Kristen Andrews

We think of play sometimes as, you know, not very functional.

Oh, they're just playing.

Like, okay, thank goodness I don't have to take care of my kids because they're just playing over there.

But we know from child development that play is really important practice for doing things in the adult world.

I actually hold a chair called the Research Chair in Animal Minds.

So, for example...

It is really useful to be able to imagine what would happen next when you make a decision.

So, you know, I might say, like, I'm very annoyed at this person over here, and maybe I want to go punch them in the face.

And instead of just punching them in the face and seeing what happens, I might take a second, imagine punching them in the face, imagine what happens next, realize that's not very good, and not punch the person, right?

So I make my decisions based on rolling out scenarios in my head.

So it's really important socially, but it's also really important scientifically.

When we do science, we form hypotheses about what might happen.

That's right.

What scientists do before they run the experiments is they run them in their imagination.

And if they don't work in their imagination, you save all the time of running it in the real world.