CHAPTER 7

LECTURE EXTENSION

More Evidence on How Play Enhances Cognitive Development

The benefits of play are not easily apparent. Many are complex and indirect and may take years to be realized. Still, there is considerable support for the view that play contributes to the development of a diverse array of higher mental functions. Make-believe play has been granted special research attention.

GENERAL COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL SKILLS Many studies indicate that play not only reflects, but contributes to general cognitive and social development. As the text points out, preschoolers who spend more time at sociodramatic play are advanced in general intellectual development and are seen as more socially competent by their teachers. Young children who especially enjoy pretending also score higher on tests of imagination and creativity. When play objects are used in novel ways, they encourage the discovery of new relationships and may enhance children's ability to think flexibly and inventively (Singer & Singer, 1990).

MEMORY Evidence indicates that fantasy play strengthens children's memory. Children's recall for both listlike and narrative information is promoted by make-believe. For example, Newman (1990) instructed one group of 4- and 5-year-olds to play with a set of toys and another group simply to remember the toys. The play condition produced far better recall. Rather than just naming or touching the objects (strategies applied by preschoolers in the "remember" condition), children instructed to play engaged in many spontaneous organizations of the materials that enabled them to memorize effortlessly. These included functional use of substitute objects (pretending to eat the toy banana or putting shoes on the doll) and narrating their activities, as in "I'm squeezing this lemon" or "Fly away in this helicopter, doggie!" When children embed an object in meaningful make-believe, they increase its memorableness. In this way, play may provide a vital foundation for more sophisticated memory strategies mastered over middle childhood that depend on establishing meaningful relationships among to-be-remembered information.

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY Effective story recall requires elaborate facility with language, a capacity that is also enriched by play experiences. As Ervin-Tripp (1991) notes, young children engaged in play hear speech embedded in actions on objects that are talked about at the moment. This helps ensure that language is understandable because it is highly redundant with the immediate context. When new words and expressions arise in the course of a fantasy scene or game, children can guess their meaning easily from concrete cues in the situation. The linguistic skills required to express different points of view, resolve disputes, and persuade peers to collaborate so play can continue are numerous. Play offers an arena in which all facets of conversational dialogue can be extended.

What does research say about the role of make-believe in children's literacy development? Time children devote to pretending at age 4 is positively related to emergent reading and writing skills after entering kindergarten and first grade-specifically, the extent to which children spontaneously read words on game cards and signs, understand print concepts, and write letters and simple words (Bergen & Mauer, 2000). The more children engage in literacy-relevant play (activities like the recycling center), the more advanced their emergent literacy skills are as well.

REASONING Make-believe also fosters young children's ability to reason about impossible or absurd situations-a finding highly consistent with Vygotsky's emphasis that play assists children in separating meanings from the objects for which they stand, thereby permitting the meanings themselves to be manipulated in flexible and innovative ways. A repeated finding in the cognitive development literature is that through much of middle childhood, children's thinking is tied to the here and now-to the concrete reality before them. But under certain conditions, a "theoretical" mode of reasoning is attained by young children. Dias and Harris (1988, 1990) explored 4- to 6-year-olds' capacity to follow logical propositions even when the context in which they are conveyed defies real-world knowledge. Consider the following syllogism:

All cats bark.
Rex is a cat.
Does Rex bark?

The researchers had some children act out the problem with toys that represented the content of each premise. Still others were told that the events were taking place on a pretend planet rather than Earth. Control children merely listened and answered the question. Children in the "play" conditions gave more "theoretical" than "factual" responses and were also able to justify their answers with theoretical ideas-for example, "In the story cats bark, so we can pretend they bark." The authors concluded that entering the pretend mode enables children to reason with contrary facts as if they were true. Treating verbal statements as a logical basis of deduction independent of their content is a capacity that does not emerge in the reality-oriented mode until adolescence.

Bergen, D., & Mauer, D. (2000). Symbolic play, phonological awareness, and literacy skills at three age levels. In K. A. Roskos & J. F. Christie, eds., Play and literacy in early childhood: Research from multiple perspective (pp. 45-62). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 45-62.

Dias, M. G., & Harris, P. L. (1988). The effect of make-believe play on deductive reasoning. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6, 207-221.

Dias, M. G., & Harris, P. L. (1990). The influence of the imagination on reasoning by young children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 8, 305-318.

Ervin-Tripp, S. (1991). Play in language development. In B. Scales, M. Almy, A. Nicolopoulou, & S. Ervin-Tripp (Eds.), Play and the social context of development in early care and education (pp. 84-97). New York: Teachers College Press.

Newman, L. S. (1990). Intentional versus unintentional memory in young children: Remembering versus playing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 50, 243-258.

Singer, D. G., & Singer, J. (1990). The house of make-believe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

LEARNING ACTIVITY

Theory of Mind

As described in the text, theory of mind refers to children's developing concepts of mental activity, such as memories, beliefs, and imagination. The most frequently used task to assess children's theory of mind is the false-belief task (Hogrefe, Wimmer, & Perner, 1986). In one variation of the false-belief task, children are shown a familiar box, such as a crayon box, and asked what they think is in the box. Of course, children usually say "crayons." The box is then opened, revealing not crayons, but something else, such as balls. Children are asked what they originally thought was the in box before being shown its contents, as well as to predict what another child, who has not seen the contents of the box, will think is in the box. The first question assesses children's memory for their initial belief (referred to as representational change), whereas the second question assesses their ability to understand false belief. Thus, children who correctly answer "crayons" to both of these questions are assumed to be able to conceptualize a false belief previously held by themselves, as well as a false belief in another person.

Use the following protocol to assess children's theory of mind. Most 4-year-old children should correctly answer "crayons" to both questions. In contrast, 3-year-olds will likely respond "balls" to both questions-seeming to forget their initial belief.

1. EXPECTATION QUESTION

Begin the False Belief Task by showing the child a closed crayon box. Say "Look what I've got. What do you think is in here?"

Once the child answers with the expected contents (i.e., crayons), say "So you think there are crayons in there? Let's look and see." Open the box and say "No, look, what is really in here?" Once the child responds with "balls," confirm the child's answer "Yes, balls are in here."

2. REPRESENTATIONAL CHANGE QUESTION

Next, take the box from the child, close it, and ask the child "When you first saw the box, before we opened it, what did you think was inside it?" (If child does not respond to this question ask "Did you think that there were balls inside it or did you think there were crayons inside it?").

3. FALSE BELIEF QUESTION

"X hasn't seen inside this box. If X sees the box all closed up like this, what will she think is inside it?" (If the child does not respond to this question ask "Will she think there are balls inside it or will she think there are crayons inside it?"). [Note: X refers to another child or adult who is not present.]

Hogrefe, G. J., Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1986). Ignorance versus false belief: A developmental lag in attribution of epistemic states. Child Development, 57, 567-582.