Defining play has plagued researchers and philosophers for years. From describing play as an inaccessible concept due to its complexity, to providing checklists of features, the field has struggled with how to conceptualize and operationalize “play.” This theoretical piece reviews the literature about both play and learning and suggests that by viewing play as a spectrum – that ranges from free play (no guidance or support) to guided play and games (including purposeful adult support while maintaining playful elements), we better capture the true essence of play and explain its relationship to learning. Insights from the Science of Learning allow us to better understand why play supports learning across social and academic domains. By changing the lens through which we conceptualize play, we account for previous findings in a cohesive way while also proposing new avenues of exploration for the field to study the role of learning through play across age and context.

This commentary provides a brief review of the history, theoretical significance, and application to early childhood education of research on metacognition in early childhood. It particularly focuses on the issue of whether metacognition in early childhood needs to be explicit, conscious, and available to be articulated or whether it can be implicit. The role of observational methodologies in advancing work in this area is highlighted. Theory and research on the different developmental trajectories of subcomponents of metacognition is also reported, and evidence of their relationship to maturational and experiential influences is discussed. Evidence of educational applications of work in this area concludes the commentary, highlighting research on parental and teacher modeling of metacognitive strategies and the role of play in supporting metacognitive development in early child development.

This qualitative study explored the interactions of six triads of Year One students in the United Kingdom (n = 18; mean age = 5 years, 7 months; 9 female) investigating interpersonal regulation of learning, social dynamics, and group dialogue, evident in instances of productive collaboration during problem‐solving activities. Group activity was captured through video (total footage = 8 hours) and subjected to two sequential phases of qualitative analysis, undertaken by three researchers: (1) comprehensive qualitative descriptions of group activity, and (2) multidimensional analysis of group interaction with a focus on interpersonal regulation of learning, social dynamics, and group dialogue. Consistent with prior research, the findings show that productive collaboration, though prevalent only in some groups, was characterized by (a) distributed forms of co‐regulation where all members took turns in taking regulatory roles; (b) positive social dynamics marked by equitable patterns of participation, playful interludes, uptake of contributions, and use of persuasive language in the event of disagreements; and (c) use of exploratory forms of talk (e.g., asking questions and volunteering reasons) directed toward the achievement of task goals. Different positional preferences were identified among the most regulated students, who consistently assumed leading roles in their groups.

Social learning allows infants to learn vicariously by observing adult behaviour, but how the infant brain accomplishes this feat remains unknown. Here, electroencephalography (EEG) signals were simultaneously measured from forty-seven mothers and infants (10.7 months) during a live social learning task. First, infants observed mothers demonstrate positive or negative emotions toward novel toys. Next, infants’ own toy interaction (learning) was measured. Infants’ social learning likelihood was robustly predicted by mother-infant interpersonal neural connectivity in the Alpha (6-9 Hz) band. Stronger dyadic neural connectedness predicted increased learning, and was associated with extended ostensive eye contact and maternal utterances. Intra-infant neural connectivity predicted learning valence (positive/negative) but was unrelated to learning likelihood. Therefore, interpersonal connectivity is a neural mechanism by which infants learn from their social partners.

Important developments in executive function are thought to occur during the second year of life, but few tools exist to assess executive function in this period. We argue that, to be effective, tasks for this age range need to reduce the abstract nature of the task rules and reduce reliance on verbal instruction. We present the Highlights • We assessed the predictive validity of the grasping task, a new measure of emerging inhibitory skills in infancy.• Grasping task scores at 12 months predicted children's delay task scores and BRIEF-P inhibition scores at 24 months.• The grasping task could be an important new tool in understanding the emergence and development of inhibitory control in infancy.