CLA Pretend Play

Question 1

Lev Vygotsky – Social Interactionist Theory

Answer 1

Vygotsky, an early child development researcher observed children’s play and linked it to both cognitive and social development. Young children often use props as pivots to support their play but when they get older they use their imagination instead. Vygotsky noticed how children role-play adult behaviour as part of exploring their environment.

Question 2

Catherine Garvey’s study of pairs of children playing

Answer 2

found that children adopt roles and identities, act out storylines and invent objects and settings as required in role-play scenarios. This is called “pretend play” and fulfils Halliday’s imaginative language function. Children play together because it is enjoyable, but it also practises social interaction and negotiation skills with roles and responsibilities often decided as they play. This is sometimes called “sociodramatic play” as it involves both social and dramatic skills, with clear rules and reflecting real world behaviour.

Sociodramatic play usually begins when the child is around four years old – possibly linked to their cognitive understanding of the different roles people have and how this affects their language. In their re-enactments they use subject specific lexis and structure them in some of the formulaic ways that adults use in real-life situations, suggesting they can observe and imitate adult behaviours.

Question 3

Leslie (1987):

Answer 3

for a child to pretend that one object is another, s/he must detach the primary [real] representation from the pretend representation. The pretend representation is thus a metarepresentation, in that it represents a representation in the child’s parallel objective world. Pretend play therefore marks the emergence of metacognition ! (Metacognition is an awareness of one’s thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them.)

Question 4

Jenkins and Astington (1996)

Answer 4

children with siblings develop a theory of mind at a faster pace. Pretend play with siblings is thought to make high demands for imaginative cooperation, promoting psychological understanding!

Question 5

Usha Goswami

Answer 5

claims that children who invent imaginary friends have richer language skills and are better at constructing narratives !