Volume 18, Issue 1

Published 2026

Editors' Note

Our interview with Foley artist Shelley Roden begins this first issue of volume 18 of the American Journal of Play. She discusses how she plays with objects to create sounds for films, television shows, and video games. Also in this issue, Daniel A. Dombrowski examines a previously unpublished article by mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Dombrowski argues that Whitehead (and historian and theorist Johan Huizinga) shared the view that human culture, especially education, is a type of play. Then Ozlem Cankaya, Salim Hashmi, and Dana Haugen explore the influences and potential benefits of parents and other care givers’ involvement in their children’s play. And next, in a systematic review of the literature on cooperative problem solving (CPS), Meilan Jin reveals the complexity of CPS and finds a significant, positive relationship between CPS-associated behaviors and play. Finally, Ryan Banfi investigates how the pinball industry represents women in its games and how women are changing the industry, tournaments, and competitive play.

Interviews

Playing with Sound: An Interview with Shelley Roden

An award-winning Foley artist working at Skywalker Sound in Northern California, Shelley Roden has created and performed in Foley sound effects for more than 250 live-action films, animated films, and film series. Her recent projects include Universal Pictures’ Jurassic World: Rebirth and How to Train Your Dragon; Warner Bros. Pictures’ F1: The Movie; Pixar’s Inside Out 2; David Fincher’s The Killer; and the Tony Gilroy series Andor. With a background in athletics, music, and theater, Roden improvises, experiments, and plays to create new sounds. A dedicated mentor to aspiring sound artists, and filmmakers, Roden has spoken at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Drexel University, Ithaca College, Sonic College in Denmark, and also annually at Virginia Commonwealth University’s department of Kinetic Imaging (where she is an affiliate faculty member). Roden is at work on a book featuring personal interviews with veteran Foley artists. Key words: film production; Foley editing; Inside Out 2; sound design; sound effects; Toy Story 4

Articles

Whitehead’s “Freedom and Order” and the Homo Ludens Hypothesis in Education

Daniel A. Dombrowski

The author examines a recently discovered and previously unpublished article by famous mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called “Freedom and Order,” for which Whitehead proposed as a title or subtitle “Wit and Humour.” Dombrowski explores this article in light of Johan Huizinga’s classic work, Homo Ludens. Whitehead and Huizinga, he argues, share the view not that human culture arises out of play, but that human culture, especially education, is a type of play. Key words: Alfred North Whitehead; freedom; humor; Johan Huizinga; order; play; wit

Play with Parents and Other Care Givers in Diverse Family Structures: Influences on Children’s Play Experiences, Cognitive Growth, and Social-Emotional Development

Ozlem Cankaya, Salim Hashmi, and Dana Haugen

The authors trace the evolution of the involvement of parents and other care givers in play using research on the topic and identifying the gaps in this research. They note that parents and care givers are often the play partners of children who invite them into their play for various reasons, including to facilitate play, to observe play, and to engage actively in play. The authors examine cultural differences in attitudes toward play and highlight significant social changes involving play. They explore children’s engagement in play with care givers in diverse family structures consisting of parents, single parents, same-sex parents, grandparents, and extended family members. They explore the influences on this engagement, including socioeconomic conditions, the availability of play environments and materials, and the impact of technology and care giver gender roles within diverse family structures. Throughout, the authors underscore the benefits of parents and other care givers becoming involved in their children’s play, particularly in fostering the cognitive, social, and emotional development of the children. Keywords: cognitive development; early childhood; family structure; parents and play; social and emotional development

Children’s Peer Cooperative Problem Solving During Play in Preschool: A Systematic Literature Review

Meilan Jin

The author reviews the literature concerning cooperative problem solving (CPS), the process in which two or more children collaborate by sharing perspectives and exploring new ways to tackle common problems. The review considers the definitions and measurements of CPS and various examinations of its relationship to play and other factors such as surrounding conditions, age, sex, and ability. Her findings reveal the complexity of CPS, which involves both verbal actions and nonverbal behaviors and varies according to the conditions of play, as well as children’s ages, sex, and individual abilities. She also finds a significant positive relationship between CPS-associated behaviors and play. Key words: comparative studies in play, cooperative problem solving, early childhood and play

Feminist Pinball: How Women Are Changing Competitive Play and the Industry

Ryan Banfi

The author investigates why some women pursue women-only pinball tournaments and how the pinball industry represents them. He argues that women are absent from the top rankings not because of their biological differences from men but rather because of problematic social environments and the pinball industry’s approach to representing women in games. Thus, pinball’s culture involves gender-related issues similar to those in the broader game industry. Banfi discusses pinball’s popularity in general and the growth of women-only leagues in reaction to harassment by male players, characterized, for instance, by the 2014 Gamergate scandal. He draws attention to women pinball players and how they are changing the culture surrounding tournaments, which often intersect with competitive gaming. Key words: competitive pinball play; feminism; game archives; game history; pinball

Book Reviews

Rae Pica, Why Play? How to Make Play an Essential Part of Early Education

Melissa McInnis Brown

Boomer Trujillo, The Virtue of Playfulness: Why Happy People Are Playful

Alison Harmer

Andrew Burn, John Potter, Kate Cowan, and Julia Bishop, eds., Playing the Archive: From the Opies to the Digital Playground

Allen Kempton

Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber, The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully

Samuel Tobin

Matthew Thomas Payne, Eugene Jarvis: King of the Arcade

Logan Brown

Mia Consalvo, Marc Lajeunesse, and Andrei Zanescu, Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch

Matt Knutson

Contributors

Ryan Banfi holds a PhD in cinema studies from the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. He was a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar and is currently on the editorial board of Games and Culture. Banfi’s work, focusing on how play across media reshapes aesthetic form, has appeared in Design Issues, Critical Inquiry, Jump Cut, Contexts, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Television & New Media, New Review of Film and Television Studies, The International Journal of James Bond Studies, Games and Culture, Game Studies, Mediapolis, Flow Online Journal, Studies in European Cinema, and In Media Res.

Ozlem Cankaya is an associate professor at MacEwan University (Canada) in the Department of Early Learning and Curriculum Studies. Her current research focuses on finding evidence that helps educators and parents effectively support young children’s learning and cognitive development. Salim Hashmi is a lecturer in psychology (education) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London (United Kingdom). His research background is in the field of developmental psychology, particularly in relation to play, imagination, and children’s developing social understanding. Dana Haugen is working on a masters of counselling in applied psychology at University of Lethbridge (Canada).

Daniel A. Dombrowski is a professor of philosophy at Seattle University. He is the author of twenty-three books and over two-hundred articles in scholarly journals in philosophy, theology, classics, and literature. Among his books are Rethinking the Ontological Argument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response; Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals; and Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism: Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne. His latest work is The Way of Reason in Religion and Politics: The Philosophy of Franklin I. Gamwell. He is the editor of the journal Process Studies and past president of the Metaphysical Society of America.

Meilan Jin is an associate professor at Western Washington University in the Department of Early Childhood, Elementary, and Multilingual Education. As the interim director of the Early Childhood Education Program, her research focuses on young children’s play and cognitive development across cultural contexts and on the professional learning and development of presevice and in-service teachers in early childhood education. She has published numerous journal articles in outlets such as Early Childhood Education Journal and Childhood Education, in addition to several book chapters.