Appendix 1 : Literature Review

Yi-Fu Tuan, a Chinese-American geographer, combined his expertise of human geography with the fields of philosophy, art, psychology, and religion. Merging these fields led to what is known as humanist geography, which is a branch of geography that studies how humans interact with space and their physical environments. He is renowned for his work called Space and Place, describing that the two concepts are interdependent. He is also author of Escapism; a number of the philosophies he proposes in this work are pertinent to this thesis. He states that every product of our culture is a form of escape. Helping to illustrate the facets of escape, he also asserts that our escapes are imposed by nature.

Most importantly he challenges the negativity that sometimes shrouds the term escape. Two chapters, entitled “Heaven”, and “Hell”, propose that while escape can bring us close to a form of heaven, or bliss, it can also, if left unchecked, lead to a self-deluding hell, or misery. Escape has the capacity to allow us to “forget the destructive preliminaries of almost all creative acts.” (Tuan, 1998, p.xv) Therefore, this route, which has historically led towards the heavenly, is subject to the evils which can also lead to a kind of hell. With respect to our culture he provides a convincing and logical argument for each of us to consider our moral responsibilities while participating in escape.

Tuan does not seem to be alone in this line of thought. The author of Nature and Madness, Paul Shepard, also warns of the path of destruction led by acts of escape. Similar to Tuan, Shepard describes that through much of our history we seem to escape the wilderness, simultaneously altering, and actively destroying it in order to gain a foothold in an insecure world. However, he states that we also seek and appreciate the manifestations of nature, and therefore, we benefit from repairing our severed bonds to nature.

Shepard states that, “Civilization increased the separation between the individual and the natural world as it did the child from the mother [...]” He asserts that farming, a primary act of civilization, led to the separation between humans and nature; it also created the contrast between childhood and adulthood. The act of farming did this through imposing necessary responsibilities; those of upkeep and planting, for example. He states that the environments of “small-group, leisured, foraging life-ways with natural surroundings,” now, no longer exist, and that we have begun to “suffer for the want of that vanished world.” (Shepard, 1982, p.14-15) Shepard describes that our disengagement with nature is the cause of modern problems.

As I further investigated our evolutionary and developmental history, the work of David F. Bjorklund and Anthony D. Pellegrini proved relevant. David F. Bjorklund is a professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University and his research interests include children’s memory and strategy development, cognitive developmental primatology, and evolutionary developmental psychology. Anthony D. Pellegrini is an award winning Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. His research interests are generally based in children’s development, and include specific interests in children’s play, children's sex segregation, social dominance, and aggression. Together they wrote The Origins of Human Nature, Evolutionary Developmental Psychology. In this book, they apply the principle of natural selection to explain contemporary human development in order to define the field of evolutionary developmental psychology. Each discipline complements the other and thereby allows for a more in-depth look at gene-environment interactions, significance of individual differences, and the role of behaviour and development in evolution. It helps us understand how developmental processes may have influenced the course of human evolution.

Prior to reading this work, specifically the chapter entitled “Homo Lundens: The Importance of Play”, I struggled with prior readings on fantasy play, or daydreaming. The works of Tuan, Shepard, Singer and numerous others claim that humans are animals that think, and that escape, including daydreaming, is what makes us distinctly human.

I found this difficult to agree with. Having a pet dog, the thinking process is clearly visible. Cubby, my sister’s Papillion, has a love for fuzzy, yellow balls. He cannot, however, fit two in his mouth at the same time. When presented with two, he gets visibly upset and frustrated, trying in vain, to take them both with him. One day, Cubby saw his fuzzy ball bounce into a small, plastic bowl that he often carried around. It did not take long for him to voluntarily place his other ball in the bowl, pick up the bowl, and dart around the house happy as could be with his two balls. This animal clearly thinks, and given his exhilaration immediately following, he knew that he had thought of something good. This was also during the process of play, a form of escape.

The chapter entitled, “Homo Lundens: The Importance of Play,” describes that play is ubiquitous in mammals and suggests that, while being vastly controversial, there is evidence that some animals also participate in fantasy play. Numerous significant studies are outlined discussing evidence of role-play and self-handicapping in non-humans, thereby substantiating my own observations. It is an important work for this reason.

The author of Play, Stuart Brown, is a medical doctor, psychiatrist, clinical researcher and founder of the National Institute for Play. Brown studies animal behaviour, and has also conducted more than six thousand play histories of humans from every walk of life. The book describes these studies as well as the most up-to-date research in order to demonstrate the vast benefits of play. In The Origins of Human Nature, the definition of play is accepted as activities which appear to be purposeless. As an expert on play, Brown furthers this, describing a set of characteristics which define play. He explains the definition of play as, “an absorbing, apparently purposeless activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of self-consciousness and a sense of time. It is also self-motivating and makes you want to do it again.”

Backed by the research of others, this work states that play is essential to our healthy development. Play is proven to promote brain plasticity, that is, the ability for nerve cells to change through new experiences, well into adulthood, as well as promoting creativity, intelligence, adaptability, physical and mental health. It is a form of escape.

Parents of the 1950’s were warned not to let their children daydream for fear that the children would be more likely to gain mental disorders such as neurosis or psychosis. (Klinger, Eric (October 1987). Psychology Today.) Written in 1966, Jerome L. Singer’s Daydreaming, contradicted the line of thinking of its time. The idea, that daydreaming causes mental disorders, is revealed as false by Singer, and that the opposite is actually true. Singer also developed the Imaginal Process Inventory (IPI) questionnaire which has been used to investigate daydreaming.

Singer presents an exploration of fantasy play, using personal experience and self-experimentation, as well as the IPI, formal experiments, and developmentally organized findings and theories. He suggests that, “[...] daydreaming may itself create a new environment or stimulus field which feeds back alternative possibilities of response.” (Singer, 1966, p. 97) Singer also states that, “[...] much daydreaming occurs during music listening, it is also the case that when an extended daydream is touched off a good deal of the music is missed!” (Singer, 1966, p.167) This statement suggests that we lose touch with reality when daydreaming. This work produced evidence and information about the act of daydreaming, that when compared with Stuart Brown’s definitions of play, the terms appear to contain the same characteristics. They both are voluntary, seemingly purposeless, diminish the sense of self, create a freedom from time, have improvisational potential, inherent attraction, as well as continuation desire. When referring to play, I refer to both daydreaming and play as defined by Brown’s definition. These are the forms of escape that incorporate acts of improvisation and adaptation, and when practiced, they lead to numerous health benefits, inventiveness, and intellect.

Having been written over forty years ago, it is not surprising that there are assertions in Singer’s work that humans are the only beings that engage in daydreaming, or fantasy play. Current evidence as described by Bjorklund, Brown, and Pellegrini, suggests otherwise.

The concept of play is closely related to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow. His book entitled, Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience, describes this concept. Flow is described as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” Flow is often experienced while playing or daydreaming, however it is important to understand, that while very similar, their defining characteristics are not the same. Play can lead to flow; yet, flow does not necessarily lead to play.

According to Csikszentmihalyi (2008), flow leads to happiness. It involves clear goals, concentration and focusing, loss of self-consciousness, a distorted sense of time, immediate feedback, personal control, balance between ability and challenge, and is intrinsically rewarding. Comparing this set of characteristics with Stuart Brown’s characteristics that describe play and daydreaming, we are able to understand the differences between the concepts of flow and that of play.

The previous works help us to understand what exactly play is, and that it is innate in humans as well as animals. It aids us in creativity and adaptation. The following works help us understand the three key desires that humans inherently possess: body-play, the desire for activity, and the creative and adaptive movement of our bodies; the dynamic, desires for a dynamic stimulating environment; and exploratory desires, our desires to seek out information and understand the world around us.

Environmental psychologist Joachim F. Wohlwill significantly contributed to the fields of environmental and behavioural psychology, as well as the areas of art and aesthetics, human-environment interaction, and concepts of development. His work, Behavioural Response and Adaptation to Environmental Stimulation, is very dense, outlining a number of studies, including research on the relationship between stimulus complexity and preference. He states that the preferred stimulus complexity tends to fall between the two extremes of this continuum. He also describes that experience, or familiarity, changes the degree to which an individual is able to structure stimulus input. This means that as an individual becomes more familiar with stimulus input, the more complexity the individual will prefer. He uses the example of trained musicians in comparison with non-trained musicians. The trained musicians are more familiar with music and its structure, and when presented with music of varying complexity, are shown to prefer music of a higher complexity than the preferences of non-musicians, who are less familiar with musical complexity.

Wohlwill thoroughly reviews varieties of hypo-and hyper-stimulation including deprivation of sensory stimulation, isolation, confinement, sensory overload, crowding, and hyper-dynamic conditions, as well as defining the dimensions of each. As the title suggests, he also describes forms of behavioural adaptation. This work is applicable to numerous areas of this thesis and compliments the other works described. The content helps to explain desires or appeals that humans inherently possess; namely our exploratory desires and desires for the dynamic, and body-play.

Relating to this thesis’s description of desires for the dynamic, Wohlwill describes the stresses that can occur during times of extreme complexity or lack of complexity. He also explains novelty, and the reasoning behind the common vacationer’s phrase “a nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there”. Human needs for body-play are confirmed by his studies regarding confinement (the restriction of movement). Lastly, Singer describes research on diversity, and the role of variation in stimulation. These act as counterparts in raising affect, and exploratory behaviour. The role of variation in stimulation also helps explain desires for the dynamic.

Stephen R. Kellert also helps us to understand these desires through his book, Building for Life, Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection. Kellert describes that our interaction with nature is crucial to human well-being and development. Kellert is familiar with Wohlwill’s work, and even quotes Wohlwill’s definition of nature, the “vast domain of organic and inorganic matter that is not a product of human activity or intervention.” (Kellert, 2005, p.11) Kellert amends this definition, however, to include “any form of direct, indirect, or symbolic expression of the nonhuman world that is integral to peoples’ lives.” His amendment allows us to begin considering how to design with a symbolic connection to nature. Drawing on the work of numerous professionals such as Jay Appleton, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, and Grant Hildebrand, Kellert explains biophilic design and its elements.

Kellert describes the healing qualities of nature and its essentiality to human development, which bear a striking resemblance to writings on play and daydreaming. The elements of biophilic design assist us in understanding the three outlined desires, the satisfaction of which, aid in achieving a play-based escape.

Last Child in the Woods, authored by Richard Louv, also describes the benefits of a connection to nature. Essential to this thesis, Louv’s work describes how nature nurtures creativity, and aids in natural play. Natural play, a term coined by Richard Louv, is play which comes naturally to us. Louv’s descriptions of natural play follow the definition of play, as described by Stuart Brown. It is a form of play-based escape. He describes that in today’s world of instant messaging, TV, and Nintendo, natural play seems to be a nearly forgotten artefact.

Louv outlines numerous negative effects, which are due to a lack of connection to nature, such as ADHD, and a condition he calls Nature-Deficit Disorder. He then demonstrates the restorative effects of nature, which are proven through research. Interestingly, a number of the restorative effects were due to nature’s ability to encourage traits which resemble those that are required to experience play and daydreaming. It is unclear, however, whether it is our nostalgia that leads us to the restorative benefits, or if these benefits are present due to nature’s way of exciting our curiosity and playfulness. Louv’s work is critical in light of the current direction which our culture appears to be headed, and suggests that a connection to nature is needed to amend the detrimental effects caused by our separation from nature. Louv’s work has been significant in stimulating dialogues amongst educators, health professionals, parents, developers, and conservationists.

John Medina is a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant, as well as Affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the University Of Washington School Of Medicine, and director at the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University. In his book, Brain Rules, Medina describes numerous known truths about the brain. He uses these rules as principles that allow us to understand how the brain works in order to live healthier and thrive.

Exercise relates to our desires for body-play. Our bodies need exercise; we evolved walking as much as 12 miles per day. In today’s world, on average, we do not walk half this amount per day. He states that “Exercise gets blood to your brain, bringing it glucose for energy and oxygen to soak up the toxic electrons that are left over. It also stimulates the protein that keeps neurons connecting.”

Medina also describes that vision is our most dominant sense, taking up half of our brain’s resources; and that we are powerful and natural explorers. These ideas are significant to this thesis, helping to understand desires for body-play as well as our exploratory desires. Rule number four states that, “people don’t pay attention to boring things.” By describing attention, awareness, and the brain’s attentional spotlight with regards to multi-tasking, this concept compliments the work of Brown, Csikszentmihalyi, and others.

The information within Brain Rules is by no means a complete record of all information on how the brain works, however, it attempts to highlight and simplify current knowledge within the field of Neuroscience. At the end of this work, Medina describes what he believes to be the greatest rule of all, which he is unable to prove or characterize: the importance of curiosity. Our curiosity relates to the first step in the process to achieving play, described by Eberle, that of anticipation. This anticipation, or curiosity, if allowed for within design, can then lead to the following steps required in the process of play.

These works have helped to understand the process of play, and how to appeal to our innate desires which relate to a play-based escape. By investigating studies of nature, we understand its significance in promoting the context necessary for an escape; as well, we learn that a symbolic connection to nature is able to achieve similar effects. By combining the understanding gained from these works, this thesis outlines a method of design which encourages a play-based escape, thereby leading to a healthier human lifestyle and greater creativity among individuals and communities.