Poster #25 - Domain Specificity in Role-Play: How Character Strengths and Weaknesses Impact Children’s Behavior

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Vygotsky famously said children are “a head taller” in play (1978, p. 102). Recent work supports this claim: when role-playing a competent character, such as a superhero, preschoolers show improved self-regulation (Grenell et al., 2018; Karniol et al., 2011; White et al., 2015; 2017). But, we know far less about the effects of character weaknesses on children’s behavior. To what extent could role-play involving incompetent characters lead to decrements in performance? In one study, children delayed gratification longer when pretending to be Superman, who “knows how to wait really well”, versus Dash, who is “quick and impulsive” (Karniol et al., 2011); however, given the lack of a control condition for comparison, the effect of this task-related weakness remains unclear. We also do not know what happens when the characters children role-play have a both strengths and weaknesses. Is children’s embodiment of character traits domain-specific? The current study aimed to answer these open questions by asking children to complete creativity and selective attention measures while role-playing a character with task-relevant strengths and weaknesses.

Participants were 29 5-7-year-olds (M = 72.29 months, SD = 7.92; 15 girls) from the northeast United States. Following a vocabulary test (NIH Toolbox, 2015), children were randomly assigned to an attentive, creative, or control condition. In the attentive condition, children watched a video of a character, Alex, who was good at selectively attending to one colorful bird in a large flock, but was not good at creating shapes out of clouds. In the creative condition, Alex was a creative cloud watcher, but not good at attending to the colorful bird. After the video, children in the attentive and creative conditions were asked to pretend to be Alex and they were given a red sweatshirt, like the one Alex wore in the video, to encourage role-play (Adam & Galinsky, 2012). Children in the control condition were told that the sweatshirt was just something to wear in our lab. Finally, all children completed the Flanker, a measure of selective attention (NIH Toolbox, 2015), and the circle task, a measure of creativity in which children draw pictures within a set of circles (Torrance Test of Creative Thinking–Figural; Torrance, 1966). Strength/weakness and task orders were counterbalanced; they did not relate to performance.

Preliminary results indicated transfer of character strengths, but not weaknesses. ANCOVAs, controlling for age and vocabulary, revealed that condition impacted performance on both selective attention, F(2, 24) = 4.34, p = .025, eta2= .27, and creativity, F(2, 24) = 6.05, p = .007, eta2=.34. Children in the attentive condition outperformed children in the creative and control conditions on the Flanker (see Figure 1). Similarly, children in the creative condition made more creative drawings than children in the control and attentive conditions (see Figure 2). However, compared to controls, performance did not suffer as a function of character weaknesses for either outcome variable. These findings highlight the power of pretending to promote positive behavioral change and suggest that children use information about characters they portray in nuanced, domain-specific ways.

Authors

• Rachel White, Hamilton College
  Presenting Author

• Rachel Yirigian, Hamilton College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Zachary Bivins, Hamilton College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Claudia Karademas, Hamilton College
  Non-Presenting Author