Play is essential to healthy brain development and learning in early childhood. Human brains evolved to “boot” principally through social interaction and exploration.
Early childhood education and care should be grounded in how young children’s brains naturally develop rather than rely upon teaching methods designed for older children and adults. Heavy reliance upon direct instruction for children under six conflicts with the developmental processes of the young brain potentially, hinders learning.
In the Beginning…
Human brains evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in highly social environments where cooperation was essential for survival. Play is therefore not a trivial activity but an evolutionary adaptation that supports learning and development. As Jerome Bruner (1976, p. 67) observed, young animals have extended childhoods because they need time to play, suggesting that play has an important biological purpose rather than being merely recreational.
Modern neuroscience helps explain why play is so important. During infancy and early childhood, the brain rapidly forms billions of neural connections, creating increasingly complex networks through experience. Neurons connect through synapses, and repeated experiences strengthen these pathways, making thinking faster and more efficient. This process, which can be colloquially described as the brain being "booted up," occurs most rapidly during the first six years of life, but continues throughout life, as we learn new skills and ideas.
Simplified diagram of a neuron, with synapse.
Building Brains
Young children build knowledge gradually by connecting new experiences with existing mental frameworks, or schemas. For example, a young child first learns the concept of a domestic cat, later groups cats with other pets, then understands the broader category of feline animals, and eventually forms more abstract associations. This growing network of knowledge allows children to process information more efficiently over time.
Working memory (Baddeley 2010) develops alongside these neural networks. It enables children to combine prior knowledge with new information to understand conversations, events, and learning experiences. Because working memory depends heavily on existing knowledge structures, meaningful experiences are essential for supporting later learning, most particularly infants and young children, whose neural networks are in such an early stage of development.
Executive function (Scorza et al. 2016, p.314) and self-regulation, which develop gradually throughout early and middle childhood. Executive function allows individuals to concentrate, resist distractions, plan, solve problems, and regulate emotions and behaviour. These abilities underpin successful academic learning and healthy social relationships.
The Role of Play
Research suggests that unstructured social play makes a significant contribution to developing executive function (e.g., Colliver et al 2022). Studies have found that children who spend more time engaged in active social or imaginative play demonstrate stronger problem-solving skills and better self-regulation later in childhood (Espy 2004; Ellis et al. 2009). Rather than being separate from learning, play actively builds the cognitive systems needed for future formal education.
When children experience developmentally appropriate, play-rich environments, they come to associate learning with enjoyment and curiosity. Singh (2014, online) quotes a teacher who comments ‘[young children] feel especially good if they discover something, if they construct knowledge themselves.’
By contrast, expecting very young children to memorise isolated facts without meaningful experiences can create frustration, anxiety, and negative attitudes towards learning.
Babies and young children learning
Babies are born with a preference for their mother's voice and begin learning through warm, responsive interactions with caregivers. Activities such as smiling, vocal exchanges, cuddling, and games like peek-a-boo teach infants the basic structure of human communication. These "serve and return" interactions, where caregiver and child respond to each other's signals, build essential neural connections that support language, social understanding, and emotional security.
As children mature, they extend these interactive skills beyond caregivers to siblings, peers, and other familiar adults. Through increasingly sophisticated conversations and shared play, they continue strengthening the neural systems that underpin communication and thinking.
Language development occupies a central place in this process. Human language is one of the most complex communication systems in nature, and mastering it requires many years of active practice. Children develop language not simply by being told the meanings of words but by using language meaningfully during play, conversations, storytelling, and social interaction.
Collaborative play is particularly valuable because children naturally create narratives, negotiate roles, solve conflicts, and experiment with ideas while talking to one another. These experiences allow them to practise using language creatively and flexibly, laying the foundations for later abstract thinking.
Research has shown that children who learn through collaborative exploration develop deeper and more flexible understanding than those who receive direct instruction alone Gopnik (2011). Without a teacher dictating every step, children search for information independently, test ideas, and consider multiple possibilities.
Neuroscience supports these findings. Curiosity activates brain systems associated with memory, making information learned during states of high interest more likely to be remembered. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to pleasure and motivation, is released when children successfully explore and discover new ideas. This positive emotional experience strengthens learning and encourages further curiosity, creating an upward spiral of engagement and confidence.
The destructive role of stress
By contrast, cortisol, the hormone associated with stress and the body's fight-or-flight response plays a negative role in the development of the infant brain (Jarvis 2020). Warm, responsive caregiving helps keep children's stress levels low, whereas neglect, insensitive interactions, or unrealistic educational expectations increase cortisol levels.
When infants experience chronic stress due to insufficient nurturing interactions, their stress-response systems become overactive. This heightened state of alertness can impair executive function and reduce children's ability to regulate emotions and behaviour. If these children are later expected to learn through abstract verbal instruction that exceeds their developmental stage, the resulting stress may further interfere with learning rather than promoting it.
Long before the advent of modern neurobiology, Susan Isaacs (1952) offered copious observational evidence to indicate that children require emotional security before they feel able to explore, experiment, and learn confidently. With the addition of modern biological evidence, it becomes increasingly clear that psychological safety underpins the foundation of intellectual development.
So, what do infants and young children need?
During infancy and toddlerhood, children need warm, attentive caregivers who engage in frequent serve-and-return interactions and gradually encourage child-led play. By preschool age, learning should continue primarily through independent and collaborative play, supported by adults who extend children's thinking without dominating it.
Teachers should provide rich opportunities for conversation, exploration, imagination, and social interaction rather than focusing on direct teaching of abstract facts. Their role is to facilitate children's curiosity, guide exploration, and build upon children's interests in ways that match their developmental stage.
Primary and secondary abilities
It is clear that "primary" abilities, such as language, social understanding, emotional regulation, and communication, which humans naturally acquire through interaction must be prioritised in infancy and early childhood, so that "secondary" abilities such as reading, mathematics, and scientific reasoning, can be more effectively taught in later schooling.
Human beings did not evolve in a way that allows them to learn like computers, storing isolated pieces of information, and their “program” cannot be “hacked” to make this so. Human brains develop through rich social experiences, practical exploration, play, language, and emotionally supportive relationships, which build the neural architecture, executive function, self-regulation, curiosity, and confidence that prepare children for formal education.
Educators must recognise that strong foundations emerge from developmentally appropriate, playful experiences. By respecting how children's brains naturally develop, adults provide the best preparation for lifelong learning, emotional wellbeing, and academic success. We must ‘draw upon primary abilities, and systematically teach secondary abilities’ (Geary 2015, online).
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