The Development of Play in Preschoolers: Roles and pretend situations: Their significance and the motivation of play activity

The motives of play activity constitute a key question. It is no accident that views on play diverge most conspicuously with regard to the the stimuli leading to play. Theories of satisfaction, pleasure, internal primary drives and self-affirmation—all "in-depth theories"—are essentially theories of the motivating forces that give rise to play. The principal flaw in these conceptions is how they construe the motivating forces of play: they are situated in the subject, in the child and in the child's experiences. These theories discount the fact that these experiences are but secondary to an activity, i.e., they are symptomatic in that they indicate the activity is indeed taking place, but they tell us nothing about the real, objective, stimuli of the activity.