Play, Pretend and Imagination

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Is pretense representational?

Golden age of make-believe

Pretend play

No representation abuse- eat block because they actually think it’s a cookie

Have to know what a horse is to act like a horse

When does pretense first emerge?

18-24 months

6th stage of infancy for piaget- sensorimotor

Mental representation is fully present

What does Batman think about Spongebob? (Or rather, do children separate fictional worlds? How do we know this?)

They do separate fictional worlds

They don’t believe that spongebob and batman can see, touch, or talk to each other because they are in two distinct worlds

What are children’s emotional reactions to pretense scenarios? Do they react emotionally as if the scenario were real (look at Harris monsters article).

Monsters, ghosts and witches: Testing the limits of the fantasy—reality distinction in young children Estes, Wellman & Woolley (1989) have shown that children as young as 3 years of age can distinguish between mental entities such as an image or dream of an object and a real object. Nevertheless, children often show persistent fear of imaginary creatures, particularly monsters (Jersild, 1943). To find out what conception children have of such imaginary creatures, 4- and 6-year-olds were questioned about three types of item: real items (e.g. a cup), ordinary imagined items (e.g. an image of a cup) and supernatural imagined items (e.g. an image of a monster). In two experiments, both age groups sharply differentiated the real items from both types of imagined item. Despite this apparently firm grasp of the distinction between fantasy and reality, two further experiments showed that 4- and 6-year-olds are not always certain that a creature that they have imagined cannot become real. Having imagined a creature inside a box, they show apprehension or curiosity about what is inside the box, and often admit to wondering whether the creature is actually inside. The experiments suggest that children systematically distinguish fantasy from reality, but are tempted to believe in the existence of what they have merely imagined.

I guess the emotional reaction is that they are apprehensive and curious since they are not certain a creature they imagined cannot become real