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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Play As The Foundation Of Human Intelligence: The Illuminating Role Of Human Brain Evolution And Development And Implications For Education And Child Development, Aaron Blaisdell Dec 2014

Play As The Foundation Of Human Intelligence: The Illuminating Role Of Human Brain Evolution And Development And Implications For Education And Child Development, Aaron Blaisdell

Aaron P Blaisdell

Children love to play. Why do they find such a frivolous activity so pleasurable and desirable? Perhaps it is not frivolous, but instead is an adaptation designed to guide proper cognitive development in human children. To understand why, I marshal evidence from different fields to build a case for play as a central behavioral mechanism of human brain and cognitive development. I start with a discussion of human evolution, focusing on the evolution of human physiology, tool-use, the human brain, and life-history strategy, and development, and how these are all connected as an adaptive suite. The anthropological and developmental evidence …


Welcome To The Journal Of Evolution And Health, Aaron Blaisdell, Paul Jaminet, David C. Pendergrass Oct 2013

Welcome To The Journal Of Evolution And Health, Aaron Blaisdell, Paul Jaminet, David C. Pendergrass

Aaron P Blaisdell

Welcome to the first issue of the Journal of Evolution and Health! The Journal of Evolution and Health is the peer-reviewed, open-access journal of the Ancestral Health Society, a community of scientists, healthcare professionals, and laypersons who collaborate to understand health challenges from an evolutionary perspective.