Make believe
[1] What separates play from other daily activities is its fun and creative aspect rather than being an action performed for the sake of survival or necessity.
[4] 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.
A common hypothesis during this period was that pretend behavior projected a child's inner feelings and reflected their experiences in their everyday lives.
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.
[1] Despite the cultural jargon on the issue, the history of playing make believe may indeed have originated at the dawn on consciousness, itself.
[citation needed] 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) .
Skills that would otherwise require being fostered by educational toys may be developed through pretend play since it is not limited by the child's financial background.
The first behavior is the tendency of performing a task without the presence of a necessary instrument, such as pretending to make a call without using an actual phone.
The third behavior, discussed in the section above, is when a child takes the role of another individual and performs their usual actions, such as pretending to be a firefighter and extinguishing a fire.
The fourth behavior is when a certain action results in an unrealistic outcome, such as a child pretending to clean the room by simply snapping a finger.
The fifth behavior will be discussed in depth in the following section and it involves giving an inanimate object, such as a doll, animate qualities, such as talking and drinking tea.
Imaginary companions can be entirely in the child's imagination or they can be based on a doll or stuffed toy that portrays animate qualities.
[2] The child also becomes capable of substitution without the use of a concrete object, thus depending solely on imagination[4] (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.
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.
[6] These different views tend to impact the amount of time dedicated to pretend play and the themes that children interact with.
[6] 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.
Children of parents who encourage sex roles and disapprove cross-sex references show more instances of sex-typed play.
[1] Although the parents' attitudes are the most influential, other adult role models such as teachers and family members can also reinforce gender play.
Issues such as marital conflict and physical forms of discipline create anxiety and tension in the child's life.
[1] 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.
Welsch describes book-related pretend play, wherein children draw upon texts to initiate games.
[4] Although stories and acting inspire creativity in pretend play, long durations of television exposure has been associated with lower levels of imagination.
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.
[4] For example, when pretending to take a road trip, both children are expected to know that the chairs they sit on represent car seats.
Studies support that children between 4 and 6 years of age are better capable of conceptualizing alternative outcomes when the situation is unrealistic or is set in a pretend context.
[6] A similar factor between counterfactual reasoning and pretend play is that they both deal with situations that divert from actual events.
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.
[11] 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.
