Children's generic interpretation of pretense.
We report two experiments investigating how 3- to 5-year-olds learn general knowledge from pretend play-how they learn about kinds of things (e.g., information about dogs) from information about particular individuals in pretend play (a certain dog in a pretend scenario). Children watched pretend-play enactments in which animals showed certain behaviors or heard utterances conveying the same information. When children were subsequently asked about who shows the behavior, children who watched pretend play were more likely to give generic responses than were children who heard the utterances. These findings show that children generalize information from pretend play to kinds even without being prompted to think about kinds, that pretend play can be informative about familiar kinds, and also that pretend play is a more potent source for general knowledge than are utterances about individuals.
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada. Electronic address: cebaer@psych.ubc.ca.
Carolyn
C
Baer
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada.
Ori
O
Friedman
D000818:Animals; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004285:Dogs; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D010988:Play and Playthings
Fiction; General knowledge; Generic language; Learning from pretense; Preschoolers; Pretend play