Play Therapy - Google Sketchup / Project Spectrum

Came across an interesting article on play: http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/documents/Smith-PellegriniANGxp.pdf
Smith and Pellegrini (2008) define and explore the role of play - language play, social play, object play, etc.  I then tracked down a site dedicated to play therapy http://www.playtherapy.org/ with a mission statement "To be the leading professional organisation, in the world, dedicated to promoting the use of play and creative arts therapies (the therapies) as ways of enabling children to reach their full potential by alleviating emotional, behaviour and mental health problems."  Digging around a bit more, I found a digital art group hosted by Ginger Poole, Art Therapist, which offers sessions to teen and pre-teen boys with Asperger's Syndrome.  http://gingerpoole.com/?page_id=54


Its purpose:
"With help and support, they will make friends with other digital artists and will learn new techniques.  This group also has an online component. The members of the group will post art on a passcode protected blog site and respond to each other throughout the week to enhance the face-to-face relationships."


So what does this all mean for me?  I just wrapped up the first two courses of my graduate studies on User-Centred Design.  We took on a project to develop an app promoting the acquisition and application of social skills for children with Aspergers.  Overwhelmingly, boys are the target audience for this type of work.  So what if my thesis went this direction:


1. examine the role and importance of play in our lives - brain-based research


2. study a target group of Aspergers students, presenting them with digital art therapy opportunities.   I'm reading through Ginger Poole's website and I don't see any research her work is based upon.  I found this article published in Psychology Today by an art therapist Cathy Malchiodi (http://www.cathymalchiodi.com/):

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-healing-arts/200911/art-therapy-meets-digital-art-and-social-multimedia.


Here, she cites some of the research being done on Aspergers and the digital arts.  Project Spectrum leverages the visual and spacial strengths of students with Aspergers by providing opportunities to represent designs in a 3-D environment.  The Youtube video on this site is worthwhile.  http://www.google.com/educators/spectrum.html

3. My goal: to determine how access to classroom-based digital arts programming improves social and/or academic outcomes for those diagnosed with Aspergers.  Some products to explore: Google Sketchup, Animoto, Xtranormal.

Play

I've got play on my mind this morning.  Yesterday I downloaded Duke Ellington's "The Ultimate Collection" on itunes.  Man, can he play.  I started thinking about my connection to play and how work and play are held in binary opposition.  Play is celebrated as leisure time while work is meant to be productive.  I play video and board games, play badminton and tennis, and occasionally play the guitar gathering dust in my living room.  These are specified as leisure activities.  I work as a teacher, graduate student, and father.  This is my work.

When I think about accounting, medicine, or finance, I categorize these kinds of occupations as work.  However, an actor, musician, or professional athlete falls under the category of play.  Why is this?  Can an accountant not play in her profession?  Is a hockey player working or playing?

I love this quote by Louis Armstrong:

"What we play is life."

We play roles.  An accountant will step into the role of how we expect a professional to act.  When we see a play, the actors are expected to stay in character.  Their work is to play.

The kindergarten program at our school is play-based.  It is designed with a series of centres for students to engage with, promoting the development of fine and gross motor skills, socialization, and the acquisition of math language skills.  The premise is that children learn through play.  How about adults?  Do we stop learning through play when we reach a certain age?  Can we only play in our work if we are in a field that allows it?

I have research to do in the area of play.  I'm going to start with a book, "Digital Play: the Interaction of Technology, Culture and Marketing" http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=gw5V10iLEsUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=digital+play&ots=jrAWPpMDCQ&sig=n0SAwB66QxsDYpxuKX4CNaXbkx0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Much play to do.

Risk Taking in Adolescence - Prefrontal Regions / Frontostriatal Circuitry

I continue to dig around for articles on risk-taking.  This one studies how the maturity of prefrontal regions and their connection to frontostriatal circuitry impacts risk taking behaviour.  My purpose and interest in this article is in optimizing a learning situation.  I want to know what the cognitive variables are that influence learning.  Does an optimal learning situation necessitate an element of risk?  ie. if adolescents are predisposed to risk-taking behaviour, how can we leverage this in learning?  How does technology factor into this?  How can technology augment and optimize a learning situation?

http://neuro.cjb.net/content/26/25/6885.full.pdf+html

Earlier Development of the Accumbens Relative to

Orbitofrontal Cortex Might Underlie Risk-Taking Behavior

in Adolescents

The Journal of Neuroscience, 21 June 2006, 26(25): 6885-6892; doi: 10.1523/​JNEUROSCI.1062-06.2006

Adriana Galvan, Todd A. Hare, Cindy E. Parra, Jackie Penn, Henning Voss, Gary Glover, and B. J. Casey

"The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that adolescence is a developmental period of increased responsivity to reward relative to childhood and adulthood" (p. 6885)

"Adolescence is characterized by continued structural and functional development of frontostriatal circuitry implicated in behavioral regulation" (p. 6885)

"These findings suggest that different developmental trajectories for these regions may relate to the increased impulsive and risky behaviors observed during this period of development" (p. 6889)

"One goal of this study was to characterize reward learning across development. Adults showed behavioral distinction to the three cues, with fastest responses to the large reward cue. Adolescents showed less discrete responses and children show little to no learning" (p. 6890)

"Here, our data suggest that reward-related neural responses influence behavioral output" (p. 6890)

"Evidence from our study supports the notion that relative reward preference is exaggerated during adolescence: adolescents showed an enhanced accumbens response to the large reward and a decrease in activity to the small reward relative to other rewards and to other ages" (p. 6890)

"Adolescents report greater intensity of positive feelings and more positive BOLD signal intensity than adults during a win condition (Ernst et al., 2005). The adolescents may have viewed the small reward as an omission of reward, similar to lack of an expected event at a given time, previously shown to decrease striatal activity (Davidson et al., 2004). This finding corresponded to a slowing of reaction time from early to late trials for the smaller rewards, providing additional evidence that this condition may have been perceived as more negative for adolescents. Together, these findings imply that reward perception might be influenced by changes in neural systems during adolescence (Irwin, 1993)" (p. 6890)

"Understanding the development of structural and functional connectivity of reward-related mesolimbic circuitry may further inform the field on the neurobiological basis of increased reward-seeking and adolescent-onset addiction"(p. 6891)

"Thus, disproportionate contributions of subcortical systems relative to prefrontal regulatory systems may underlie poor decision-making that predisposes adolescents to drug use and, ultimately, addiction." (p. 6891)