BACKGROUND: Children have a right to participate in matters affecting their lives. With increasing regularity, children\'s perspectives are being sought regarding their health and health care experiences. Though there is evidence that children find play to be one of the \'best\' aspects of hospitalisation, studies rarely focus on children\'s perspectives on play in hospital.
METHODS: This qualitative study explored children\'s lived experiences of play during hospitalisation. Over five months, ethnographic observations were conducted on a paediatric oncology ward as well as interviews with 16 children ages 3-13 years.
RESULTS: Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, children\'s expressions and experiences illuminated three key points: safety and comfort are integral to children feeling able to play in hospital; the value and efficacy of play is decided by children; and that play is a way for patients to be (and be treated as) children first.
CONCLUSIONS: Hospitals can only be child-friendly if children find them friendly. Listening to and integrating children\'s perspectives in the discourse around the importance of play in hospital is essential for respecting children\'s rights and delivering person-centred paediatric healthcare.

There are increasing demands for Participatory Arts-Based (PAB) programs involved in health research to better evidence outcomes using robust quantitative evaluation methodologies taken from science, such as standardized questionnaires, to inform commissioning and scale-up decisions. However, for PAB researchers trying to do this, barriers arise from fundamental interdisciplinary differences in values and contexts. Researchers are required to navigate the tensions between the practice-based evidence produced by the arts and the evidence-based practice sought by psychologists. Consequently, there is a need for interdisciplinary arts-science collaborations to produce alternative methods of evaluation that are better aligned to PAB approaches, and which combine systematic rigor with a sensitivity to the values, contexts and strengths of this approach. The current article centers on the development of an alternative transdisciplinary analytic tool, the Participatory arts Play Framework (PP-Framework), undertaken as part of an arts-psychology collaboration for a UK AHRC-funded PAB research project: Playing A/Part: Investigating the identities and experiences of autistic girls. We present details of three stages in the development of the PP-Framework: 1. preliminary emergence of the framework from initial video analysis of observational data from participatory music and sound workshops run for 6 adolescent autistic girls (aged 11-16); 2. identification and application of modes of engagement; and 3. further testing of the framework as an evaluation tool for use in a real-world setting, involving professional musicians engaged in delivery of a creative music project at a center for homeless people. The PP-Framework maps types of participation in terms of performative behaviors and qualities of experience, understood as modes of play. It functions as a vehicle for analyzing participant engagement, providing a tool predicated on the processes of working in creative participatory contexts while also being sensitive to the esthetic qualities of what is produced and capable of capturing beneficial changes in engagement. It offers a conceptual approach for researchers to undertake observation of participatory arts practices, taking account of embodied engagement and interaction processes. It is informed by understandings of autistic performativity and masking in conjunction with an ecological understanding of sense making as being shaped by environments, social relations and sensing subjectivity. The framework has the potential to be a bi-directional tool, with application for both practitioners and participants.

Play spaces are important components of paediatric healthcare environments. They provide children with critical opportunities to experience the social, emotional, and developmental benefits of play while in healthcare settings for appointments or hospitalizations. These spaces can help to mitigate stress, provide a sense of normalcy in unfamiliar environments, and facilitate social engagement for children and their families. Given the benefits of play spaces in paediatric healthcare settings, it is important to understand how these spaces can be designed to enhance children\'s inclusion and quality of care. The aim of this scoping review was to explore the current understanding of paediatric play space design. Using search terms related to children, health care, and play space, six interdisciplinary databases were searched over a 30-year period. The search found 2,533 records from which eighteen were included for review. Findings suggest that although it is well-documented that play spaces offer valuable social and emotional benefits, little is known about the specific design features that can and should be incorporated to enhance play opportunities and ensure that they benefit all children and families. Further, the literature mostly considers play spaces in the context of designated play or recreational rooms. Scholars are encouraged to consider how play opportunities can be incorporated into the designs of paediatric healthcare environments beyond the boundaries of these rooms. Future studies should also consider the diversity of play space users, including children of varying ages and abilities, to create more accessible and inclusive paediatric play spaces for children and their families. Advancing knowledge on play space design can help to optimize the quality of these important spaces and to ensure their designs meaningfully enhance children\'s play experiences and quality of care.

UNASSIGNED: Research has identified diverse constraints to the adoption of school-based occupational therapy approaches and a lack of attention to addressing the barriers to children\'s play opportunities. Critical contextualised research is advocated to inform practice possibilities.
UNASSIGNED: This inquiry aimed to explore with occupational therapists their existing practices in Irish schoolyards to generate practice possibilities concerned with play, as an issue of occupational justice.
UNASSIGNED: Using the theory of practice architectures, six occupational therapists from diverse sites of practice participated in the first phase of a critical action research process using dialogical focus group and occupational mapping methods.
UNASSIGNED: Three themes were generated (1) Existing practices as situated (2) (Re)mattering play and practices as occupations and (3) Practice possibilities - \'Finding the play\' between responsiveness and responsibilities. A further interrelated dimension was how the research methods provided mechanisms of raising consciousness.
UNASSIGNED: Alongside constructing knowledges on existing practices in an Irish context, this inquiry contributes to understandings of practices as socially embedded generative processes of \'finding the play\', highlighting ethical responsibilities to make visible inequities reproduced in habitual practices and engage in relationships of solidarity to (re)construct alternative shared practices.

UNASSIGNED: Play is often included in autism diagnostic assessments. These assessments tend to focus on negatives and how people who are not autistic interpret observable behaviours. It is important to take a neurodiversity-affirmative assessment approach. This involves focusing on what autistic people say and looking at strengths and needs. We wanted to find out how autistic adults experience diagnostic assessments that include play. We asked autistic and non-autistic people to help us design our study and interview questions. We then interviewed 22 autistic adults to find out what they think about the use of play in assessments. We used a qualitative method called interpretative phenomenological analysis to analyse the data. Autistic adults told us about the different ways play was included in their diagnostic assessments. For example, some completed a diagnostic tool called the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule. Autistic adults also talked about the importance of considering how autistic people are different to each other. For example, we found that play may not be useful for assessing women or girls who mask. This suggests that professionals should adopt a personalised approach to diagnostic assessments that use play catering to each person\'s needs. Our findings also suggested that professionals should assess strengths and differences as well as needs.

On the surface, fear and humor seem like polar opposite states of mind, yet throughout our lives they continually interact. In this paper, we synthesize neurobiological, psychological, and evolutionary research on fear and humor, arguing that the two are deeply connected. The evolutionary origins of humor reside in play, a medium through which animals benignly explore situations and practice strategies, such as fight or flight, which would normally be accompanied by fear. Cognitively, humor retains the structure of play. Adopting a view of humor as requiring two appraisals, a violation appraisal and a benign appraisal, we describe how fear-inducing stimuli can be rendered benignly humorous through contextual cues, psychological distance, reframing, and cognitive reappraisal. The antagonistic relationship between humor and fear in terms of their neurochemistry and physiological effects in turn makes humor ideal for managing fear in many circumstances. We review five real-world examples of humor and fear intersecting, presenting new data in support of our account along the way. Finally, we discuss the possible therapeutic relevance of the deep connection between humor and fear.

Digital devices such as iPads are prevalent in children\'s play from an early age. How this shapes young children\'s play is an area of considerable debate without any clear consensus on how different forms of play are brought into the iPad interaction. In this study, we examined 98 play activities of children in two preschool settings, featuring 2 and 4-5-year-olds, their play with iPads and non-digital artefacts. Three analytical approaches were used: an index built on a digital play framework [Bird, Jo, and Susan Edwards. 2015. \"Children Learning to Use Technologies Through Play: A Digital Play Framework.\" British Journal of Educational Technology 46 (6): 1149-1160. doi:10.1111/bjet.12191 ], a quantitative description of the index, and a qualitative interaction analysis of children\'s play. Results show how play with iPads is characterised as less ludic than play with other artefacts, and diverges from the age-typical norms of play. We discuss what these results might mean for children\'s play in contemporary early childhood settings and for children\'s learning.

This article aims to reflect on the images of childhood in videos featuring child YouTubers playing, analyzing the nature of play portrayed in them and its relationship with the child\'s right to play and be protected against any form of exploitation.
METHODS: A documentary study of 100 videos shared on YouTube was conducted, subjected to categorical content analysis with an emphasis on the modes of participation of adults and children in dialogues with the platform\'s languages present in the videos.
CONCLUSIONS: The boundaries between children\'s artistic expression and child labor exploitation are becoming increasingly challenging, with legal discussions presenting difficulties in regulation due to the home environment and predominant parental control. The analysis reveals how the videos are perceived as standardized commodities, hiding the concrete work behind an image of apparent spontaneity.
CONCLUSIONS: The research highlights contractual digital risks for children, focusing on those related to commercialization. The analyzed videos reflect an instrumentalization of the child\'s basic right to play, associated with market interests, an aspect that takes on the contours of child labor exploitation, compromising the freedom to play spontaneously.

Pediatric hospitalization is a common experience that may increase children\'s sense of isolation and impinge on their social-emotional wellbeing. Educators and medical practitioners could minimize these negative effects of hospitalization if they were able to listen to the voices of the children and, therefore, better meet their needs. This qualitative study provides an overview of how children with a medical condition actively construct and organize their thoughts and feelings about illness, life in hospital, and relationships. We extrapolated from a collection of children\'s narratives from a previous more comprehensive study (consisting of 379 narratives from children in 29 public hospitals across Italy, age range 3-14 years). Narratives grouped under the headings \"Me and my illness\" or \"Me and the others\" were selected and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to identify the richness and complexity of children\'s experience. Results showed that children\'s description of their illness was affected both by cognitive and social factors. For children, the concept of feeling ill or well is not linked only to the fact that they are in hospital for a medical condition; rather, it is influenced by their ability to form relationships with others, play, be active, and feel alive within the hospital environment. Listening to narratives can deepen our understanding of children\'s illness-related experiences and how they make sense of their situation. A set of practice implications are presented to help health professionals and educators to improve their listening capabilities and better prevent adverse pediatric hospitalization outcomes.

BACKGROUND: The Evolved Developmental Niche (EDN) is a millions-year-old developmental system that matches the maturational schedule of the offspring, optimizing health. Every animal has a developmental niche.
OBJECTIVE: Humanity has fallen away from providing its EDN. Does it matter?
METHODS: Several components of humanity\'s EDN were reviewed (breastfeeding, positive touch, allomothers, responsive care, free play) in relation to cardiac vagal nerve regulation, a signal of healthy development. Focal subjects were young children.
METHODS: A review of research on the selected EDN components in relation to vagal nerve function was performed. Data were available for all but the allomother component, which is typically not measured by western researchers, although allomothers provide EDN components alongside parents.
RESULTS: Apart from the lack of research on allomother effects, all these EDN components have been shown to influence cardiac vagal regulation in young children.
CONCLUSIONS: Converging evidence suggests that providing the EDN in early life may not only support aspects of a child\'s primal health system, but bolster capacities for social health and wellness, the cornerstone of a positive life trajectory.