Poster #32 - Embodiment and Representation when Constructing Knowledge through Play—A Registered Replication and Extension

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

How and when do children learn from pretense? In many well controlled studies of children’s learning through pretend play, children are passive, simply presented with a pretend scenario via an experimenter or video (e.g., Sutherland & Friedman, 2012; Mares & Sivakumar, 2014). But to fully understand how children learn from pretense, the pretense must include well-controlled embodied, active experiences, to determine whether this more naturalistic play also engenders learning.

In the current study, we replicated previous work showing children learn facts about real animals from a passively presented pretend scenario (Sutherland and Friedman) and extended these methods to embodied pretend via interactive puppet and costume play scenarios and learning and retention across a two week delay. Children were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: 1) replication of previous learning, 2) replication of control condition, 3) extension to embodied, interactive puppet condition, and 4) extension to embodied, interactive costume condition. In the two replication conditions, children passively watched an experimenter present a puppet show about an ambiguous animal called a “nerp” conveying what nerps like and dislike. In the puppet and costume conditions, the child and a trained research assistant used/wore nerp puppets or costumes, and the research assistant guided the child through a scripted play scenario conveying the same information. In all conditions, children were asked four questions about nerps. Children were then asked the same questions during a two-week follow-up.

Participants included 144 3-5 year old children (M = 4yr, 8mo). Children participated either in their preschool or a children’s science museum or play center. We replicated Sutherland & Friedman’s (2012) results, showing that children answered target questions correctly significantly more often in the passive pretense condition than in the control condition, F (1, 69) = 14.77, p <.001.

We then added in our two embodiment conditions, and found again that not only did children in the passive pretense condition learn more than in the control condition but that children in the puppet and costume conditions also learned more than the control condition F (3, 132) = 8.62, p <.001. We then looked at children’s memory for the material presented in the pretense at a two week follow up, and again found children remembered more across all pretense conditions, regardless of embodiment type, than they did in the control condition, F (3, 84) = 3.023, p = .034.

Taken together, these results show children can and do learn from pretend play scenarios. Importantly, we found that children are learning just as well when they engage in such pretense passively (by watching others engage in the pretense) as they do actively (when engaging in the pretense themselves as a puppet or in costume). More active embodied pretense is neither distracting children away from learning, but neither is it promoting their learning. This is true not only in the moment of learning, but also two weeks later. These results have implications for children’s learning from pretense, as well as for the use of pretend play methods that are closer to the ways in which children play naturalistically.

Authors

• Brittany Thompson, George Mason University
  Presenting Author

• Thalia R. Goldstein, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Author