Children’s understanding of the mind’s involvement in pretense: do words bend the truth?

Abstract

Abstract Many have thought that children have an early appreciation of the role of the mind in pretense, fitting with the notion that pretend play is, in general, a ‘zone of proximal development’ ( Vygotsky, 1978 ). Although results from several experiments are against this hypothesis, the evidence from that line of research has been questioned because the experiments thus far have always used the word ‘pretend’. Young children might have a perfectly clear understanding that pretense involves the mind, but have mismapped the word ‘pretend’ onto non‐mental correlates of pretending, like action and costume. Two experiments tested this possibility. Four‐year‐olds were shown videos of people engaging in real and pretend activities and asked questions regarding the role of mind; for half the children the word ‘pretend’ was used to describe the activity, and for half it was not. Contrary to the hypothesis, even when the word ‘pretend’ was not used, roughly half of the 4‐year‐olds failed to designate pretense as involving mental activity. Consistent with prior work, more children of this age were cognizant of the mind’s involvement in pretense than were cognizant of the mind’s involvement in physical actions.

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