Lion Kings or puppies: the influence of fantasy on children's understanding of pretense

Many have thought that children have an early appreciation of the mind in the case of pretend play. Results from several experiments are against this. However, an experiment by Lillard (Body or mind: children's categorizing of pretense, Child Development, 67 (1996), 1717±1734, Experiment 4) suggested that when a pretense is about a fantasy character, instead of a real entity, children might have a better understanding of the mind's involvement. The present experiment tested this, and found that indeed, when pretending to be a fantasy character is at issue, 4-year-olds are significantly more apt to indicate the mind's involvement. Several possible reasons for this result are discussed. The field of early social cognition has been re-energized in recent years by the study of how children develop an understanding of minds (Flavell & Miller, 1998). Particularly central has been the issue of when children understand that minds represent the world. Minds are not simply mirrors of reality; they represent reality, and can do so in a variety of ways. One person might represent something as an apple when in fact it is a candle. Another might represent his keys as being in a drawer when someone else knows the keys have been moved to a door. People's ability to see one and the same situation in myriad ways seems obvious to adults, but often seems unappreciated by most children under the age of 4. Evidence often credited with suggesting that this ability develops in early childhood is from Wimmer and Perner (1983). They showed children a doll named Maxi, who hid his chocolate in a cupboard and then went out to play. While he was out, his mother moved the chocolate to a new location. Children were asked, when Maxi returned, where he would look for his chocolate. Surprisingly, many children under 5 claimed he would look in the new location. Later experiments using more refined methods usually find that 4-year-olds respond correctly on such tasks, but most 3-year-olds do not (Astington, Harris & Olson, 1988; Moses & Flavell, 1990; Wellman, 1990; Flavell & Miller, 1998). This result is very solid; other methods, like those in which the child hides an object herself, sometimes show better performance and sometimes do not (e.g. the discrepancy of Chandler, Fritz & Hala, 1989, versus Sodian, Taylor, Harris & Perner, 1991). Anecdotally as well, younger children sometimes seem to show evidence of understanding false belief (Dunn, 1988; Reddy, 1991), but the apparent understanding may not be reliable or even valid. In sum, young children appear to lack understanding that minds represent, rather than mirror, reality. Pretend play is of particular interest in this regard (Leslie, 1987). When one pretends, one mentally represents the pretend situation or object, and projects it onto the existing, real one (Lillard, 1993a). Children pretend as early as 18 months of age, and they appear to understand pretense in others by 28 months (Harris & Kavanaugh, 1993). For example, they understand that if someone pretends to spill pretend tea, the location is `wet'. Many have assumed that engaging in pretense requires not only having mental representations, but also knowing that one has them (Flavell, 1988; Forguson & Gopnik, 1988; Leslie, 1988; Taylor & # Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Address for correspondence: A. Lillard, Department of Psychology, Gilmer Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2477, USA; e-mail: [email protected] Carlson, 1997). If it were the case that pretenders know that they mentally represent the pretend situation, then this would constitute an early appreciation of mental representation in the pretense domain. Several theorists (those just cited, except Leslie) have suggested that this decalage does occur. (Leslie, in contrast, believes that there is no decalage because younger children understand representation in belief contexts as well.) Against the speculation that pretense entails precocious mental representation understanding, some work suggests that young children actually do not understand that pretense involves mental representation (Lillard, 1993b; Rosen, Schwebel & Singer, 1997), or even involves the mind at all (Lillard, 1996). For example, when asked if various events could occur using only one's body, or only one's mind, or whether they required both a body and a mind, 4-year-olds correctly placed think events (like `Think about your teacher') in the mind box, but placed pretend events (like `Pretend you are a rabbit') along with physical events (like `Get wet in the rain') in the body box. This categorizing of pretend events with purely physical, mindless events suggests young children do not perceive mental involvement in pretense. (For discussion of other work that seems to run contrary to this view, see General Discussion in Lillard, 1998.) Interestingly, though, one experiment in the study by Lillard (1996, Experiment 4) suggested that, for certain types of pretense, children might have somewhat more understanding that the mind is involved: namely, for pretending to be fantasy characters. Sixteen 4and 5year-olds (mean age 4;11) were asked to place cards naming various events in the mind, body or both boxes just mentioned. Several items focused on pretense: pretend you are a puppy, a hippopotamus, the Lion King, a mommy=daddy, in your bedroom, in an airplane, and in the jungle. The control items were usually put in their proper boxes, and of the pretense items, 13% were placed in the both box, 34% were placed in the body box, and 53% were placed in the mind box. Because using the both box implies that the child knows that the event requires the mind, this amounts to children claiming that 66% of pretense events required a mind. This was the best performance seen in any experiment in this line, for this age group; in other experiments, performance has hovered around 40% (Lillard, 1996). What might be the reason for this better performance? Children did particularly well on two items, `Pretend to be the Lion King' and `Pretend you are in the jungle', averaging 81% mind and both box designations (hereafter simply `mind boxes') for each. Closer inspection of the results (see Table 1) suggested particularly strong performance for one group in which the Lion King and jungle items were early in the item order; perhaps better performance on these items carried over to other pretense items. It is also possible, of course, that the groups were somewhat different due to random sample variation: other experiments (cited earlier) have shown that about 40% of 4-year-olds do understand that pretending involves the mind, and probably that more competent subset was over-represented in Group 1. The experiment described here aimed (1) to see if the possible fantasy character effect would replicate with another sample, and (2), if it did, whether the order effect, in which considering fantasy or exotic characters first leads to more insight about other types of entities, would also replicate.