Ad. Dev. - Pretend Play

WHAT IS PRETEND PLAY?
1. HUMANS ARE DIFFERENT due to ability to carry out mind-reading and symbolic communication
2. ANY play that contravenes the reality of a situation.
  1. starts with an OBJECT SUBSTITUTION between 18-24 months
    1. SOCIODRAMATIC PLAY - mini dramas with other children or adults - 30 MONTHS
      1. UNIVERSAL, so INNATE? IN USA 5-20% of time in 2nd year of life
PRETEND PLAY SYMBOLIC?
1. appreciate that real objects can represent or serve as symbols for other objects
  1. Pretend play is symbolic as the child must suspend their knowledge of reality to engage in pretence
    1. QUARANTINE pretend situation from real one
      1. children rarely confused, better at tasks in pretence that reality!
THEORIES OF PRETEND PLAY
1. 1. FINAL STATE NATIVIST - INNATE MENTAL ARCHITECTURE FOR PRETEND UNDERSTANDING
  1. LESLIE - 1994 and FODOR - 2002 - innate TOM module enables metarepresentation and adult concept of pretence from 2 years old
    1. META- REPRESENTATION
      1. PRIMARY REPRESENTATION - X = telephone
      2. LESLIE - 1994 - primary representations, what it really is. secondary representations is what the pretend use for the object is. secondary representations are meta-representations and allow the ability for a child to fantatsise in their own game
2. META-REPRESENTATION AND THEORY OF MIND
  1. EVIDENCE FOR A LINK BETWEEN PRETENCE AND BELIEF UNDERSTANDING
    1. LESLIE - 1991 and BARON-COHEN - 1987 - children with autism fail false belief and tend not to engage in pretend play
    2. TAYLOR AND CARLSON - 1997 - children who engage in more pretend play pass standard TOM tasks earlier on
  2. INNATE TOM module enables metarepresentation
    1. frequently engaging in pretense, >> understanding of pretense, >>understanding others' perspectives
3. THEORY 2: STARTING STATE NATIVIST - SIMULATION ACCOUNTS OF PRETEND PLAY AND TOM
  1. HARRIS - 2000 - ROLE-TAKING - practicing pretend play may result in children learning to represent another's perspective through empathy - appreciate that others can hold different mental states
  2. IMPROVED SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS - ASTINGTON & JENKINS - 1995 - better able to take other's desires into account
  3. ASTINGTON AND BAIRD - 2005 - pretend play in general is associated with the understanding of mental representations
DO CHILDREN REALLY UNDERSTAND PRETEND PLAY?
1. LILLARD - 1994 - "BEHAVING-AS-IF" THEORIES - initially activity-based, not based on understanding mental representations
  1. LILLARD - 1993 - mos 4 year olds do not understand the intentional pre-requisite of pretense. children construe pretend play as its external representations such as costumes and actions
  2. NICHOLS and STICH - 2000 - behaving-as-it is behaving in a way that would be appropriate if the counterfacttual situation were the case
INTENTION-READING AND PRETENCE
1. INTENTION - action plan behind physical movements
2. RAKOCZY ET AL - 2004 - understanding the difference between pretending to do X and trying to do X
  1. LOGICAL INFERENCE within pretence, if he has pretended to pour water, i can pretend to drink it
  2. PROBLEMS WITH RAKOCZY ET AL'S STUDY??
    1. Perhaps the children just noticed the ‘accidental’ different features associated with the ‘pretending’ vs. ‘trying’ conditions
      1. Trying: effortful, frustrated, surprised Pretending: non-serious, smiling
        OBJECTION: reacted appropriately to the logical inference depending on whether EXP intended to try or intended to pretend.
  3. After the actor ’ s model action children were then given the object and could act with it themselves. Three-year-olds (and to some lesser degree 2-yearolds) very clearly showed that they understood pretending and trying as such: after trying models, they really performed the action themselves or tried to really perform it, often commenting on their failure (e.g. ‘ I cannot do it either ’ ), but after pretence models they only pretended themselves and did not care about the real effects of their acts (e.g. whether there was water coming out of the container).

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Ad. Dev. - Pretend Play

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	Created by Becky Waine over 10 years ago