ABSTRACT
If any one psychological concept in the child development literature captivated the attention and challenged the acumen of researchers during the decade of the 1970s, it was the concept of play. Unprecedented streams of books (e.g., Caplan & Caplan, 1973; Ellis, 1973; Garvey, 1977; Schwartzman, 1978; Bruner, Jolly, & Sylva, 1976) and research articles too numerous to cite, emerged to suggest that the frivolity of play is only apparent.
