Many cognitive experiments have shown that iconic dimensional conformations are prominent in implicit thought and perception of authority ranking relations. Cognitive experiments are designed to isolate the parameters of interest, or hold other parameters constant, so as to be able to make strong causal inferences. Schubert’s 2005 study showed pairs of role terms to German participants and told them to respond as quickly as possible to indicate with the UP or DOWN key to indicate whether the more powerful role terms was above or below the other role term. Participants responded significantly more slowly when the powerful role was displayed on the screen below the less powerful, compared to when the powerful role was displayed above the less powerful (Schubert 2005). Other researchers have replicated Schubert’s results, and extended them to surface area and to mass. Also, preverbal infants readily recognize that iconic dimensional conformations mean authority ranking relationships.

This chapter describes raised platforms, burial mounds, and topographic conformation of authority ranking in which elites’ dwellings are at higher elevations. Emperors palaces were often surrounded by vast private plazas, massive walls with high and strong gateways, and often stairs that have to be climbed to reach the palace. These are examples of iconic conformations of authority ranking using elevation, mass, and surface area. In cartography, the status of nations is conformed by their relative sizes and their position on the vertical axis of a map. For thousands of years, rulers have built massive, imposing monuments, including earthen mounds, pyramids, and huge, tall stone monoliths. The chapter concludes by explaining why these conformations of authority ranking cannot be fully explained by theories of costly signals, not by theories of conspicuous consumption of energy.

What is play? How does play develop? What is the relationship between play, learning and development? This book looks at these central questions from the perspectives of children, families, educators and what is known from research. You are encouraged to read and reflect on the content as you progress through the book. Although each chapter brings in different dimensions, the approach taken is interactive, with most chapters (but not all) inviting you to consider specific research into play practices, and to generate your own ideas/data to discuss or critique. We begin the journey in this first chapter by looking at your ideas and the writings of others on the topic ‘What is play?’

As advocates for play, teachers need to have a clear definition of play, a model of play used to guide their practice and a theory of play that underpins their philosophy of teaching and learning. This chapter brings together insights gained about play from all the chapters in this book and invites you to take a position on your own philosophy of play. We then ask you to become an advocate for children’s play.

To conform market pricing, people typically use symbols whose meaning is purely a matter of common knowledge of widespread use of the symbols in a given social network or community. Like the other three conformation systems, market pricing symbols conform representationally, emotionally, motivationally, and morally. Signatures on a contract, for example, are symbolic legal and moral commitments. Beyond writing and bookkeeping, many technologies have been developed and continue to be invented to facilitate the use of symbolic conformations of market pricing. Before and after the invention of currency, measurements of weights, volumes, and land-areas depend on convention-based symbolism. Commerce is especially dependent on such symbolism to conform prices, rents, wages, interest rates, and other rates and proportions.

This chapter considers Moosé forms of the four conformation systems: iconic dimensions and magnitudes, indexical consubstantial assimilation, concrete operations of one-to-one correspondence, and purely conventional symbolism. It discusses the ineffability of Moosé sacrifices: they have no explanation for sacrifices, and are not comfortable even describing them. But they are eager to discuss prices paid in the local market.

The discovery of iconic dimensional conformations raises many interesting questions. Are the conformational effects of iconic dimensions on superiors equal in degree to their effects on subordinates? What are the mathematical functions that link “amounts” of conformational dimensions to their effects? How do the conformation effects combine when there are repeated with the same dimension? What are the felicity conditions, under which the iconic dimensional conformations actually do conform authority ranking? When a pyramid brilliantly reflects sunlight, or an enormous bell peals, when and how are their percepts linked to an emperor who commanded them, rather than, say, the engineers or the workers who built them? Does sensitivity to the conformational effects of all ten dimensions emerge simultaneously in ontogeny? Why are these ten dimensions prevalent in conformations of authority ranking, but other dimensions, such as distance, apparently are not often used?

Since at least Sumer and ancient Egypt, people have conformed supreme rank using surfaces perfected to reflect sunlight. In both the Old World and the New, people developed technologies of mining and metallurgy in order to fabricate the shiniest possible surfaces on rulers, their palaces, their temples, and statues of divinities. Glimmering shells and beetle elytra were widely used for personal wear. Olmec, Mayan, and some Asia elites wore highly polished mirrors and shiny clothing and accoutrements. Artists depicted rulers and gods with a nimbus, areole, or halo to evoke their literal brilliance. The Rigveda, and Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, Persian, Zoroastrian, and Greek texts represent divinities, kings, and heroes as brilliantly shining, conforming their rulership. It is common to make loud noises to salute rulers, or praise divinities. In the British empire, the number of cannons fired in salutes marked the top levels of political hierarchies.

In this chapter, we seek to examine how play supports children’s overall development. We specifically take the child’s perspective in planning for play development.This chapter has been designed to provide a strong theoretical sense of the concepts of play, learning and development in early education; the capacity to analyse and support play development; a look at planning for play and learning outcomes, drawing on the The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (V2.0) or Te Whāriki.

Language is a symbolic system, but it is often used metarepresentationally for indexical conformations of communal sharing, iconic conformations of authority ranking, and concrete operation one-to-one correspondence conformations of equality matching. Speakers of English, Mooré, Chinese, and, apparently, Proto-Indo-European and Turkish, rely on words whose original, nonsocial-relational meaning concerns dimensions or magnitudes. There are several reasons why typological study of lexicons is illuminating with regard to conformations. Language always provides the opportunity to convergently validate the other kinds of evidence available for any society. Also, there may be conformational dimensions apparent in language that are not easily seen in other media. Language also conforms third-party relationships that are otherwise difficult to conform, and makes it possible to formulate complex ideas about conformations. Finally, language provides enormous samples of metarepresentations of conformations, permitting analyses that could not be done with the smaller available samples of conformations themselves.

At the beginning of this book, we examined your own play memories and those of other people. We concluded that play really matters to children. But what do we really learn about children’s learning and development when we observe and analyse play? We begin this chapter by looking at a play memory of a 16-year-old boy whose parents used play to support their son in dealing with the arrival of his new baby sister.

In this chapter, we will look at how children play in families, and the diversity of roles that parents may take in children’s play. We begin this chapter with details of the play practices of two families living in the same community. We argue that play is learned in families, and in early childhood centres and classrooms, rather than being something that arises naturally within the child. Through reading this chapter on families at play, you will gain insights into how some families play and how play is learned in families, and an understanding that play practices learned at home lay the foundation of children’s play and learning, and that as teachers we should consider how to build upon these early experiences in our early childhood centres and classrooms.

This chapter has been designed to help you learn about: how others plan for play-based learning and intentionality in the The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (V2.0); what a Conceptual PlayWorld looks like for three groups – infants and toddlers, preschoolers, and children transitioning to school; how to design a Conceptual PlayWorld to support cultural competence; and how to plan a Conceptual PlayWorld for a range of educational settings.