First, Eric Corning's understanding of the social origin of children's role-playing.
As a real scientific research object, children's games began in the second half of19th century. For more than 100 years, the origin of game has been the primary problem to be solved by various game theories. They generally hold two different views on the origin of games: "Instinct Theory" and "Labor Origin Theory". Early game theories, such as "residual energy" theory, are generally based on the continuity of game evolution between humans and animals, and explain the game with "instinct" as the core concept. The theory of "origin of labor" emphasizes the particularity of human games and the significance of labor to human development and human social civilization. [ 1] 126
Eric Corning inherited plekhanov's thought that games and art originated from labor, and developed Marxist historical materialism as the methodological basis to explain the origin of children's games. He believes that children's role-playing is the product of the development of human history to a certain stage, which is caused by the development of social productive forces and the change of children's status in social production and labor. As he concluded from the analysis of the origin of toys, children's role-playing does not appear spontaneously, but comes from the needs of society. [2] 129 All this shows that the game is social in origin and essence, and it is related to children's life under certain social conditions, not determined by instinct.
Second, Ai Kangning's understanding of the individual origin of children's role games
In the early game theory, the theory of "surplus energy" regards games as the consumption of surplus energy after the survival needs are met, and children can vent their surplus energy through games and get pleasure and satisfaction from them. According to the "relaxation" theory, the game is to recover the energy consumed in work and get relaxation and rest. The theory of "pre-practice" holds that games are preparation for future adult life and instinctive practice or training. The theory of "replay" regards games as the result of human biological inheritance, and children's games are activities that continue the past of human race. "Maturity" theory holds that games are the expression of general desires from a biological point of view, and they are children's activities of manipulating certain objects.
The above-mentioned game "instinct theory" affirms the biological significance and value of the game to the individual, and explains the origin of the game from different aspects. However, these theories have a strong biological color, are mainly speculative, lack of reliable experimental basis, and fail to enhance people's attention to children's games.
Eric Corning proposed that the generation of role games must change the relationship between children and adults from the perspective of the individual origin of role games. He believes that at the end of lactation, due to the improvement of children's mastery and independence of using physical objects, the unique cooperative activities between lactating children and adults collapse, and children tend to participate in incompetent adult activities. Because of this contradictory tendency, children and adults have a new relationship-role-playing. Children play the role of adults in the game and repeat the activities of adults to satisfy this desire. [3] It can be seen that role-playing is produced in the new relationship between children and adults. In terms of its origin, it is social, and in terms of its content, it is also social.
Thirdly, Aiken's understanding of the characteristics of children's role-playing.
Some researchers in Western Europe, represented by Kaufka and Lei Wen Wen, believe that children play the role of adults in games, making them transition to a new imaginary, symbolic and hypothetical world, which has the special law of complete freedom. Eric Corning refuted the hypothesis and free regularity of their role games through experiments. His experiments show that the logic of children's actions in the game accurately reproduces the logic of adults' real actions, and even the introduction of minimum hypothesis is rejected by players. Only pre-school children in large classes give false qualitative performances of their roles, and treat this assumption with sarcasm, treating this extremely hypothetical role performance as a special game. [3] It can be seen that Eric Corning opposes hypothesis as a feature of children's role games.
At the same time, Eric Corning believes that games are not a special field of children's lives at all, not the laws of the imaginary world mentioned by Levin Wen, on the contrary, they are as strict as the real world. [2] It can be seen that Eric Corning denies that hypothesis is a feature of children's role-playing, and at the same time does not agree with the free regularity of role-playing. He believes that children should abide by certain rules when playing role games. Although these rules are not formulated by adults in advance, they should be consistent with the rules of the real society. For example, when children play their mothers in role games, they always follow the rules of behavior between mother and child. This fully embodies the consistency of the rules of the game and social rules.
Four. Eric Corning's understanding of the formation and emergence stages of roles in role games.
Eric Corning takes the formation and appearance of characters as the focus of his research on role games. In his view, the symbolic function of role games is mainly manifested in substituting things for people, which is role-playing in the game, and role-playing is in the core position, and substituting things for things should be included in the symbolic structure of substituting things for people. [4] He pointed out that physical activity has a two-way internal structure, that is, it is associated with physical objects and also with people as the main body of action. Therefore, the emergence conditions of the role and its relationship with the operation of things and the substitution of things constitute the formation and emergence stage of the role.
Eric Corning believes that the usage of objects should be taught to children by adults, and children should not be allowed to master or "construct" themselves, but only allowed to master them in cooperative activities with adults. After adults teach children how to use objects, when the simulacra of real life appears, children will reproduce these actions, but these actions cannot be separated from the specific objects that form a connection with them. With the expansion of the range of objects that can be used as substitutes, children's actions begin to break away from the original objects, and gradually they can see the main body of actions-"people", and activities imitating people also appear one after another. For example, play the role of doctor, policeman, teacher and so on. At the same time, Eric Corning believes that the content of children's games has developed from a game that repeats human physical activities to a game that reflects the relationship between people, and finally to a game that shows the social significance of human activities. The development of game content closely depends on children's deeper understanding of the social content of adult activities.
Eric Corning's research on the appearance of characters in children's role games reveals the change of the development law of children's games, that is, from the reproduction of adult's physical activities to the reproduction of the relationship between adults or between adults and children. This fully affirmed the foundation of the symbol of things, and affirmed that it is an important prerequisite for the emergence of roles.
Fifth, the evaluation of Eric Corning's game theory.
Ai Kangning's game theory inherits the understanding of social and cultural history school games, embodies the basic views of social and cultural history school on children's psychological development, and highlights the sociality of games. He regards role-playing as the main research object of children's games, discusses the sociality of games from the perspective of the social and individual origin of role-playing, denies the hypothesis and free regularity of games from the perspective of experimental investigation, and reveals the development law of children's games from the study of the formation and emergence stages of roles in role-playing, which not only further expands and develops the game theory of social, cultural and historical schools, but also has enlightening significance for the understanding and discussion of games.
First of all, Eric Corning's understanding of games provides a new perspective for China's game theory research. He thought and explored the essence of role-playing from the perspective of social origin and individual origin, inherited plekhanov's thought that games and art originated from labor, explained the origin of children's games based on Marxist historical materialism, and further criticized the "instinct theory" of games. This provides a more objective and scientific ideological basis for people to understand the concept of games, and also provides a methodological basis for people to further scientifically promote the application and practice of games in education. He attributed the essence of games to sociality. On the one hand, he emphasized the sociality of the origin of games. He believed that the development of social productive forces led to the change of children's status in social production and labor, and from the perspective of individual origin, it was caused by the contradiction between children's wishes and abilities. Therefore, the importance of adults and education in the development of children's games is affirmed. On the other hand, it advocates the sociality of the game content, thinks that the game is the repetition of children's adult activities, and affirms the necessity of the game as a means or way for children to master social culture and life experience. Therefore, this view of social essence of games can stimulate our enthusiasm and initiative in developing and guiding children's games, thus improving the effectiveness of games in educational practice.
Although Eric Corning expounded the social essence of the game from the perspectives of social origin and individual origin, which broke the limitation of Vygotsky's positioning the game as a single level of social activities, he still did not affirm that the game was a free and spontaneous activity. This is worthy of our attention and criticism. Of course, his explanation of the social origin of role games also needs further discussion and verification.
Secondly, Eric Corning's game theory focuses on role games, especially on the process of role emergence, which has important reference value for us to guide the development of role games. He believes that the appearance of roles in role games can be divided into three stages, the first of which is to affirm the importance of adults in guiding children's games, which coincides with the idea that adults are the initiators, instructors and demonstrators of children's games. At the same time, he thinks that only in the middle and late preschool can children have the consciousness of role-playing, and points out the important role of symbols in the appearance of roles. Therefore, after children are 4-5 years old, adults should consciously change roles, provide children with imitation scenes, and participate more as partners in children's games.
Children's games can't be separated from people's social environment, and it is understandable to emphasize the role of adults in the development of children's games. However, as Ada, a China scholar, said, "Do adults have to teach them step by step before children can play games?" [1] 129 It can be seen that this is a problem that we should carefully consider when inheriting the reasonable components of Eric Corning's game theory.