The Effect of Imagination and Pretend Play on Children's Social Behaviors and Attitudes

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

Children are exposed to huge amounts of media -- the average child watches 32 hours of television and videos per week, in addition to playing video games and reading books. This media activity to some degree supplants the age-old childhood staple of pretend play. Yet little is known about how any of these activities impact children, and how the impacts compare among the different activities. How much and in what ways does participation in fictional worlds change children? The existing literature does offer a few suggestions. For example, children who watch violent acts on television are apt to imitate those acts, and very young children who watch more aggressive and entertainment-focused (non-educational) television are more apt to have attention problems later in life. On the positive side, children who watch more educational television have more positive outcomes in terms of language and school success. But how exactly does this work, given that children distinguish pretense and reality fairly well from an early age? Why doesn't the fictional world stay a world apart? And what are the extents of influence -- if television with aggressive content leads children to be more aggressive, does television with prosocial content lead them to be kinder? This research will examine how television, books, other media, and pretend play impact children, for better or for worse, and how the impacts differ when children encounter similar experiences in real life. It will focus particularly on three areas of potential impact: social behavior; executive function (their capacities for self-regulation, inhibitory control, and problem solving, for example); and attitudes towards people of different ethnic backgrounds. Children will be given pre-tests, then will be exposed to the fictional situation for a fixed amount of time, and finally will be given post-tests to measure the impacts of the situation. The significance of this project lies in its contribution to a better understanding of how fiction influences children, with an eye to creating and advising parents on more positive fictional experiences for children's development. For example, in a pilot study, the PI found that watching just 9 minutes of the most popular television show today for children ages 2 to 11 lowered 4-year-olds' ability to self-regulate and delay gratification considerably, as compared to drawing or watching a different television show. It is vital that parents understand the influences such experiences have both immediately and over the long term. This research will help clarify our understanding so that parents and others working with children can make wiser choices about their children's fiction-related activities.