Citation

Lillard AS, Witherington DC. Dev. Psychol. 2004; 40(1): 95-113.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400, USA. lillard@virginia.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/0012-1649.40.1.95

PMID

14700467

PMCID

PMC3334333

Abstract

An important issue for understanding early cognition is why very young children's real-world representations do not get confused by pretense events. One possible source of information for children is the pretender's behaviors. Pretender behaviors may vary systematically across real and pretend scenarios, perhaps signaling to toddlers to interpret certain events as not real. Pretender behaviors were examined in 2 experiments in which mothers were asked both to pretend to have a snack and really to have a snack with their 18-month-olds. Episodes were analyzed for condition differences in verbal and nonverbal behaviors, including smiling, looking, laughter, and functional movements. Reliable differences were found across conditions for several variables. In a 3rd experiment, children's apparent understanding of pretense in relation to their mothers' behaviors was examined, and significant associations were found with some of the mothers' behavioral changes but not others. This work provides a first inroad into the issue of how children learn to interpret pretense acts as pretense.

Language: en