Pretend play
When and how do babies understand and use the art of pretence and how might it enable their understanding of the world?
A recent study led by Professor Elena Hoicka at the University of Bristol, UK, has shown that infants begin to recognise the use of pretence by others and later engage in pretence play and behaviour themselves at an early age. Nine hundred parents of children aged from birth up to three-years-old (47 months) from the UK, US, Australia and Canada were recruited to the early Pretending Study (EPS). The study defined categories of pretence that develop at various ages and used parent observation and reporting, and inter-observer reliability to check findings.
Some infants were reported to understand or recognise pretence in others from a very early age and children’s use of pretence became very sophisticated by the age of three years when they were observed to engage in complex imaginary and creative games involving situations of which they had no lived experience, and acting out characters both invented and known to them. The authors acknowledged that parents may have occasionally overstated their child’s understanding of pretence but nevertheless felt that the size of the study and the consistency of the observations suggested that the findings were reliable. While earlier studies were experimental and limited in the number of children observed, the EPS study involved the researchers observing a large number of children over a long period of time.
‘Babies recognise pretence and around half of children can pretend themselves by 12 months’, explained Professor Elena Hoicka. ‘Our findings highlight how pretending is a complex, evolving process which begins very early on in life, helping [children’s] cognitive and social skills to advance. Pretence is a key part of children’s learning, creativity, making friends, and understanding of other people. This study maps its many different stages and types.’
Read more:
Hoicka, E. & Prouten, E. (2024) The Early Pretending Survey (EPS): A reliable parent-report measure of pretence type development for 4- to 47-month-olds. Cognitive Development, 71:101483.
