Brick by brick, six- year-old Alice is building a magical kingdom. Imagining fairy-tale turrets and fire-breathing dragons, wicked witches and gallant heroes, she's creating an enchanting world. Although she isn't aware of it, this fantasy is helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity and so it will have important repercussions in her adult life.

六岁的爱丽丝正在一砖一瓦地建造一个魔法王国。想象一下童话里的角楼和喷火巨龙、邪恶的女巫以及英勇的男主人公，而她正在创造一个迷人的世界。尽管她还没有意识到，但这些幻想是帮助她提升创造力的第一步，并将对她成年后的生活有着重要的影响。

Minutes later, Alice has abandoned the kingdom in favour of playing schools with her younger brother. When she bosses him around as his 'teacher', she's practising how to regulate her emotions through pretence. Later on, when they tire of this and settle down with a board game, she's learning about the need to follow rules and take turns with a partner.

几分钟后，爱丽丝放弃继续建造王国，开始和弟弟一起玩在学校里玩的游戏。当她以“老师“的身份引导弟弟时，她是在练习如何通过扮演不同角色来调节自己的情绪。之后，当她们感到厌倦了，开始玩棋盘游戏时，她开始意识到需要遵守规则并且要与搭档轮换。

'Play in all its rich variety is one of the highest achievements of the human species,' says Dr David Whitebread from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. 'It underpins how we develop as intellectual, problem-solving adults and is crucial to our success as a highly adaptable species.'

英国剑桥大学教育学院的戴维·怀特布雷德博士说:“玩各种各样的游戏是人类最伟大的成就之一，它有助于我们成为聪明又善于解决问题的成年人，并且作为一个适应能力很强的物种来说这对我们获得成功起着至关重要的作用。

Recognising the importance of play is not new: over two millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Plato extolled its virtues as a means of developing skills for adult life, and ideas about play-based learning have been developing since the 19th century.

认识到玩耍的重要性并不是什么新鲜事:早在2000多年前，古希腊哲学家柏拉图就赞美玩耍这是一种培养成人生活技能的方式，自19世纪以来，以玩耍为基础的学习理念就一直在发展。

But we live in changing times, and Whitebread is mindful of a worldwide decline in play, pointing out that over half the people in the world now live in cities. 'The opportunities for free play, which I experienced almost every day of my childhood, are becoming increasingly scarce,' he says. Outdoor play is curtailed by perceptions of risk to do with traffic, as well as parents increased wish to protect their children from being the victims of crime, and by the emphasis on earlier is better which is leading to greater competition in academic learning and schools.

但我们生活在一个变化万干的时代，怀特布雷德注意到世界范围内游戏的减少，他指出，现在世界上超过一半的人生活在城市中。他说:“我的童年几乎每天都有自由玩耍的机会，但是现在孩子的自由玩耍机会已经越来越少了。“户外玩耍的时间减少了，这与人们对交通风险的认知有关，也与家长对保护自己的孩子不成为犯罪的牺牲品的意愿更加强烈有关，此外，对于“更早就是更好观念的强调使得学术研究和学校之间的竞争更加激烈了。

International bodies like the United Nations and the European Union have begun to develop policies concerned with children's right to play, and to consider implications for leisure facilities and educational programmes. But what they often lack is the evidence to base policies on.

联合国和欧盟等国际机构已开始制订有关儿童玩耍权利的政策，并考虑娱乐设施和教育方案的意义。但他们常常缺乏制定政策的依据。

'The type of play we are interested in is child-initiated, spontaneous and unpredictable - but, as soon as you ask a five-year-old "to play", then you as the researcher have intervened,' explains Dr Sara Baker. And we want to know what the long-term impact of play is. It's a real challenge.'

“我们所感兴趣的游戏类型是儿童天生的、自发的又未知的--但是一旦你去让一个五岁的孩子“玩耍”，你就会作为研究人员而介入其中，"萨拉贝克博士说，“况且我们想知道玩要后带来的长期影响是什么。“这才是真正的挑战。

Dr Jenny Gibson agrees, pointing out that although some of the steps in the puzzle of how and why play is important have been looked at, there is very little data on the impact it has on the child's later life.

珍妮·吉布森博士对此表示赞同，她指出，虽然对于“为什么玩耍如此重要以及如何重要“这一谜题的研究已经有些进展，但是关于玩要对孩子日后生活的影响方面的数据却少之又少。

Now, thanks to the university's new Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL), Whitebread, Baker, Gibson and a team of researchers hope to provide evidence on the role played by play in how a child develops.

现在，得益于大学新成立的玩乐在教育发展学习型游戏研究中心，怀特布雷德、贝克、吉布森和一批研究人员希望能够为玩耍在儿童发展过程中所扮演的角色提供证据。

'A strong possibility is that play supports the early development of children's self-control,' explains Baker. 'This is our ability to develop awareness of our own thinking processes – it influences how effectively we go about undertaking challenging activities.'

贝克解释说:“有很大一种可能性是玩要有助于儿童早期自控能力的发展，这是我们自身培养思维意识的能力--它会影响我们如何有效地应对具有挑战性的活动。

In a study carried out by Baker with toddlers and young pre-schoolers, she found that children with greater self-control solved problems more quickly when exploring an unfamiliar set-up requiring scientific reasoning. 'This sort of evidence makes us think that giving children the chance to play will make them more successful problem-solvers in the long run.

在贝克对学步儿童和学龄前儿童进行的一项研究中，她发现，在探索一个需要科学推理的陌生问题时，自控能力较强的儿童能更快地解决问题。“这类证据让我们想到，从长远来看，给孩子们玩耍的机会能使他们更顺利地解决问题。

If playful experiences do facilitate this aspect of development, say the researchers, it could be extremely significant for educational practices, because the ability to self-regulate has been shown to be a key predictor of academic performance.

研究人员说，玩耍的经历确实促进了这方面的发展，它对教育实践可能具有极其重要的意义因为自我调节的能力已被证明是影响学习成绩的关键预测因素。

Gibson adds: 'Playful behaviour is also an important indicator of healthy social and emotional development. In my previous research, I investigated how observing children at play can give us important clues about their well-being and can even be useful in the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.'

吉布森补充道:“爱玩的行为也是健康社交和情感发展的重要指标。我之前研究了如何观察游戏中的孩子如何才能为我们提供有关他们健康状况的重要线索，甚至还能为诊断出例如自闭症这样的神经发展失调问题提供帮助。

Whitebread's recent research has involved developing a play-based approach to supporting children's writing. 'Many primary school children find writing difficult, but we showed in a previous study that a playful stimulus was far more effective than an instructional one.' Children wrote longer and better-structured stories when they first played with dolls representing characters in the story. In the latest study, children first created their story with Lego[1], with similar results. 'Many teachers commented that they had always previously had children saying they didn't know what to write about. With the Lego building, however, not a single child said this through the whole year of the project.'

怀特布雷德最近的研究涉及开发一种基于游戏的方法来帮助孩子们提升写作能力。“许多小学生觉得写作很困难，但我们在之前的一项研究中发现，风趣的激励远比专业的指导更有效。“当孩子们第一次代表故事人物的玩偶时，他们会写出更长、结构更好的故事。在最新的研究中，孩子们首先用乐高创造出了他们的故事，随后得到了类似的成果。“许多老师评论说，以前总有孩子说他们不知道写什么。然而，有了乐高积木，一整年没有一个孩子再说出这样的话了。

Whitebread, who directs PEDAL, trained as a primary school teacher in the early 1970s, when, as he describes, 'the teaching of young children was largely a quiet backwater, untroubled by any serious intellectual debate or controversy.' Now, the landscape is very different, with hotly debated topics such as school starting age.

指导研究中心的怀特布雷德在上世纪70年代初接受了小学教师培训，他说“当时的幼童教育基本上是一潭死水，不接受任何严肃的智力辩论或争议。"现在的情况大不一样了，开始出现例如几岁适合上学等话题的激烈争论。

'Somehow the importance of play has been lost in recent decades. It's regarded as something trivial, or even as something negative that contrasts with "work". Let's not lose sight of its benefits, and the fundamental contributions it makes to human achievements in the arts, sciences and technology. Let's make sure children have a rich diet of play experiences.

“在某种程度上，玩耍的重要性在最近几十年已经消失了。它被认为是微不足道的东西，甚至是与“工作“相反的消极的东西。我们不应忽视它的益处，以及它对人类在艺术、科学和技术方面的成就所作出的根本贡献。让我们确保孩子们能有丰富的游戏体验。

[1] Lego: coloured plastic building blocks and other pieces that can be joined together

[1] 乐高：一种彩色塑料积木及其他可拼接在一起的部件。