This essay will discuss and evaluate four modern theories of play and it’s role in child development; Cognitive, Arousal Modulation, Socio-Cultural and Metacommunicative theory of play. Furthermore, research evidence presented will consider the aforementioned types of play and critically evaluate the use of such experimental methods in relations to the theories. Piaget’s Cognitive Theory: Modern cognitive theories of play start from Piaget’s contributions. He proposed that play reflects and contributes to development (Piaget, 1962). Furthermore, Piaget considers play to be an outcome of assimilation which is behaviour that is exhibited by the child as a result of their own mental constructs (Sutton and Smith, 1979; Christie & Johnsen, 1983). A child resorts to play in order to make the environment around them match their cognitive constructs. According to Piagetian cognitive theory, play does not necessarily result in learning new skills, but is the practice of already learned skills or behaviours (Johnsen & Chritisie, 1986). Furthermore, Piagetian theory of play suggests assimilation overtakes accommodation and hence contributing to their own development (Mellou, 1994). Piaget’s work suggests play to influence cognitive development in three levels of play; sensorimotor, symbolic and play with rules. He argues that during play, imitation is required which is essentially the child’s ability to reproduce learned behaviour (Gray, 1982). Thus, imitation leads to developmental growth in children and with the help of play children practice this. Pellegrini et al., (2002) investigated the impact of playground games with rules involving numbers. Results demonstrated that boys in particular showed greater social competence as a result of frequent playground games. Furthermore, Siegler and Ramani (2008) in their study showe>