What Shall We Do: Pretend or Real? Preschoolers’ Choices and Parents’ Perceptions

ABSTRACT

Pretend play is common in childhood. Yet by age 4, children shown pretend and real activities in a book said they would choose to do the real activity over the pretend one. The present studies extended this research, examining children’s actual behavior in laboratory and school settings (Study 1, n = 32, M = 59.32 months; and Study 2, n = 16, M = 54.08 months), their choices about pretend roles (Study 3, n = 50, M = 59.48 months), and parents’ perspectives on what children prefer (Study 4, n = 83). As in prior work, 4-year-olds preferred real activities from a book; by 5, children also engaged more with real activities. In contrast, 3- to 4-year-olds preferred pretend roles and 5- to 6-year-olds were ambivalent. Parents correctly predicted children’s preference for real activities, but they did not predict that children’s reality preferences increase with age.