ABSTRACT
Two-year-old children were required to use nonliteral words or actions to complete scenarios in which a doll acted as the agent of a series of make-believe events. An experimenter encoded the doll's imaginary intentions either verbally or through pretend actions. No gender differences were observed, but older 2-year-olds performed reliably better than younger 2-year-olds. In addition, episodes that required children to enact the conclusion to events that began with doll-directed actions proved difficult to comprehend. Discussion focuses on the implications of children's understanding of independent agency for joint sociodramatic play and on the problem of intersubjectivity in children's understanding of an adult's nonliteral intentions.
Subject(s)
Child Behavior , Child Development , Imagination , Internal-External Control , Play and Playthings/psychology , Psychology, Child , Social Behavior , Social Perception , Verbal Behavior , Age Factors , Analysis of Variance , Child, Preschool , Cross-Sectional Studies , Female , Humans , Male , Nonverbal CommunicationABSTRACT
In 3 experiments, children's comprehension of successive pretend actions was examined. In Experiment 1, children (25-38 months) watched 2 linked actions (e.g., a puppet poured pretend cereal or powder into a bowl, and then pretended to feed the contents of the bowl to a toy animal). Children realized that the pretend substance was incorporated into the second action. In Experiment 2, children (24-39 months) again watched 2 linked actions (e.g., a puppet poured pretend milk or powder into a container, and then pretended to tip the contents of the container over a toy animal). They realized that the animal would become "milky" or "powdery." In Experiment 3, children (25-36 months) drew similar conclusions regarding a substitute rather than an imaginary entity. The results are discussed with reference to children's causal understanding, their capacity for talking about objects and events in terms of their make-believe and real status, and the processes underlying pretense comprehension.
Subject(s)
Child Development , Play and Playthings , Child Behavior , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , MaleSubject(s)
Fantasy , Language Development , Mother-Child Relations , Verbal Behavior , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Infant , Male , Play and Playthings , SemanticsSubject(s)
Language Development , Semantics , Speech Perception , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , MaleABSTRACT
The results of these studies indicated that children younger than 1 year possess the cognitive capability of translating a perception of a novel action into their own behavior. However, the likelihood of imitation varied as a function of the nature of the target behavior. For example, actions requiring direct social commerce with the examiner were imitated less frequently than simple motor behaviors with objects, and reproducing gestures was more common than vocalizations. Moreover, imitation seemed to depend upon the child's level of mental development--the imitation of coordinated sequences, which requires the child to associate two external events, lagged behind the imitation of single-unit behaviors. There was no evidence for individual traits of general imitativeness, at least not until symbolic relations were involved. Live models were imitated more than TV models but only prior to age 3. While children under 2 years of age were not facile at imitating sequences of behaviors or delaying performance at short time after modeling, older toddlers readily and accurately imitated televised sequences even after a 24-hour delay. Whereas socially extroverted and fearless children imitated live models more than shy children, TV imitation was not related to temperament, home TV viewing habits, or parental education. Finally, the experience of being imitated may facilitate the social cognition of influencing another person.
