That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-Deliberate Play

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

In today's Neuroscience Bite we discuss Deliberate Play, an activity that builds intrinsic motivation. 

Hi, my name is Ola Kregolson, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Byte. On the last episode of the podcast, which was the first of season six, I was talking about motivation and specifically intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and how it works in the brain. And I was using a sports example. And I mentioned this idea that, you know, certain types of situations create intrinsic motivation where you want to do things for your own reasons. Whereas in other situations, athletes might be motivated extrinsically they're doing

things for reasons that don't come from within and i mentioned specifically something called deliberate play is a key for building intrinsic motivation now to frame this there's free play which is just what you think it is it's just running around and playing and then there is structured practice which is an organized sport thing where the goal is to learn skills and get better. And deliberate play is sort of wedged in between the two of them. And the reason this is so important is that deliberate play has been shown to play a crucial role in developing intrinsic motivation. Now, what is deliberate play? Well, deliberate play can be coached,

but the key thing is the emphasis is on enjoyment and not skill development. It's structured and you can play games, but again, the idea is that the emphasis is on enjoyment. And like I've said, the key to it and why it's so important is deliberate play is being seen to underlie intrinsic motivation. And we know from research that athletes that are intrinsically motivated perform better. They stick with the sport longer. They tend not to get burned out. They tend not to drop out. Whereas athletes that are extrinsically motivated, they have all the opposite of all those things. They do tend to those things. They do tend to burn out. They do tend to drop out. And they're doing it because they don't really love the sport,

but they've got some other reason for doing it. So let's say you're teaching or coaching and you want to create a deliberate play environment. Well, what can you do? Well, typically in a deliberate play environment, you might focus on physical ability as opposed to skill. play environment, you might focus on physical ability as opposed to skill. All right, coordination, strength, flexibility, general movement patterns that will help people just be a better overall athlete and allow people to move around a bit better as opposed to focusing and honing on specific skills from a very, very young age. Now, can you teach skills? Yes, but typically the idea is that you emphasize generic sports skills, such as spacing and passing, as opposed to something very complex. So in basketball, for instance, you could teach someone to shoot or dribble a basketball,

but you might not teach them a zone defense. So the idea is things that are physical abilities or generic sport skills or basic sport skills, but the emphasis is on fun. And by doing that, you're going to create that intrinsic motivation where the person in question falls in love with the sport and they want to keep doing it. Now, I have been talking about sport here, but this is true in any domain. If you make the domain fun at a young age, whether it's math, music, or art, or whatever you want to pick, people will be more intrinsically motivated and they're going to tend to want to do it longer and they're going to tend to perform better. All right, there's a little bite on deliberate play tying back to the episode on motivation. I'll keep the

bump short. Don't forget the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. Of course, you can send us ideas on X or Twitter at that neuroscience guy. And of course, thank you for subscribing and listening to the podcast. My name is Olive Kregolson, and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast.