ABSTRACT
The communication gap between practitioner and theoretician in the management of play seems to be wide. This is because many of the people concerned with either the management of play or theorizing about it are confused about their roles. It is the responsibility of the scientist to produce principles, laws, and theories that can be used generally to relate cause and effect. A different and coordinated set of studies, derived from the fact that the play of children is always shaped to some extent by the physical environment in which it occurs, has been carried out in our laboratory. Stimulus properties of play objects comprise a crucial portion of the child’s environment. The theoretical basis for the work stemmed from research showing that stimulus complexity is an important parameter for preferences and from characterizations of play as stimulus or arousal-seeking behaviors.
