AUTHOR=Yu Yue , Shafto Patrick , Bonawitz Elizabeth , Yang Scott C.-H. , Golinkoff Roberta M. , Corriveau Kathleen H. , Hirsh-Pasek Kathy , Xu Fei 

TITLE=The Theoretical and Methodological Opportunities Afforded by Guided Play With Young Children

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 9 - 2018

YEAR=2018

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01152

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01152

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=For infants and young children, learning takes place all the time and everywhere. How children learn best both in and out of school has been a long-standing topic of debate in education, cognitive development, and cognitive science. Recently, guided play has been proposed as an integrative approach for thinking about learning as a child-led, adult-assisted playful activity. The interactive and dynamic nature of guided play presents theoretical and methodological challenges and opportunities. Drawing upon research from multiple disciplines, we discuss the integration of cutting-edge computational modeling and data science tools to address some of these challenges, and highlight avenues towards an empirically grounded, computationally precise and ecologically valid framework of guided play.