Lion Kings or puppies: the influence of fantasy on children’s understanding of pretense

Many have thought that children have an early appreciation of the mind in the case of pretend play. Results from several experiments are against this. However, an experiment by Lillard (Body or mind: children’s categorizing of pretense, Child Development, 67 (1996), 1717-1734, Experiment 4) suggested that when a pretense is about a fantasy character, instead of a real entity, children might have a better understanding of the mind’s involvement. The present experiment tested this, and found that indeed, when pretending to be a fantasy character is at issue, 4-year-olds are significantly more apt to indicate the mind’s involvement. Several possible reasons for this result are discussed.     

Developmental changes in preschoolers' ability to distinguish memories of performed,pretended, and imagined actions

The goals of the research presented in this article were to: a) examine changes in pre-schoolers' ability to distinguish among memories of performed, pretended, and imagined episodes, and b) use source monitoring as a tool for inferring the nature of preschoolers' conceptualizations of pretense. The participants, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, performed, pretended, and imagined performing actions. After a short delay, they identified the origin of their memories in a 3-alternative, forced-choice procedure. Results showed significant improvements between ages 3 and 4 in the ability to distinguish: a) performed actions from imagined actions, and b) performed actions from pretended actions. However, 4- and 5- year-olds confused memories of pretended and imagined actions. These results were replicated in a second experiment with 3- and 4-year-olds, using a simpler 2-alternative, forced-choice format. The findings suggest that, by age 4, children represent both pretense and imagination in memory according to cognitive operation features associated with generating a fictional mental state. Thus, 4-year-olds may recognize that constructing a mental, alternative reality is an important part of pretense.     

The Development of Substitute Object Pretense: The Differential Importance of Form and Function

Substitute object pretense is one of the earliest-developing forms of pretense, and yet it changes considerably across the preschool years. By 3.5 years of age, children can pretend with substitutes that are highly dissimilar from their intended referents (Elder & Pederson, 1978), but even older children have difficulty understanding such pretense in others (Bigham & Bourchier-Sutton, 2007). The present studies had 3 aims: 1) to examine the relative influence of the form and function of substitute objects; 2) to replicate the age gap between pretense production and comprehension using a tightly controlled procedure; and 3) to investigate whether preschoolers’ comprehension of substitute object pretense is predicted by a) theory of mind (ToM), because it involves reading pretender intent, and (b) executive function (EF), because it involves inhibiting the substitute object’s identity. In Study 1, 3- to 5-year-old children performed at ceiling on a test of substitute object pretense production, whereas pretense comprehension improved considerably across this age range. Study 2 provided evidence that the function of a substitute object is more influential than its form in determining whether a child can comprehend pretense actions with the object. The results of Study 2 also provided support for the role of ToM in comprehending another’s pretense. Finally, Study 3 replicated the results regarding form, function, and ToM in a sample drawn from a different community. The effects of EF on pretense comprehension were inconsistent across conditions and studies, suggesting that EF may not play a major role in the comprehension of pretense with substitute objects.     

My future self: Young children's ability to anticipate and explain future states

Two experiments examine preschool-aged children's ability to anticipate physiological states of the self. One hundred and eight 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were presented with stories and pictorial scenes designed to evoke thought about future states such as thirst, cold, and hunger. They were asked to imagine themselves in these scenarios and to choose one item from a set of three that they would need. Only one of the items could be used to address the future state. In both experiments, developmental differences were obtained for correct item choices and types of verbal explanations. In Experiment 2, the performance of the 3- and 4-year-olds was negatively affected by introducing items that were semantically associated with the scenarios but did not address the future state, whereas the 5-year-olds’ performance was not. Results are discussed with respect to children's understanding of the future, theory of mind, and inhibitory control skills.     

Children’s understanding of the mind’s involvement in pretense: do words bend the truth?

Many have thought that children have an early appreciation of the role of the mind in pretense, fitting with the notion that pretend play is, in general, a ‘zone of proximal development’ ( Vygotsky, 1978 ). Although results from several experiments are against this hypothesis, the evidence from that line of research has been questioned because the experiments thus far have always used the word ‘pretend’. Young children might have a perfectly clear understanding that pretense involves the mind, but have mismapped the word ‘pretend’ onto non‐mental correlates of pretending, like action and costume. Two experiments tested this possibility. Four‐year‐olds were shown videos of people engaging in real and pretend activities and asked questions regarding the role of mind; for half the children the word ‘pretend’ was used to describe the activity, and for half it was not. Contrary to the hypothesis, even when the word ‘pretend’ was not used, roughly half of the 4‐year‐olds failed to designate pretense as involving mental activity. Consistent with prior work, more children of this age were cognizant of the mind’s involvement in pretense than were cognizant of the mind’s involvement in physical actions.     

“They Danced Around in My Head and I Learned Them”: Children's Developing Conceptions of Learning

Two studies examined how 3–6-year-olds understand the process of learning. In study 1 examined how children spontaneously talk about learning via a CHILDES language analysis. Talk about the learning process increased between the ages of 3–5. Talk specifically about learning in terms of desire decreased during this period. This suggests the possibility that desire is important to children's initial understanding of learning, and children develop an understanding that various mental states including desire, attention, and intention, play a role in the learning process. In Study 2, we presented 4- and 6-year-olds with a set of stories designed to test their understanding of the role of these mental states. In both their judgments about whether someone learns and their justifications of their responses, younger children relied more on the character's desires whereas older children were more likely to integrate desire, attention, and intention together. These data suggest that children's understanding of the process of learning is developing during the early elementary school years.     

Is young children’s recognition of pretense metarepresentational or merely behavioral? Evidence from 2- and 3-year-olds’ understanding of pretend sounds and speech

When young children observe pretend-play, do they interpret it simply as a type of behavior, or do they infer the underlying mental state that gives the behavior meaning? This is a long-standing question with deep implications for how “theory on mind” develops. The two leading accounts of shared pretense give opposing answers. The behavioral theory proposes that children represent pretense as a form of behavior (behaving in a way that would be appropriate if P); the metarepresentational theory argues that children instead represent pretense via the early concept PRETEND. A test between these accounts is provided by children’s understanding of pretend sounds and speech. We report the first experiments directly investigating this understanding. In three experiments, 2- and 3-year-olds’ listened to requests that were either spoken normally, or with the pretense that a teddy bear was uttering them. To correctly fulfill the requests, children had to represent the normal utterance as the experimenter’s, and the pretend utterances as the bear’s. Children succeeded at both ages, suggesting that they can represent pretend speech (the requests) as coming from counterfactual sources (the bear rather than the experimenter). We argue that this is readily explained by the metarepresentational theory, but harder to explain if children are behaviorists about pretense.     

Pretend Play as Twin Earth: A Social-Cognitive Analysis

Pretend play appears to be important to a theory of mind, but exactly how or why has been controversial. One widely entertained hypothesis about why pretense is important to understanding minds is termed the Metarepresentational Model. According to this model, children knowingly consider and manipulate mental representations during pretense. Children appreciate these mental representations as such and later come to apply their understanding of mental representation outside of pretense domains. This article reviews evidence relevant to the metarepresentational model, and it is concluded that the evidence does not support it. Alternative models of the relationship between pretense and theory of mind are reviewed, culminating in a proposed developmental model of the relation. The Twin Earth model proposes specific relations between pretend play and understanding minds, from the ontogenesis of pretense to the later emergence of role play and mental representational understandings of pretense. Central to the proposal is the supposition that pretend play functions for children in much the way that Twin Earth functions for philosophers—by allowing for participation in and reasoning about nonactual situations.     

Young children know that trying is not pretending: a test of the "behaving-as-if" construal of children's early concept of pretense

In 3 studies, young children were tested for their understanding of pretend actions. In Studies 1 and 2, pairs of superficially similar behaviors were presented to 26- and 36-month-old children in an imitation game. In one case the behavior was marked as trying (signs of effort), and in the other case as pretending (signs of playfulness). Three-year-olds, and to some degree 2-year-olds, performed the real action themselves (or tried to really perform it) after the trying model, whereas after the pretense model, they only pretended. Study 3 ruled out a simple mimicking explanation by showing that children not only imitated differentially but responded differentially with appropriate productive pretending to pretense models and with appropriate productive tool use to trying models. The findings of the 3 studies demonstrate that by 2 to 3 years of age, children have a concept of pretense as a specific type of intentional activity.     

Children's understanding of teaching: the role of knowledge and belief

The relation between preschoolers’ concept of teaching and theory of mind was explored to determine if there is a developmental change in understanding how teaching depends on knowledge and belief. The study tested whether 3- to 6-year-olds thought the awareness of a knowledge difference is necessary for teaching. The 3- and 4-year-olds understood teaching stories with clear knowledge differences and could correctly use that information to specify the teacher and learner. The 5- and 6-year-olds, who performed well on a standard false belief task, further understood that it was the teacher's belief about the knowledge difference that would actually govern teaching. The conceptual link to teaching suggests that theory of mind is critical for understanding other forms of knowledge acquisition besides perceptual access.     

Preschooler's Understanding of the Role of Mental States and Action in Pretense

This research investigated 3- to 5-year-old's understanding of the role of intentional states and action in pretense. There are two main perspectives on how children conceptualize pretense. One view is that children understand the mental aspects of pretending (the rich interpretation). The alternative view is that children conceptualize pretense as "acting-like" and do not appreciate that the mind is crucial to pretense (the lean interpretation). The experiments in this article used a novel approach to test these two interpretations. Children were presented with two types of videotaped scenarios. In Experiment 1, children were presented with a scenario in which people wanted to be like something else (e.g., a kangaroo) and either acted like it or did not act like it. Children were asked whether the protagonists were pretending and whether they were thinking about the pretend entity. In Experiment 2, children were presented with the Experiment 1 scenarios and also with a scenario in which a person had the intention to do something else (e.g., look for her keys) but whose actions were similar to those of a pretend entity (e.g., a bear). Children were asked about the pretense, thoughts, and the intentions of the protagonists. Experiment 3 tested for the effect of asking an open-ended versus a forced-choice question on the Experiment 2 tasks. The results of this study suggest that in certain facilitating conditions (e.g., intention information salient, forced-choice question) children have an early understanding of the role of mind in pretense.     

Narrative Discourse and Theory of Mind Development

The authors examined experimentally whether exposure to social discourse about concepts related to mental states could promote changes in children's theory of mind understanding. In 2 studies, 3- to 4-year-old children were assigned to either a training or a no training control condition. All children were administered several theory of mind measures at pretest and 2 posttests. Training was not effective in improving performance in Study 1 (n = 37); but in Study 2 (n = 54), modifications of the training procedure led to significant improvements on measures of false belief and deception from pretest to 1st posttest. The findings support the influence of social discourse on children's theory of mind development.     

Young children's understanding of belief constraints on intention

One important characteristic of rational action is that our intentions should be consistent with our beliefs. That is, an intention to perform an action should normally be accompanied by a belief that the action will in fact be performed, and be supported by other relevant beliefs. Thus, if the intention is unfulfilled it will have been accompanied by false beliefs. Two studies examined whether 3-year-olds understand these belief constraints on intention. Children were shown films in which actors displayed great surprise and sadness at their failure to bring about the outcomes they intended and expected. They were then questioned about the actors' unfulfilled intentions and false beliefs. In both studies their understanding of unfulfilled intentions was excellent, and significantly better than their understanding of false beliefs. Nevertheless, they also revealed considerable understanding of the beliefs underpinning intentions and, in Study 2, their performance in terms of such beliefs was significantly better than that on standard false-belief tasks. Three-year-olds thus appear to have a threshold understanding of the role of belief in intentional action.     

The Development of Symbolic Coordination: Representation of Imagined Objects,Executive Function,and Theory of Mind

Children's developing competence with symbolic representations was assessed in 3 studies. Study 1 examined the hypothesis that the production of imaginary symbolic objects in pantomime requires the simultaneous coordination of the dual representations of a dynamic action and a symbolic object. We explored this coordination of symbolic representations in 3- to 5-year-olds with a modified action pantomime task that employed both a "dynamic action + object" condition and a "hold + object" condition. Consistent with earlier research, production of imaginary symbolic objects rather than body-part-as-objects increased with age, although, even at age 5, children did not perform at adult levels. As hypothesized, children produced fewer body-part-as-object anchors when they were simply asked to hold an object, rather than perform a dynamic action with the object. Study 2 repeated the conditions of Study 1 and examined these conditions in relation to performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task. This study replicated the developmental findings of the earlier study and indicated a modest relation between pantomime and the DCCS, which disappeared with age partialled out. Study 3 examined the action pantomime task in relation to the DCCS, false belief, and appearance-reality with 3- to 5-year-olds. Though performance on the DCCS was related to theory of mind, production of imaginary symbolic objects in pantomime was not strongly related to theory of mind or the DCCS. Results are discussed in terms of children's developing reflective competence in coordinating symbolic representations.     

How do children coordinate information about mental states with social norms?

We investigated how 3-7-year-olds weigh and coordinate information about specific mental states with social norms in the domain of contextually conventional rules. With increasing age, participants increasingly took into account an actor's mental state to predict that actor's behavior. In a criticism judgment task, 7-year-olds could assign criticism conditional on mental state, with response patterns similar to those of adults; 5-year-olds assigned criticism regardless of the actor's mental state. Three-year-olds tended not to assign criticism at all, irrespective of the actor's mental state. Results indicated that the ability to weigh and coordinate information about mental states with understanding of norms depends on age and on the particular type of judgment being made. To some extent, our results may also reflect the influence of culture and parenting.     

Children's Level of Participation in a False-Belief Task,Age, and Theory of Mind

The hide-and-seek deception task of M. Chandler, A. S. Fritz, and S. Hala (1989) was modified to provide a more precise estimate of the age at which children acquire and manifest a theory of mind. Two characters (good, bad) and two levels of involvement (pretend play, sociodramatic play) were incorporated into the research design, so that children's representational understanding of deception could be studied. Two-, 3-, and 4-year-olds (N = 90) participated in the study. The results indicated that 4-year-olds used significantly more deceptive strategies than 2- and 3-year-olds in pretend play and in sociodramatic play. There was no difference between 2- and 3-year-olds in the use of deceptive strategies; they used significantly fewer strategies in the bad roles than in the good roles. No significant differences were found in the 3 age groups' performances in the good-character tasks. The reality-masking hypothesis (P. Mitchell, 1994) accounts for the differences in performances on that task; thus, children younger than 4 years old do seem to have a theory of mind.     

How fantasy benefits young children's understanding of pretense

Sobel and Lillard (2001) demonstrated that 4-year-olds' understanding of the role that the mind plays in pretending improved when children were asked questions in a fantasy context. The present study investigated whether this fantasy effect was motivated by children recognizing that fantasy contains violations of real-world causal structure. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds were shown a fantasy character engaged in ordinary actions or actions that violated causal knowledge. Children were more likely to say that a troll doll who was acting like but ignorant of the character was not pretending to be that character when read the violation story. Experiment 2 suggested that this difference was not caused by a greater interest in the violation story. Experiment 3 demonstrated a similar difference for characters engaged in social and functional violations that were possible in the real world. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that preschoolers use actions and appearance more than mental states to make judgments about pretense, but that those judgments can be influenced by the context in which the questions are presented.     

Preschooler's Understanding of the Role of Mental States and Action in Pretense

This research investigated 3- to 5-year-old's understanding of the role of intentional states and action in pretense. There are two main perspectives on how children conceptualize pretense. One view is that children understand the mental aspects of pretending (the rich interpretation). The alternative view is that children conceptualize pretense as "acting-like" and do not appreciate that the mind is crucial to pretense (the lean interpretation). The experiments in this article used a novel approach to test these two interpretations. Children were presented with two types of videotaped scenarios. In Experiment 1, children were presented with a scenario in which people wanted to be like something else (e.g., a kangaroo) and either acted like it or did not act like it. Children were asked whether the protagonists were pretending and whether they were thinking about the pretend entity. In Experiment 2, children were presented with the Experiment 1 scenarios and also with a scenario in which a person had the intention to do something else (e.g., look for her keys) but whose actions were similar to those of a pretend entity (e.g., a bear). Children were asked about the pretense, thoughts, and the intentions of the protagonists. Experiment 3 tested for the effect of asking an open-ended versus a forced-choice question on the Experiment 2 tasks. The results of this study suggest that in certain facilitating conditions (e.g., intention information salient, forced-choice question) children have an early understanding of the role of mind in pretense.     

Conflicting desire and the child's theory of mind

We contrast the standard representational theory-of-mind approach to the understanding of mental states with an alternative view that theory-of-mind tasks require executive functioning or the inhibition of more “cognitively salient” information. Two experiments test the hypothesis that 3-year-olds' apparent problems on theory-of-mind tasks are not due to an inability to represent the mental contents of another, but rather lie in the informational structure of the task. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds were tested on their understanding of desire in others either when they themselves held a strong and conflicting desire or when they had no strong desire. Results showed that under the condition of having a strong and conflicting desire, only 5-year-olds were able to recognize that another person may desire something different. In contrast, when the children themselves held no strong desire, even 3-year-olds were able to judge another's desire correctly. Experiment 2 compared 3-year-olds' performance on a standard false-belief task with an equivalently structured desire task in which participants had again to inhibit their own strong and conflicting desire. Results showed similar performance on the traditional false-belief task and the new conflicting-desire task.