ReviewFrontiers in psychology2018
Accessing the Inaccessible: Redefining Play as a Spectrum.
Review in Frontiers in psychology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Can guidance during play enhance children's learning and development in educational contexts? A systematic review and meta-analysis.Child development · 2022Pooled it
- Play, Learn, and Teach Outdoors-Network (PLaTO-Net): terminology, taxonomy, and ontology.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2022Pooled it
- Trial
- Article
- Physically Active Play as a Context for Motor Learning in Children with and Without Developmental Coordination Disorder: A Conceptual Synthesis of Cross-Domain Alignment.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Development and validation of the CAPPAC scale to measure multidimensional play in children and adolescents.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Outdoor play in Europe: terminology and state of research, practice, and policy.European journal of public health · 2026Article
- Article
- In the Living Room and Across the Screen: Intergenerational Play Between Infants and Grandparents.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies · 2026Article
- Playful learning, inclusion, and belonging: a perspective on engaged classrooms.Frontiers in child and adolescent psychiatry · 2026Article
- Inferential talk between teachers and children across play types: a categorization based on the play continuum.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- 2025 Position statement on active outdoor play.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2025Review
- A longitudinal study investigating the association between social maturity, social preference and children's perceptions of their playfulness.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The Relationship Between Children's Indoor Loose Parts Play and Cognitive Development: A Systematic Review.Journal of Intelligence · 2025Review
- Impact of flipped classroom strategy and learning on the acquisition of basic skills among students in the basketball 1 course at Birzeit University.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2025Article
- Teachers' perceptions of barriers and facilitators to peer play between children with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing peers in early childhood education: a research circle study in Austria.International journal of developmental disabilities · 2025Article
- Does Play-Based Learning Support Children's Everyday Resiliency? A Cross-Case Analysis of Parents' and Kindergarten Teachers' Perceptions of Play-Based Learning as a Precedent to Young Children's Coping During the Pandemic-Affected 2020-2021 School Year.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Active inference goes to school: the importance of active learning in the age of large language models.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Effect of the Partners in Play Intervention on Parents' Autonomy-Supportive Guiding Behaviour and Children's Self-Regulation.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Supporting literacy development in kindergarten through teacher-facilitated play.Journal of early childhood research : ECR · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Defining play has plagued researchers and philosophers for years. From describing play as an inaccessible concept due to its complexity, to providing checklists of features, the field has struggled with how to conceptualize and operationalize "play." This theoretical piece reviews the literature about both play and learning and suggests that by viewing play as a spectrum - that ranges from free play (no guidance or support) to guided play and games (including purposeful adult support while maintaining playful elements), we better capture the true essence of play and explain its relationship to learning. Insights from the Science of Learning allow us to better understand why play supports learning across social and academic domains. By changing the lens through which we conceptualize play, we account for previous findings in a cohesive way while also proposing new avenues of exploration for the field to study the role of learning through play across age and context.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.