This paper presents a computational approach to the generation of cognitive scripts employed in freeform activities such as pretend play. Pretend play activities involve a high degree of improvisational narrative construction using cognitive scripts acquired from everyday experience, cultural experiences, and previous play experiences. Our computational model of cognitive script generation, bas...

The aim of this study was to examine relationships among pretend play, creativity, emotion regulation, and executive functioning in children. Pretend play processes were assessed using the Affect in Play Scale (APS), which measures children’s cognitive and affective processes, such as organization of a plot or use of emotions. Sixty-one female participants, in kindergarten through fourth grade,...

Play fighting and chasing in human children – often referred to as rough-and-tumble play, or RTP R&T is a common form of one that has the most obvious correspondence play many (especially mammalian) non-human species. Unlike object, pretend sociodramatic generally encouraged by teachers parents, viewed much more ambivalent way. The role it development, whether this should be positive negative l...

The authors discuss the association between make-believe play and the development of executive-function (EF) skills in young children. Some forty years ago, Lev S. Vygotsky first proposed that make-believe fosters the development of symbolic thought and self-regulation. Since then, a small body of research has produced evidence of an association between pretend play and such EF skills as inhibi...

The Augmented Knight’s Castle is an augmented toy environment that enriches the children’s pretend play by using background music, sound effects, verbal commentary of toys, and different forms of tactile and visual feedback in reaction to the children’s play. Moreover, interactive learning experiences can be integrated into the play (e.g. to teach songs and poems or to provide the child with fa...

Mothers begin to pretend with their children during the second year, when children still have much to learn about the real world. Although it would be easy to confuse what is pretend with what is real, children at this young age often demonstrate comprehension during pretense situations. It is plausible that social referencing, in which the child uses the mother's emotional expression as a guid...

This study examined whether a storytelling and story-acting practice (STSA), integrated as a regular component of the preschool curriculum, can help promote three key dimensions of young children's school readiness: narrative and other oral-language skills, emergent literacy, and social competence. A total of 149 low-income preschoolers (almost all 3- and 4-year-olds) participated, attending si...