Pretend Play: An Observational Study of Childrens Indicators and Understanding of Pretense

Matt Belzner PSYCH 212H 17 December, 2012

2 Introduction Playing is a fun and important part of childhood that all children should be able to experience. As children we play to occupy ourselves for the sheer enjoyment of the various activities we take part in. One very interesting play behavior is that of pretending. Pretend play has been characterized as children creating some kind of pretense over their real surroundings by projecting an alternate, mentally represented situation, object, or property onto a shared or individualized play scenario (Lillard et al., 2012). The emergence of pretending in childrens play activities has been found to come about as early 18 months old (Rakoczy, 2008) and is at its most frequent at around three to five years old (Lillard et al., 2012). This type of play, these imaginary alterations of objects and situations, has been considered to be a contributing factor in the development of social and cognitive skills (Doyle et al., 1992). Its very activity is symbolic in nature just like that of language, and as it is linked to the development of language skills, pretend play also involves aspects of human cognition and culture convincing some that all art forms such as literature, painting, and music are a product of the ability to pretend (Lillard & Witherington, 2004). In this observational study, I will attempt to identify various indicators of pretend play as identified by Lillard and Witherington (2004) to affirm what signals are used by children in order to relay to both themselves and others that they are taking part in pretense. I will first examine past research to outline what various types of experiments and studies have been done in regards to pretend play and then move onto the findings of my own personal observations. The first study, conducted by Rakoczy, Tomasello, and Striano in 2004, aimed to reconcile two different theoretical concepts of pretend play: behaving-as-if and intentionally acting-as-if. Behaving-as-if means that a person, character in a story or cartoon, etc. is behaving

3 in a certain way that is representative of something else without intentionally doing so. The example provided was one of a person hopping around on a hot surface and behaving like a rabbit without the intention of looking like a rabbit (Rakoczy, et al., 2004). Intentionally actingas-if can be considered pretend in the more traditional sense of acting like something else or projecting a property onto something else with the intention of creating pretense. According to Rakoczy (2004) and colleagues, behaving-as-if will predict that children will mistakenly overextend their pretend concept to situations that involve something or someone acting as something unintentionally. Based on their results from observing 26 to 36 month old children taking part in an imitation game, they found that young children do have the ability to distinguish between the two types and that their idea of pretense is not just behaving-as-if, but of intentionally acting-as-if (Rakoczy et. al. 2004). In 1992, Doyle and colleagues conducted a study of 89 kindergarten and 124 first grade children participating in 20 minute play sessions in groups of two. They provided the children with toys to play with that would ideally maximize the occurrence of pretense so the childrens social interactions during pretend play situations could be observed. The idea was, that because of the associations attributed to pretend play and the development of social skills, the children, in making the transition from solitary play to social pretend play, would display flexibility in their negotiations about the play scenario (Doyle et al., 1992). Doyle and colleagues (1992) hypothesized that social pretend play would not only be more positive and socially complex, but that it would actually facilitate these aspects to occur more quickly than in regular play. Upon examining the results of the study, they were able to make the conclusion that pretend play did create a more positive, more social environment for the children to interact in than a regular play situation. However, Doyle and colleagues did acknowledge the fact that the children were

4 placed in a somewhat controlled environment and that certain toys may have actually affected the nature and complexity of the play behavior that the children took part in (Doyle et al., 1992). Lillard and Witherington (2004) examined the various signs that children may display to indicate to both themselves and others that they are taking part in pretend play behaviors. They wanted to identify these signals to determine just how children are able to distinguish between real and pretend play. The most direct and obvious way that they uncovered was children simply using the word pretend when describing what they were playing; however, this method was not very prevalent until they observed children at around five years of age. Children under this age were able to indirectly, verbally communicate taking part in pretense through the use of identifications. Objects that, in pretend play, were representative of another, imaginary object were identified as taking on the form of the imagined object (Lillard & Witherington, 2004). An example in this case would be verbally identifying a stick as a sword. The intention of using the object in a pretend manner is communicated to and understood by other playmates without the use of the word pretend. Lillard and Witherington (2004) also affirmed that preschoolers use many future tense as well as past tense language when indicating that pretend play is taking place, but that this was not true for toddlers who do not have such skill in the use of language yet. Besides the use of language, there are many other behaviors that children can exhibit indicating that they are taking part in pretend play such as sound effects. Sounds that children make to give qualities to pretend objects are usually very clear because the actual, real life object would not normally make such sounds (Lillard & Witherington, 2004). This might be seen as giving vroom or engine noises to a toy cars or making clang noises when playing with sticks representing swords. Other cues that could indicate an action is pretend are laughter and smiling

5 (Lillard & Witherington, 2004). Laughter could be a clear indicator especially in those cases in which children are pretending to do acts that would not normally be accompanied by laughter. For instance, if two children were fighting in actuality, there would certainly not be any laughter, just hostility and aggression. But if the two children were only pretending to fight, they may be laughing at their own pretend game and this could be clearly observed by an outsider. Smiling may be very similar to laughing in that pretense would be clearly noticed; however, there could be some pretend play situations in which a knowing smile is seen. Lillard and Witherington (2004) contest that there are no specific conditions that clarify what exactly a knowing smile is. However, I believe that it is a perfectly valid term identifying exactly the type of smile that is accompanied by pretend play behaviors. Imagine a child pretending to sleep. Once he or she is discovered to be faking, a certain type of smile comes over the childs face and the observer can clearly tell that the child is pretending. This may also manifest itself in other pretend behaviors such as pretending to cook; the child will give a smile indicating that there is no actual cooking activity taking place. All of these indicators described by Lillard and Witherington (2004) can take various forms and these pretend play indicators will be identified in the observations I conducted. Method Participants This observational study consisted of 11 children, 5 boys and 6 girls all between the ages of only six months old to as old as three years. The children were all placed into the daycare facility called Hort Woods located at the Pennsylvania State University. The observation lasted from 9:30 in the morning to approximately 10:40 am in one of the Infant/Toddler rooms that the facility has.

6 Procedure Before the observation of the children, I created a sheet based off of Lillard and Witheringtons (2004) observational system that I needed to alter in order to fit the type of study that I planned on conducting. Lillard and Witheringtons (2004) system relied on an experiment they did with pretending during snack time. The events of the experiment were organized and planned to observe smiles, laughter, and other indicators from children that pretend play was in progress. Their study also had the mothers of the children intentionally initiate pretend play activities in order to more effectively study such behavior. I had to rely on only what I observed in my assigned block of time at Hort Woods. An official experiment could not have been conducted given the strict rules of the facility and the commitment time such a study would have required. I sat on a bench against the wall closest to the staffs section of the Infant/Toddler room to get a view of the entire room during the observation. I observed all types of play behaviors that the children took part in not limiting myself to instances of pretense. The observational sheet that I created contained sections for gender of the children, whether or not the children were playing in groups, including how many were in the group and whether or not it was a same sex or coed group. The group section also specified on how the groups were formed whether by a child simply joining in or asking, being invited, or being organized into a group by the staff of Hort Woods. There were also blocks available to write in different types of play for each time a child performed a different type of play behavior. It should be explicitly specified that I did not observe each child only once, I observed a child each time he or she would change their play behavior which generated the 41 different results. This included a section on whether or not the behavior was pretend and what indicators were shown to identify the play as such. I had wanted

7 to only observe and study the pretend play behaviors of the children, but I feared that time constraints may not allow for a substantial amount of pretend play to be observed. However, an adequate amount of pretense and pretense indicators were observed and recorded for the purposes of this study. Results During the approximate hour and ten minutes that were spent observing the 11 children, 41 play behaviors were observed. Of the 41 behaviors, 14 of them were behaviors that indicated to me that they were pretend. The playing that was observed included playing with dolls, with cars and blocks, with animal toys, with blocks only, with toy cars only, sneaking around, and fake sleeping with multiple indicators that pretense was being taken part in (Table 1). Table 1: Pretend Play Frequencies and Indicators Pretend Play Frequency Indicators of Pretense Behavior 1. Making doll cry Dolls 3 2. Consoling doll 3. Making doll talk Cars and Blocks 3 1. Car sound effects ("vroom") Animal Toys Blocks Only Cars Only Sneaking Sleeping Total 3 2 1 1 1 14 1. Make animal noise (roaring) 1. Making fearful faces 2. Smiling 1. Making truck talk 1. Smiling 2. Laughing 1. Eyes closed tight, snoring 2. Stating it was pretend

Of the three instances in which children pretended with dolls, all of them were female, and all exhibited similar indicators that they were pretending. One of the girls pretended that her doll was crying. She deliberately gave voice to the doll to pretend that it was actually a human

8 baby. In a similar fashion, another girl gave a voice to her doll, not making it cry, but making it talk and request certain items like a pillow in one instance that the girl then provided to the doll. The third girl did not give voice to her doll, but did console it as if it were a real child that needed care. These indicators are similar to the sound effects that Lillard and Witherington (2004) described. Although these girls were making voices for their dolls and not sound effects, it still falls under the category of giving a quality to an object that would not normally have it; in these cases giving voices and feelings to inanimate toys. The 3 children that were pretending with cars and blocks were all boys and all showed similar indicators of pretend that the girls did, but to specifically match their play behavior. They all made sound effects, zooming and vrooming noises to indicate that they were pretending their cars were actually driving. Another 3 children showed the same indicators with animal toys as well, giving them sound effects like roaring and growling. Even though all of these children were pretending, they were pretending with toys that already had a certain type of activity associated with them; dolls being cared for, cars being driven, and animals making animal sounds. The sound effects made during use of these toys may have been a direct result of the toy itself and not necessarily the childrens own desire to pretend. The only different type of behavior observed with cars was when a child made a truck talk like it was human. This still falls under the category of sound effects, but adds slightly more depth to the pretend play than the others did. In this case, the sound effect attributed to the object in no way represents reality and is completely imaginary. The other pretend behaviors did yield more convincing evidence of certain indicators being apparent when children are pretending. Of the two children that were observed playing with blocks, both of them were playing in the same way conducting a play behavior that is not

9 typically associated with blocks. The two children were using the blocks, all lined up and connected, as a walkway, pretending that they were very, very high up on the blocks. The indicators that I observed were the children showing fear, but in a false manner. They would look down beyond the blocks at the floor as if it were very far below them and look very scared. When they looked up, however, they smiled as if very pleased with their pretend game. This, of course, falls into line with Lillard and Witheringtons (2004) statement that smiles often accompany pretend play. A child pretending to sneak around showed both the smiling and laughing indicators. She walked around as if she were unseen in the room and when I looked at her she held her finger up to her mouth to tell me to keep quiet. This gesture was followed by a grin and then a lot of laughter indicating to me that she was clearly playing a mentally devised pretend, stealth type of game. The last pretend behavior that I observed had very clear indicators as described by Lillard and Witherington (2004). A child that was pretending to sleep held his eyes tightly shut and over pronounced a snoring noise he was making. A member of the staff asked him if he was tired and he simply responded that he was only pretending, providing the most clear and obvious indicator of all. Discussion Observing pretend play behaviors, or any type of play behaviors is an interesting experience filled with the potential for studying their relationship to more complex developmental concepts. The indicators that accompany each childs pretend play activity is particularly important in that it actually indicates to the observer that the children know and understand the difference between reality and pretense, even at such young ages. These are truly remarkable phenomena: Children have to set, remember, coordinate, and follow joint

10 fictional worlds with others and at the same time not get confused about reality (Rakoczy, 2008, p. 1199). A part of this statement is definitely true of the observations that I conducted in that it is fascinating that the children are able to reconcile pretense and reality at such young ages. The quote does touch on the notion of groups and pretense as well, which could not be studied in my observation. I simply did not observe children taking part in pretend play in groups; it did not occur at all in the room that I was in. Perhaps if more time was allotted or multiple observation sessions were conducted, group pretend behavior could have been observed. Although I could not personally observe group pretend play, Rakoczy (2008) does offer the notion that makebelieve groups can serve as a beginning point for childrens development in that they are concrete, rule and action based games that reflect what the children may encounter later in adult life and society. However, there is some doubt that pretend play is any better or worse for development than any other type of play. This idea that pretending is not necessarily crucial to positive development and is only one of many routes to it is called equifinality, as defined by Lillard and colleagues (2012). The limitations of my study prevents me from doing any kind of in-depth work in the realm of pretend play and I feel that more longitudinal studies of children into adolescence must be conducted in order to see more defined developmental results. It would, however, be very difficult to test pretend plays effect on development as play behaviors would have to be controlled throughout portions of a childs life, which would effectively ruin the very nature of play, a spontaneous, fun activity.

11 References Doyle, A.B., Doehring, P., Tessier, O., de Lorimier, S., & Shapiro, S. (1992). Transitions in childrens play: A sequential analysis of states preceding and following social pretense. Developmental Psychology, 28, 137-144. Lillard, A.S., Lerner, M.D., Hopkins, E.J., Dore, R.A., Smith, E.D., & Palmquist, C.M. (2012). The impact of pretend play on childrens development: A review of the evidence. Psychological Bulletin. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0029321. Lillard, A.S. & Witherington, D.C. (2004). Mothers behavior modifications during pretense and their possible signal value for toddlers. Developmental Psychology, 40, 95-113. Rakoczy, H. (2008). Taking fiction seriously: Young children understand the normative structure of joint pretence games. Developmental Psychology, 44, 1195-1201. Rakoczy, H., Tomasello, M., & Striano, T. (2004). Young children know that trying is not pretending: A test of the behaving-as-if construal of childrens early concept of pretense. Developmental Psychology, 40, 388-399.