We compared 1and 2-year-old children’s performance on Pretend and Reality tasks. Pretend tasks involved the comprehension of a pretend scenario, whereas Reality tasks did not. For example, the experimenter pretends to drink water from an empty cup, she fills another cup with imaginary water and then invites the child to drink. In the Reality version, the experimenter uses real water in making e...

The imagination and creativity of children is often puzzling to the adult mind. Pretend play and make-believe friends are often prevalent in the life of a child. Past research shows a relationship between the use of the imagination in children’s play and their social, cognitive, and emotional development. Furthermore, there are a number of gender differences in the type of imaginary play and pr...

Abstract Research on the development of Theory Mind has often focused predominantly belief attribution, but recently moves have been made to include also other mental states. This includes especially factive states like knowledge, where may turn out be more basic than non-factive Mind. I argue that children’s early pretend play carries important implications for research. Although does not dire...

Imaginative play is an important part of childhood that provides insight not only into a child’s ability to use language, but ultimately their understandings the world more broadly. Through play, children control story as they shape emerging narrative through words, gestures, movement, and spaces. In this paper we deconstruct single instance imaginative captured in home corner preschool classro...

This paper informs therapeutic practices that use play, by providing a non-standard philosophical account of pretense: the enactive account of pretend play (EAPP). The EAPP holds that pretend play activity need not invoke mental representational mechanisms; instead, it focuses on interaction and the role of affordances in shaping pretend play activity. One advantage of this re-characterization ...