as another?
(‘Imaginative
transformations’)
YES: Representations
Counter: REC
Independent
argument
Explanatory. What do
they explain?
Why a child does not
get confused?
(‘Double knowledge’)
NO: Affordances,
Social Practices
…
Part II: Towards the positive
account
Non-representational Tools:
1. Object affordances (role of play props)
2. Social affordances: role of play participants
3. Wider social context: role of narratives
Aim
• Challenge to the weakest notion of representation: Currie’s
Seeing-As
• Thesis: Enacted, on-line capacity for action (“Doing-As”)
replaces off-line representational activity of the mind (“Seeing
As”) in enabling basic imaginative transformations (explaining
how it is possible to treat one thing as another)
• Adjusting Currie’s view with O’Regan and Noe’s (2001)
sensorimotor account of perception and Gibson’s
(1979)/Chemero’s (2009) account of affordances
Positions in the Debate
Leslie: stimulus (B)  thinking-as (conceptualising B as Ph)  response (“Ph”)
Currie: stimulus (B)  seeing-as (representing B as Ph)  response (“Ph”)
Rucinska: stimulus (B)  doing-as (enacting B as Ph)  response (“Ph”)
+ affordances?
Currie: Seeing-As
1. What is to See-As/”Act as if”?
• To “imaginatively fill in the gap” or “to respond to the
environment as it is transformed by imagination” (Currie
2006, 275).
• “To represent the world not as it is, but as it might be”
(Currie 2006, 276)
• To be “directed at situations that do not actually obtain”
(Harris and Kavanaugh 1993)
• Imaginative Transformation: Minimally needed to
account for having controlled experiences in the absence
of appropriate stimuli
• Answer to “How can you treat one thing as another?”
Currie: Decentring
2. What enables seeing-as/‘as-if’ response to the
environment?
Decentring:
• Cognitive tool
• Underlies shifting perspectives
• “Indicates the (relative) freedom from environmental
constraint and sensitivity to representational content we
think of as part of rationality” (Currie 2004, 211).
• Over-intellectualised account: tokened thoughts
Accommodated “Seeing-As”
• To accommodate Seeing-As, REC account minimally has to:
1. Preserve “the (relative) freedom from environmental
constraint”, or having “controlled experiences in the
absence of appropriate stimuli” to account for the
question “How do we respond in flexible ways to that
which is not perceptually present?”
2. Get rid of the notion of representations of any form
(“sensitivity to representational content we think of as
part of rationality”).
3. = Imaginative Transformation without Decentring as such
Methods:
1. Object affordances (role of play props)
1) Pace Noe: Seeing-affordances-in the
environment
2) Pace Chemero: acting on perceived affordances
But is the concept of affordances adequate?
Seeing-affordances-in:
Noe’s 1.0 affordances
• Directly perceiving possibilities of action
• “Things in the environment, and properties of the
environment, offer or afford the animal opportunities
to do things (find shelter, climb up, hide under, etc.).
(...) When you see a tree, you not only directly perceive
a tree, but you directly perceive something up which
you can climb” (2004, 105).
• The immediate environment, thus, affords certain
actions and resists others. Objects can afford novel
possibilities, but it does not afford all sorts of play (not
the case that ‘anything goes’).
Chemero’s 2.0 Affordances as
perceived possibilities of action
• Gibson (1979): affordances are neither in the environment, nor in the
agent, but in the interactions. What is required is active exploration of the
object: “The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal,
what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill” (1979, p. 127).
• Chemero (2009): affordances are set up through a history of interactions
– “depend on an individual animal’s developmental history or the evolutionary
history of the species, both of which occur in the context of the environment”
– “more appropriate to understand affordances as being inherent not in
animals, but in animal-environment systems. Affordances are relations” (idem,
145)
• This leaves the possibility of the shifting of affordances and responding in
flexible ways to that which is not perceptually present
Seeing affordances?
• For Gibson, to see an affordance is to directly perceive a familiar
object’s practical ‘meaning’ or ‘value’ (1986, 127), that is, to see it
as suggesting a possible usage which can be taken up in action: a
chair affords sitting to a creature capable of sitting, lateral terrain
affords walking to a creature capable of perambulation, and so
forth. In Gibson’s ecological theory of vision, though affordances
are ‘external’ properties of objects, they are nevertheless relational
properties – they are ‘animal-relative’, meaning that their
perceptibility depends on the behavioural repertoire of the
perceiver (Chemero 2003, pp.127-8).
• “action possibilities readily perceivable by an actor” (Norman
1988). Affordances "suggest" how an object may be interacted
with. The actor brings past experiences to bear when ‘evaluating’ a
new affordance.
Problems with seeing affordances
1. Shift of problems
Shift from “how it is possible to see objects which are not there?” to
“… to see affordances which are not there?”
How can objects afford special ‘phone’ actions, such as, e.g., calling or
dialing? (Bananas do not afford ‘dialing’ because they do not have
buttons)
2. Involuntarily invoking higher processes
Seeing possibilities of action = knowing the possibilities in advance?
(sensorimotor contingencies)
Seeing all possibilities of action, evaluating them, and choosing one?
You don’t first perceive a ground as ‘walkable’ and then walk on it;
worry of over-conceptualisation
Alternatives
• McGrenere and Ho (2000):
– “Gibson intended an affordance to mean an action
possibility available in the environment to an
individual, independent of the individual's ability to
perceive this possibility”
• Gaver (1991):
– Hidden Affordances: unperceived possibilities for
action
– False Affordances: perceiving non-existent possibilities
of action (e.g., “placebo button”)
Structure
Affordances
1.0 (Noe) In the
Environment,
Perceived
2.0 (Chemero)
Relational,
Perceived
3.0 (RECish)
Relational,
Enacted
(Doing-As)
Why they are attractive…
Whose line is it anyway?
Props
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3y6NGI
A9pA&playnext=1&list=PLF9264126BA358B71
&feature=results_main
Non-representational Tools:
1. Object affordances (role of play props)
2. Social affordances: role of play participants
3. Wider social context: role of narratives
2. Social context: Immediate (dialogical)
Interactions (direct external factors)
1.
Structured guidance of others - initiates what is being played and
guides how it is being played
1.
2.
2.
by showing how to hold a cup, which the child imitates. Mimicking others’
tea party play as responsiveness to them ‘on the spot’
by verbal feedback (“this is not how you hold a cup”).
Reactions of others (spectators)
1.
2.
Reassurance of smiles, gestures and actions of caregivers or fellow
playmates. Even when not playing with a caregiver, a child at play is
frequently in the presence of a caregiver, who approves or disapproves the
play by reacting (e.g., with laughter and encouragement), which asserts to
the child that this acceptable as a game.
Charades: seeing that their audience does not understand and respond to
their interpretation of what is written of the paper, the actors adjust their
behaviours to accommodate the understanding of the spectators, and
explore another means of depicting the same thing.
Importance of social context
• Safety: affords exploration and innovation by feeling safe to break
with convention;
• The intersubjective context scaffolds active exploration of objects
and playing with conventional roles. Individual’s exploration, in
turn, allows one to break with norms in a way that does not
threaten the norms, as the norms are socially established.
• Retaining normativity?
– Social context determines whether there is a breakdown in the
‘restaurant’ play or whether it is accommodated by ‘restaurant with
swords instead of cutlery’ play (what makes it correct or incorrect is
the context at hand).
• (Creating meaning/meaningful actions?)
– (De Jaegher and Di Paolo’s (2007) ‘participatory sense-making’: They
suggest that novel meanings are established from mutual
understanding; a ‘shared meaning’ of what is played emerges when
the pretenders adjust their performance to the audience’s needs)
Non-representational Tools:
1. Object affordances (role of play props)
2. Social affordances: role of play participants
3. Wider social context: role of narratives
3. Engagement in narrative practices
(indirect external factors)
1.
History of past interactions within a social setting
-
2.
recreating tea party routines one participated in
re-enacting what has been seen or shown without the need to internalize
what has been learned as sets of rules
Weakly internalized narratives
-
-
enacted routines can be enhanced by stories, which in turn may motivate
new forms of play and new routines. For example, one can engage in a
restaurant scenario by enacting what one usually does in a restaurant and
elaborating the play inspired by a story about sword-fighters.
narratives may provide the possibility of going beyond the immediacy of
social routines and oil the wheels of elaboration, enabling possible
counterfactual engagements. familiarity with narratives could allow children
(and adults) to create new pretence scenarios, while using a specific preestablished set of characters and settings, (e.g., pretend-playing to be a
‘waiter’ and a ‘customer’ in a restaurant scenario, but improvising with the
script). Narratives expand the range of acceptable or at least possible norms
and practices.
Importance of external narratives
-
Structuring role is external to the subject (wide cognition)
-
-
Preserves normativity:
-
-
It may be weakly internalized but NOT in the form of internalised
rules of behaviour; narratives are themselves not mental-scriptlike; narratives are not as structured as rules (Hutto 2010)
Routines depict a status-quo of appropriate behaviour, but with
narratives, these are voiced and explained; in stories, we gain
reasons for what is taken to be good and bad, what is moral and
immoral behaviour.
Allows innovation:
-
Narratives, insofar as they portray unusual or alternative
behaviors, can expand on accepted norms and increase the
possibilities of play, as well as the possibilities of understanding
others who are very different from us.
Conclusion: possibility of nonrepresentational pretend play counting as
intelligent behaviour (cognition)
• “What structures pretend play?”/What makes it more than mere
thrashing about? Possibilities:
• A) game props affords various actions and types of play while limiting
others
– Allows for retention of normativity
– But we should study affordances carefully
• B) social context affords exploration and innovation:
– Safe environment and approval allows breaking with convention
– Engaging with others – creating meaning, if meaning is use
• C) immersion in narrative practices
– Provides an external structure of play, frames the play, makes the play nonaccidental, not-random, without appeal to internalised mental scrips (plan)
First attempt towards an enactive, towards non-representational account of basic
pretence, laying groundwork for its application to further types of pretence for
future research.
Thank you!
z.rucinska@hotmail.com
http://herts.academia.edu/ZuzannaRucinska