Mammalian Play: Training for the Unexpected

By M. Špinka, R. C. Newberry, M. Bekoff. The Quarterly review of biology, 2001

749 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Small Animals, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/909a2cb5c6e4450d29e77a50b5c6b883de8e21e4

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Small Animals

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Social tolerance and adult play in macaque societies: a comparison with different human cultures (2012, background): “It has been suggested that sex differences in animal play are expected whenever males and females differ in their physical, behavioural and social features (Fagen 1981; Byers & Walker 1995; Spinka et al. 2001) because play can be used differently by adult males and females according to their role wi”
Understanding weaning distress (2008, background): “, Arey and Sancha, 1996), and play experience may be particularly important in learning social skills (Spinka et al., 2001).”
Deep Curiosity Search: Intra-Life Exploration Improves Performance on Challenging Deep Reinforcement Learning Problems (2018, background): “…dopamine response for behaviors that produce unexpected results (i.e. a high temporal difference error) [28], encouraging the discovery of novel states and creating an instinct to play/explore that may facilitate an animal’s survival by leading to the acquisition of useful skills [26, 29, 30, 31].”
Animal play and animal welfare (2011, background): “Defining ‘play’ is difficult because it covers many behavioural categories, varies considerably between and within species, and its single or multiple functional significance is still being debated (e.g. Bekoff & Byers 1998; Power 2000; Spinka et al. 2001; Burghardt 2005).”
Social Play Behaviour: Cooperation, Fairness, Trust, and the Evolution of Morality (2001, background): “…a week, are sufficient for domestic dogs from three to seven weeks of age; Scott and Fuller, 1965), researchers agree that play is very important in social, cognitive, and/or physical development, and may also be important for training youngsters for unexpected circumstances (Spinka et al., 2001).”
Updating Animal Welfare Thinking: Moving beyond the “Five Freedoms” towards “A Life Worth Living” (2016, background): “The brain processing that underlies the generation survival-critical negative affects and that which underlies the generation of situation-related positive affects interact, such that when animals experience significant levels of the former this discomfort inhibits their motivation to utilise existi”
“I Did Not Have Time to Play Growing Up… So This is My Play Time. It's the Best Thing I Have Ever Done for Myself”: What is Play to Older Women? (2008, background): “Spinka, Newberry, and Bekoff (2001) argued that in evolutionary terms the purpose of play is to train for unpredicted or stressful physical and/or emotional events.”
Sharing the motivation to play: the use of signals in adult bonobos (2008, background): “Since unexpected situations frequently occur during a play bout (Špinka et al. 2001; Van Hooff & Preuschoft 2003), I expect that, due to the difficulty for individuals to monitor all the partners involved, polyadic play sessions have higher rates of play signals than dyadic play sessions.”
Adolescence as a neurobiological critical period for the development of higher-order cognition (2018, positive): “As an example, play behavior—which involves complex peer-peer social interaction and cognitive flexibility (Spinka et al., 2001) —peaks during the adolescent period in the rat (Panksepp, 1981), is mediated by mPFC activity (van Kerkhof et al., 2013) and induces plastic changes in the mPFC that…”
Partner preferences and asymmetries in social play among domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris, littermates (2008, positive): “2001) or motor development (Byers 1998), to develop the emotional flexibility needed for dealing with unexpected situations (Spinka et al. 2001) or as a way to assess their own capabilities relative to conspecifics (Thompson 1998; Smith et al.”
Announcing the arrival of enrichment increases play behaviour and reduces weaning-stress-induced behaviours of piglets directly after weaning (2006, background): “In addition, animals appear excited but relaxed while playing and give the overall impression that they are ‘‘having fun’’ (Spinka, 2001).”
Maternal investment results in better foal condition through increased play behaviour in horses (2008, background): “Despite its widespread occurrence, the evolutionary significance of play has proved elusive (Caro 1988; Pellis & Iwaniuk 1999; Spinka et al. 2001).”
The Function of Play in the Development of the Social Brain. (2010, background): “This, in turn, serves to train animals to cope with an unpredictable world (Špinka et al. 2001).”