Make believe

The interest in pretend play advanced through three significant stages, though it has likely existed since the dawn of humanity, as children tend to do this naturally on their own, without coercion, or needing a term to describe what they are doing. The initial stage was during the 1920s and 1930s when research in play had gained popularity. During this time, there were little or no empirical findings specifically about pretend play. A revival of interest starting in the late 1940s signified the second stage. The new mission was to find how pretend play related to the developing personality of a child. A common hypothesis during this period was that pretend behavior projected a child's inner feelings and reflected their experiences in their everyday lives. The most recent stage, which persists until today, began in the 1970s. Research in this stage is greatly influenced by Jean Piaget's studies and theories, either in terms of finding evidence to support it or to falsify it. Despite the cultural jargon on the issue, the history of playing make believe may indeed have originated at the dawn on consciousness, itself. == Critical period ==

The act of pretending is believed to be inbuilt because it occurs universally and begins promptly between the ages of 18 and 24 months (Lillard, Pinkham & Smith, 2011) . The prevalence and frequency of pretense increases between 1 and a half to years of age. The first stage of pretense generally starts with object substitution. By 3 years, a child can easily distinguish between real life events and pretense. Children within 3 to 6 years, who have acclimated to pretend play, show an increase in interactive pretend play. This means that they participate in self-other relations, giving the doll a more active role (e.g., driving a car) instead of a passive recipient role (e.g., being fed). At the age of three, children's pretense remains close to their real life experiences. A three-year-old girl may pretend that she and her mother are going grocery shopping. In this case, both her role in the relationship and the activity she is taking part in are literal. There is then an increase in the mastery of role play within the ages of 4 and 5 years. During the fifth year, the child shows ability to incorporate forms of relationships into their play. They are no longer limited to the role of child, instead, they can be a parent or a spouse, or expand further by adopting the role of members in society such as policemen, doctors and so forth. == Components ==

Role-play When children participate in social role enactment, or role-play, they are portraying the identity or certain traits of another individual. In pretend play, any object in the child's surroundings can be used as a prop. Substitution Any object can be integrated into pretend play as a representation of another object. This kind of representation is referred to as substitution. The ability to substitute one object for another emerges when a child is about 2 years old. In early instances of substitution, children are only capable of substituting objects that either have a similar structure or a similar function. For example, a child can pretend that a pen is a toothbrush, or that a television remote is a telephone. A pen has roughly the same shape as a toothbrush, while the remote has buttons that function similarly to a telephone. Around the age of 3, the child begins to master substitution and no longer needs physical or functional similarity between the actual object and the substitute. The child also becomes capable of substitution without the use of a concrete object, thus depending solely on imagination (e.g. putting their palm to their ear and having a conversation, indicating a phone call). The ability to hold more than one substitution at a time also increases, meaning that the child can pretend to be on the phone, walking a dog, and sipping juice all at once. There are two types of substitutions. Symbolic substitution is when one object is used to represent another, such as when a coach uses sticks to represent players in a game plan. Hypothetical substitution is when one object is used "as-if" it actually is another object, such as the previous example of imagining that a pen functions as a toothbrush. Doll play Pretense with dolls begins when a child extends pretend self actions to a doll. A child might start by pretending to feed themselves, then reach out and pretend to be feeding a doll. This is further developed when a child begins giving the doll an active role rather than a passive one. For example, the doll does not just eat when fed by the child, instead, the child pretends that the doll reaches for the spoon and feeds itself. After the doll is given an active role, the child begins to bestow upon it sensory and emotional attributes, such as feeling sad, happy, or hurt. The highest form of doll play appears when a child is about years of age. At this point, the child is capable of giving the doll cognitive abilities. A distinguishing feature between doll play and social play, which includes more than one child, is the degree of control a child has. When participating in doll play, the child has full control over the situation. ==Influencing factors==

Pretend play is universal, in that it appears in many or all cultures. However, some cultures tend to disapprove it and believe that it is a form of communication with spirits or devils. These different views tend to impact the amount of time dedicated to pretend play and the themes that children interact with. Yet, although many cultures discourage pretend play, its unavoidable emergence indicates that it develops from internal cognitive abilities rather than from the external environment or observed learning. Adult intervention Gender roles Sex-typed play is generally established between the ages of 4 and 9 years. During this age, girls often take domestic and realistic roles, while boys often lean more towards fantastical and physically active roles. The degree to which these roles are expressed has been linked to the attitudes of the parents. Children of parents who encourage sex roles and disapprove cross-sex references show more instances of sex-typed play. Although the parents' attitudes are the most influential, other adult role models such as teachers and family members can also reinforce gender play. Family structure Levels of imagination are closely related to a child's familial environment. Issues such as marital conflict and physical forms of discipline create anxiety and tension in the child's life. These have been linked to reduced occurrence of play behaviors and low levels of imagination. On the other hand, strong and encouraging relationships between the children and their parents, specifically fathers, are linked to higher rates of play and imaginative pretense. When parents introduce pretend play to their children at an early age, the children begin to imitate their actions and create their own pretense scenarios. Children also become more capable of identifying social signals, such as eye contact and referential pointing. Scripts Participants in games of make believe may draw upon many sources for inspiration. Welsch describes book-related pretend play, wherein children draw upon texts to initiate games. Children seem most interested in texts with, for example, significant levels of tension. Children who use more fantastical pretense themes tend to understand the concept of pretense at an earlier stage. Although stories and acting inspire creativity in pretend play, long durations of television exposure has been associated with lower levels of imagination. == Social and cognitive development ==

The presence of a relationship between pretend play and the following cognitive and social skills suggests that pretend play may have a causal effect. Current research attempts to investigate how pretend play can be used to develop and improve performances in theory of mind tasks, reasoning skills, and how it can be used as an intervention method, especially for children with autism. Most research emphasizes on the preschool period since this age group shows the greatest emergence and development in pretend play and the following social and cognitive skills. Research on preschool children also seek to integrate pretend play as a teaching method. Theory of mind Pretend play encompasses several abilities that coincide with theory of mind. The first two abilities relate to object representation. The child has the ability to mentally represent one object as another. The child also has the ability to understand the paradox, in which the object can represent another, but in essence remains the same object. and what attributes the child needs to ignore, form and/or function. Overall, prior research has shown that pretend play activities can improve a child's executive function, but whether the act of pretending or some other part of the activity such as practice inventing a story or building a fortress is responsible is still an open question. == Learning and knowledge acquisition ==

Pretend play is not only associated with developing general cognitive abilities While children do not invent new knowledge on their own, when pretending with others, children make judgements about the generalizability of unknown information introduced by others in the pretend context. These judgements affect the degree to which children believe the information is applicable and reflective of the real world. There are a number of factors known to influence these judgements including the fantastical themes employed in the pretend world as well as the credibility of the other play participants. Emotions By the age of three, children are generally able to distinguish fantasy and pretense from reality, but there are a number of reasons why children might confuse the two. In some cases, it appears as though children are unable to regulate their emotions, especially fear, and this leads to what may seem like confusion between reality and pretense, such as monsters hiding in their toy bin. Negative emotions such as fear and anger also seem to have a negative effect on children's tendency to believe an event is either possibly real or fantasy and either more or less likely to actually happen in reality. Prior knowledge From ages as early as 15 months, children demonstrate both an understanding of pretense and expectations of reality being reflected in pretense. At times, pretend play may involve animals, objects, or places that the child knows little or nothing about, and any information about these subjects that is introduced during the pretend play is readily associated with the subject. Credibility and trust Children do not treat all new information equally, and in fact a number of situational and source specific factors influence how likely children are to believe information is true or applicable to reality as is the case in pretend play. Jaswal (2010) found that when playing with an adult, children display a general tendency to trust the truthfulness of information, though the extent to which it conflicts with what they already know or believe will still influence the extent they will generalize the information to reality. Also other attributes the adult or peer may influence the child's judgements. Children have been shown to be sensitive to socio-economic cues and differences. Children also look at the informant's stance relative to a perceived group, whether that be the group involved in play or a larger social group that the child identifies with, and will show a bias towards information coming from a less conflicting stance with the majority. Overall children, while biased to trust adults, still apply rational judgements to new information introduced during pretend play that influences their tendency to believe how much that information generalizes to reality. == See also ==