The Role of Play in Executive Function

Originally published here on February 28, 2008.

If you listened to Alix Spiegel over at NPR you could get the impression that Mickey Mouse is to blame from the state of today's kids. She might be right...

The first Mickey Mouse shop in 1955 heralded a change in the way toys were marketed. As that marketing change took hold the toy market grew and, according to author Howard Chudacoff at Brown University, the nature of play changed. And changes in the nature of play have altered children's imaginations - and even the way their minds develop.

Before the advent of the toy industry as we know it today, children played in groups usually and had to use their imaginations to create play. They also had to use a process called executive function to regulate their play. Executive function is "a set of cognitive abilities that control and regulate other abilities and behaviors," according to one source. The NPR piece describes it as "private speech." Children "talked" to themselves inside their heads (minds, whatever) in order to bring order to what they were doing.

The gist of the NPR story is that today's toys take away much of the need for imagination and for the sort of self-regulation involved in executive function. One result is that executive function is weaker in today's kids than it was in 1955 when Mickey Mouse debuted.

If you teach reading at the elementary level, you're probably familiar with a concept that is sort of a subset or application of executive function that is essential to reading comprehension: metacognition. Metacognition (in the context of reading) is the process of monitoring your thought processes as you proceed through a story or text. You ask yourself, "Do I remember who the main characters are?" And "Now where is it that this happened." Being able to answer those sorts of questions along the way is essential to understanding a story. We model it in class by thinking aloud and we try to teach it.

So the logical question is, "Are reading skills becoming weaker as a result of changes in the way kids play?" I'll leave answering that question to the researchers...

You can listen to the NPR story yourself by clicking here.