Imagination And Pretend Play Research

Imagination and pretend play as a child is a crucial part of growing up into teenagers as well as into adults. In a press article from Psychologytoday.com, the authors stressed the idea of not only physical play being important, but also the need for acting and using imagination. “Systematic research has increasingly demonstrated a series of clear benefits of children’s engagement in pretend games from the ages of about two and one half through ages six or seven.” The author, Scott Kaufman, mentioned studies that have shown that pretend play results in cognitive benefits such as a significant increase in language usage. He mentions a source that explains the “theory of mind”, which is an awareness that one’s thought may differ from those of
Pretend play isn’t just about having fun, it’s crucial for learning. Pretending allows children to learn about how adults interact with each other. They also are able to get an idea of how society is shaped. It guides children into learning behavior and manners while playing in different scenarios and situations. Pretend play allows a child to gain self-esteem and obtain control over the scenario, as an adult would have to do every day. (Six Benefits of Pretend Play. (2012, June 11). Retrieved September 13, 2016, from
One key issue found in this research is that there is a problem with replicating the results. In an example given in the research, “one study shows increases in empathy associated with pretense training (Saltz & Johnson, 1974) and another does not (Iannotti, 1978), and typically only the positive finding is cited…”(Lillard, A. S., Lerner, M. D., Hopkins, E. J., Dore, R. A., Smith, E. D., & Palmquist, C. M. (2012, June). The Impact of Pretend Play on Children’s Development: A Review of the Evidence. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/bul-a0029321.pdf). In a study for the relationship between pretend play and creativity, researchers have found that there was no correlation. “Johnson (1976) found that, controlling for IQ, amount of social not solitary fantasy play was related to fluency. This would suggest that something about the social element, rather than pretending in and of itself, was related to creativity…” And in a different study done by L. Dunn & Herwig (1992), they found that there was a “negative relationship between originality of responses and solo pretend play that disappeared when IQ was partialled out.” (Lillard et al.