WEBVTT - From the Vault: Pretend Play, Part 2 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:08.639 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:10.639 is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so we have a 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:12.959 vault episode for you. This is going to be Pretend 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:17.760 Play Part two. It originally published one nine, twenty twenty five. 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:19.520 Let's explore. 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:26.400 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:34.760 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:35.880 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.320 And I am Joe McCormick, and we are back with 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:42.280 part two in our series on pretend play, meaning play 0:00:42.320 --> 0:00:46.960 that involves non literal action. Now, this is really one 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:49.040 of our series where I think if you haven't heard 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:51.440 part one, I would really recommend you go back and 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:53.479 listen to that one first, because we really laid the 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.360 groundwork there. We establish a lot of the definitions and 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:01.160 so forth. But as a brief refreshed or in part one, 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:05.760 Rob and I talked about our own memories of pretend 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:08.440 play from our own childhood, as well as our experiences 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:12.240 of pretend to play as parents, especially centering out around 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:15.120 the kind of play that happens in preschool age, you know, 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:17.480 around three to five or so, which, according to the 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:20.800 researchers is sort of the high season of pretend play 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.440 when the most pretending is happening usually though, of course, 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:27.440 we also talked about the ways that play extends throughout 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:30.800 the lifetime. Even pretend play, you know, it starts before 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:34.000 this period goes beyond it. But the preschool age is 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.319 when the pretending is coming thick and fast, and we 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.600 characterized what a lot of that play is, Like Robert, 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.600 I don't remember if we ever got into this in 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.080 the previous episode, but one thing I was reflecting on 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:49.920 before we started today is not just how much my 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:54.080 two year old daughter loves engaging in pretend play with 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:58.360 you know, her various dinosaurs, kind of doing imaginary tasks 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:02.320 and going to imaginary events things like that, but also 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:07.080 gets so dedicated to pretend play that like it is 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:11.040 a tragedy and an emergency if she is asked to 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:13.160 stop pretending before she's done. 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:17.640 Yeah. Again, I think that's one of the wonders of childhood. 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.760 They just get so they go all in on their 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:24.720 imaginative play, and you know, it's it's enviable. Though I 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.639 think we can sometimes relate. We can sometimes relate to 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:32.240 being thrown out of our own creative, imaginative endeavors without 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:36.160 enough warning, without a five minute warning from life. Parents 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:37.960 at least tend to give that five to ten minute 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:38.720 warning if they can. 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:41.600 I think the thing about pretending is if you're deep 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:43.400 enough in it, you can be given the warning and 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:45.959 then you just forget and you know, it doesn't stick. 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:49.760 Yeah, it's like falling back into a dream. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.680 But anyway, in the last episode, we also looked in 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:57.600 depth at a paper sort of scientific overview published in 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:01.400 a in a cognitive science review that was looking at 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:04.280 the state of research on pretend play in children. That 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:09.480 paper was by a researcher named Dina Skolnik Weisberg, published 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:13.000 in twenty fifteen. It was just called pretend Play, and 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.520 it was sort of a review of research on pretend play, 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:21.080 especially as it relates to other developing cognitive skills in childhood. 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:25.280 So in the last episode we talked about the paper's 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:29.000 discussion of the possible relationships of pretend play to symbolic 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:34.720 understanding and also to counterfactual reasoning. Today, I want to 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.720 return to another idea explored in this paper, and that 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:42.200 is the relationship of pretend play to theory of mind. 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:44.440 This is a concept that's come up on the show 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.560 many times. Before, but to define it again here, theory 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:52.200 of mind is the ability to recognize that other entities, 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:58.560 like other people and animals, have their own internal mental states, 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:04.640 such as beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions. And theory of 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:08.920 mind is also the understanding that other people's mental states 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:13.680 are independent of one's own. So it's not that everybody 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.160 is sad because I'm sad right now. The other people 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:19.680 different things are happening in their minds. We are not 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:23.240 born with theory of mind skills. The ability to imagine 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:26.880 and model the mental states of other people is something 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.280 that is acquired and refined throughout childhood. 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.520 Yeah, and it's this is of course the topic that's 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:37.280 come up on the show multiple times before and what'll 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:39.120 keep coming up because it's a huge part of the 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:43.479 human condition and it's so fascinating to think about. It's 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:45.640 one of those things that we use all the time 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:48.039 to the point that we we just we think of 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:50.520 it as just reality, and we think of what we 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:52.640 know of others' mental states, and we attribute to other 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:57.520 people's mental states as being just how people are. You know, 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:01.600 we think we know them, but in reality, like the 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:05.680 whether we're dealing with the closest relationships in your life, 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.200 you know, a significant others, family members, offspring, and so forth, 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:13.320 whether you're dealing with them or you're dealing with someone 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:15.279 you just met on the street or didn't even meet 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:18.599 someone that was walking across the street from you. We 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:22.640 we we create a simulation of their mind state of 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:27.040 what they're roughly, their their goals, their attitudes towards us 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:31.000 generally are, and and then we react to the to 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:34.400 those models, and so it is. It is kind of interesting, 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:36.680 kind of haunting to think about the fact that, like 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:39.520 the you that I think I know best is actually 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.559 inside of me. Yes, you know. And and of course 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:45.400 theory of mind can be trained on plenty of non 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:48.839 human entities as well, on objects and on real things. 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.120 Uh So it's a very powerful part of the human 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:53.320 cognition tool chest. 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:55.680 That's right, it's a you know, I was just thinking 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:58.400 about how theory of mind is so deep in such 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:02.599 different types of sort of human relations and expression. Like 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:06.440 theory of mind is the core of love, of what 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:09.040 it means to love people, but it's also the core 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:12.560 of like manipulation and machiavelianism. It's it's everywhere. 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:17.000 Yeah, yeah, it's involved in in all of our prejudices. 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:21.880 It's involved, you know, in in our hatred as well 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:23.960 as our love. So it's you know, it's it's a 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:25.240 very broad spectrum here. 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:29.560 Yeah, So it's I think easy to see why theory 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:34.320 of mind might have connections to pretend play. When you 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:38.680 play a pretend game, especially with other people, it is 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:43.719 important to understand the intentions of the play partner in 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:48.200 order to understand the game as non literal. So this 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:51.320 is an example game I mentioned in part one. Why 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:54.880 is my friend stirring a bowl of crayons with a 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:58.320 fork and then lifting the fork to my stuffed therapod 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:03.120 dinosaur's mouth. This activity does not make any sense when 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:07.000 just observed and taken literally. But if I'm a child 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.800 and I see this happening, even without talking about the game, 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:15.600 I can probably infer that my friend intends the crayons 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:18.560 to be understood as food. You know, last time we 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:23.120 talked about crayons as spaghetti, and thus intends the forklifting 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:27.560 to be understood as feeding, and thus intends the inert 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:31.920 stuffed dinosaur to be understood as eating. So I can 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:36.760 participate in this play by feeding the dinosaur spaghetti crayons 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:40.120 as well, or by making nomnom sounds when the crayon 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:44.640 reaches the dinosaur's mouth. And about this connection, Weisberg writes 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:49.920 in the paper quote pretense is thus meta representational, meaning 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:54.560 it involves representing someone's representation of a state of affairs. 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:59.280 Without the ability to meta represent one would see pretense 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:04.320 actions as nonsensical, and quarantining would break down. And remember 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:09.640 from last time, quarantining is the ability to stop yourself 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:15.760 from taking inapplicable lessons from pretend play. So the example 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:20.040 was mom is using a banana as a phone. Somehow 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:22.960 we can play that pretend game and yet not take 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:25.960 the incorrect lesson that you can actually make calls on 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:29.440 a banana. It's the ability to ward off incorrect information 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:33.040 and prevent your brain from learning things that are wrong 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:37.080 based on a game that is counterfactual. And so what 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:41.120 Weisberg is saying here is that things like quarantining are 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:47.120 only possible because we have this meta representational ability. Like 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:50.400 you can see somebody playing the banana as phone game 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.960 and you don't think that, oh, maybe the banana can 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:58.000 place calls because you understand that person's intentions that they're 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:01.040 just intending this to be a game, not intending to 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.240 use the banana literally as a phone. In my example, 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.160 I guess the equivalent would be like, are we feeding 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:11.000 the dinosaur crayons? Because crayons are actually food? Should I 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:14.680 eat them? Sometimes a kid may experiment along these lines, 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:17.400 but usually they do not end up at this conclusion. 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:21.439 Usually the kid understands the intention of the play partner 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:24.319 to treat the crayons as something other than what they 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:24.959 actually are. 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:28.079 I do have to say that after we recorded the 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:32.440 last episode, there were a number of phone banana shenanigans 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:35.280 in my household. Oh Ran it totally killed. It's just 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:39.720 inherently funny. So I hope listeners have been re exploring 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:40.680 the comedy as well. 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:43.679 I mean, that's funny no matter what age are. Absolutely 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:46.440 Oh but to talk about killing the joke by over 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:49.480 explaining it, nevertheless, I'm going to go there. I would 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.880 love to understand better the like the minute mechanics of 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:57.560 that kind of humor, Like how close physically does the 0:09:57.559 --> 0:09:59.800 fruit or the food have to be to the op 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:04.120 objecked to like work enough to be funny, because obviously 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:07.680 it's like a banana is funnier than like a plastic 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.600 toy phone. But I would also think a banana as 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.000 a phone is funnier than an apple as a phone. 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:16.920 Yeah, I mean a banana is stupid. A banana, I mean, 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:19.680 don't get me wrong, is delicious. But a banana is 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:24.199 bright yellow, there's all slipping on the peel clown shenan. Again, 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.440 it is phallic and therefore has that layer of humor 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:32.360 to it as well. And then the juxtaposition is that 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.679 a phone is serious. A phone, you know, it may 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:37.480 be a loved when calling, but it may be bad 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:40.120 news on the other end of the phone. The phone 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:42.360 is what you reach for when there's an emergency, So 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:45.400 the phone is dead serious or can be. The banana 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.560 is stupid and therefore it just works. 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.560 It's so good. But anyway, Okay, to come back to 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:56.360 playing pretend and theory of mind, the connections we've talked 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:59.520 about suggests there is a link between theory of mind 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:04.000 and playing pretend because it's about recognizing and internally modeling 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:06.720 the mental states of others, recognizing not just what another 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:11.679 person literally does, but understanding what that person intends. And 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:16.800 Weisberg compares this to a common experiment that is used 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:20.880 to test theory of mind in children, which he refers 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:24.480 to as the Sally Ann false belief task, though or 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:26.920 sometimes in the literature they just call this a false 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.880 belief test. Here's a simplified version of it. Okay, the 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:35.040 child is a participant. The child watches a character playing 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.680 with a ball, and then this character puts the ball 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.240 down in a basket and walks out of the room. 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.360 And then while the original character who is playing with 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:47.520 the ball is gone, somebody else comes into the room, 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.520 takes the ball out of the basket, hides it in 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:54.520 a box, and then leaves. Then the first character comes 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:57.600 back into the room, and the child has been watching 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:00.120 the whole time, so the child saw everything happen. When 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:03.520 you ask the child a question, where will the original 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:07.720 character look for the ball? So the child knows, because 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:10.079 they were watching the whole time, that the ball is 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.880 hidden in the box. But with theory of mind skills, 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.760 the child should be able to say that the character 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:19.760 should look in the basket where she left it, because 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:22.720 the child knows that the character does not know that 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:25.600 the ball was moved or where it was moved too, 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:28.960 So to answer this question correctly, the child in the 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:32.600 experiment has to ignore their own knowledge about the true 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:36.480 state of affairs and instead answer based on the false 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:41.160 belief that the character in the scenario would have. If 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:44.280 you compare this to the pretend play scenario, if a 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:47.760 kid wants to join in the crayons as spaghetti game 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:52.360 with another child, they have to ignore the true knowledge 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.000 that the crayons are crayons and that they are meant 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:58.560 for drawing and not for eating, and also to infer 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:01.800 the intentions of the play partner that the crayons are 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:06.199 to be treated as food for the dinosaur. So both 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:09.520 of these situations, pretend play and the false belief test 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:12.640 for theory of mind depend on at least two things 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:17.080 that Weisberg highlights. One of them is what she calls decoupling, 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:20.560 and that is temporarily ignoring your knowledge of what is 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:25.679 literally true, And the other is meta representation, internally representing 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:29.960 somebody else's mental states, such as their intention to represent 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:34.360 a literal object X as pretend object Y. So it's 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:37.199 very tempting to see a link between theory of mind 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:41.920 and pretend play. Weisberg in fact cites a researcher named A. M. 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:46.240 Leslie who has speculated in some writing that there is 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.520 possibly an underlying neural structure in the brain that is 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:54.040 responsible for both theory of mind and for pretending. Calling 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:59.439 this hypothetical structure the theory of mind module. Leslie apparently 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:03.880 argued that perhaps a developmental difference in this neural structure 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:07.920 is what underlies autism, given the observation that studies have 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:12.600 found that children with autism spectrum diagnoses demonstrate deficits in 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:16.600 social cognition, which implicates theory of mind, but also tend 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:20.840 to engage in less pretending. But both the existence of 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.479 this module and the connection with the autism spectrum is hypothetical. 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:30.040 What's clear is the cognitive and behavioral similarity between theory 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:34.760 of mind and elements of pretend play. And then Weisberg 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.000 goes on to site some studies that seem to support 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:38.920 this link. I thought a couple of these were kind 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:43.720 of interesting. One of them is by researchers named Rebecca 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:49.200 Dore and Angeline Lillard, published in Imagination, Cognition, and Personality 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:52.360 in twenty fifteen called Theory of Mind and Children's Engagement 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:56.240 in Fantasy Worlds. This was a study that looked at 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:59.480 preschoolers at the beginning and then the end of a 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.440 seven month period, and it tested for a few different 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:05.280 things to see if there are any correlations. One was 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:10.600 a child's tendency to engage in fantasy, ideation and activities, 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:13.680 so this would be related to pretending basically a child's 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:18.160 orientation toward fantasy. And then another thing measured was the 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:22.960 child's tendency to use mentalistic descriptions. I had to look 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:25.760 up what this is, but I think this basically means, like, 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:30.200 imagine you see a drawing of a character reaching a 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:32.920 bucket down into a pool of water. You could give 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:35.960 a physical description of that scene, you know, the character 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:38.840 is leaning down scooping up water, or you could give 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:43.000 a mentalistic description, which might be something like this character 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:46.000 wants a drink of water, explaining things in terms of 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:50.000 motivations and mental states as opposed to just physical movements. 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:53.680 And then the third thing tested for correlation here was 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:57.160 the child's capacity for theory of mind, which is tested 0:15:57.160 --> 0:15:59.400 a variety of ways, one of which is the false 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:01.600 belief TAC that I was talking about a minute ago, 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:05.480 but another is testing for whether children understand that different 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:09.480 people have desires and emotions they're different from their own. 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:13.640 Things like that, and this study found that preschool children 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:17.200 who are more oriented toward fantasy on a number of 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:20.920 measures did not grow beyond the baseline in the use 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.800 of mentalistic descriptions during the seven month period, but did 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:28.160 show some greater improvements in theory of mind, so that 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:31.920 establishes that there could possibly be a link between the 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:36.000 tendency to engage in fantasy and faster learning on theory 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:39.760 of mind skills. Another finding is that some experiments have 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:44.360 found that children do better on false belief tasks like 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:46.680 the ball in the basket versus the box thing I 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:50.000 was talking about when the format of the test involves 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:54.760 more pretending. So think of when the scenario is presented 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:58.560 as a fictional story or when it is acted out 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:03.080 with invisible pretend and objects, as opposed to being acted 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:06.119 out with literal physical props, in which case apparently the 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:08.880 kids do a bit worse. That kind of makes sense 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:11.360 to me, Like, I guess it's harder to ignore your 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:14.280 knowledge that the ball is actually in the box and 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:16.840 remember that Sally left it in the basket and that's 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:19.159 all she knows. When oh my god, like I just 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:21.120 saw the ball go in the box. I literally saw 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:25.239 it go in there. There It is also interesting is 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:28.879 there are apparently some findings that suggest this is actually 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:34.399 in adults, that reading fiction may possibly improve particular theory 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:35.440 of mind skills. 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.360 I remember reading about this several years back. 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:41.320 I believe yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, as with the stuff 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:44.280 discussed in the previous episode, with the links to symbolic 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:49.840 understanding and counterfactual reasoning, Weisberg adds the important caveat that 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.560 basically all of these experiments connecting theory of mind to 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:57.639 pretend play are correlational or they're limited to a single situation. 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:02.920 It's really hard, maybe impossible, to devise an ethical, robust 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:07.720 experiment where you like randomly manipulate the independent variable of 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.399 pretend to play over a developmentally significant period of time 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:15.720 and then track the results. Both ethics and practicality kind 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.679 of limit us to weaker forms of testing in this 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:21.840 subject matter. So we should be realistic and thus humble 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.840 about the limitations of what we know about these links. 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:27.920 So what we know is very interesting, but it's also 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.359 fairly tentative and important to not hang too much on 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:44.480 these findings, especially the findings of a single study. But 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:47.320 with those caveats, I think there's pretty good reason to 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:51.440 think that pretending and theory of mind are deeply intertwined 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:54.440 in some ways in the brain and in child development, 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:58.400 but exactly how they are related, how one affects the other, 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:02.439 and so forth, is more questionable. Now. The kind of 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:05.280 theory of mind that we have been primarily talking about, 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:09.560 of course, is inferring the mental states of other people 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:14.679 who do physically exist. But a different related question is 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:18.439 what about simulating the workings of an external mind that is, 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:22.520 at its base level make believe? And this brings us 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:25.280 back to something we mentioned only briefly in Part one, 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:26.919 the imaginary friend. 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:30.639 Yeah, in some ways, the imaginary friend is it's like 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:36.360 the ultimate pretend play manifestation, an imaginary being that is 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:41.720 altogether imaginary and invisible, but is also gifted with varying 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:46.879 degrees of agency and intelligence. This you know. This of course, 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:50.800 gets more complicated when you try and like nail down 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:55.320 what an imaginary friend is. There are sort of related 0:19:55.359 --> 0:20:00.399 concepts that are sometimes looped together and sometimes are considered like, 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.160 for instance, you have things like stuffed animals that are 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:06.840 attributed personalities in some degree of agency. You also have 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:11.679 personified objects, and you also have also sometimes there's a 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:15.680 distinction between imaginary companions and imaginary friends. I'll come back 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:19.120 to that in a bit, but I guess a good 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:23.560 place to start would be with examples from our own lives. Joe, 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:27.960 did you have an imaginary friend? And does your child 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:29.600 have an imaginary friend or friends? 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:32.600 This may get into some of the distinctions you were 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:37.080 just highlighting, But I never had like a consistent imaginary 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:39.719 friend over time. I think I may have had single 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:42.520 use imaginary friends that were, you know, dreamed up for 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:46.439 a single play occasion or something. With my daughter, I 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:49.520 don't think there's not a single entity who is her 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.840 consistent imaginary friend, but she does seem to ascribe a 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:59.280 lot of personality to various pretend entities, like imbuing mind 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:03.960 into stuff, to animal friends, or imagining. We sometimes play 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:07.439 this game with these invisible kitty cats and stuff that 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:10.560 you know, we can find like hiding between the couch 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.080 cushions and things, and we pull out an invisible kitty cat, 0:21:13.080 --> 0:21:14.920 and oh, and she can talk about what the kitty 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:18.080 cat wants. But I think that's different than an imaginary friend, 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:21.960 which is usually thought of as something that persists over time. 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:25.960 Well, I mean, yes, yes, and no. I guess one 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:28.520 thing This sort of comes out of the research I've 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:31.920 been looking looking at here is that I think imaginary 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:34.400 friends do come and go, and they inevitably do come 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.080 and then go. There is kind of like a period 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:39.159 of time during which they tend to be active. But 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:41.919 there's not necessarily like we should can get too attached 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:44.720 to the idea that they'll just be a single imaginary friend. 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:48.080 There could be several, and they need not be this 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:52.040 sort of you know, standard version of some sort of 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:57.840 essentially invisible friend, an invisible humanoid being that is like 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:01.760 on the same level as as your child. And also 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:03.680 they might just spring out of nowhere, as we'll get 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:09.040 into a bit. But yeah, I myself have no memory 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:13.320 of ever having an invisible friend, despite the fact that 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:16.359 I was the oldest child and in many respects the 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:19.400 eldest child that seemed to be more likely to have 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:25.000 an imaginary friend. My own child had being lost friends 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:28.840 that I remember, and so I asked them about this, 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:30.879 is like, do you remember your being lost friends? And 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:32.560 they were like, no, I don't remember the being lost 0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:36.479 friends at all. I remember three imaginary cats that I 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:38.960 had at one point. I'm like, okay, well I forgot 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:40.720 about that. One. So that's another thing to keep in 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:44.960 mind when you think about like single imaginary friends that 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:48.280 a child may or may not have a lot of. 0:22:48.280 --> 0:22:51.280 It also comes down to what memories are retained by 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:55.200 the child and what is noticed and retained by the parents. 0:22:55.680 --> 0:22:58.400 And so it's entirely likely between those two things that 0:22:58.720 --> 0:23:03.240 old imaginary friends are lost entirely. So, yeah, there's a 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:04.240 lot to unpack there. 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:06.960 It's funny. My daughter has also gone through phases where 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:09.719 she was really obsessed with bees. She loves bees and 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:12.680 has you know, likes to point out bees flying around 0:23:12.680 --> 0:23:16.040 things that aren't always bees, you know, sometimes there might 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:18.320 just be a buzz or something, you know, made by 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:19.040 a machine and. 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:22.560 It's like b b Yeah. Yeah, So like my child's 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:25.000 being lost friends. I don't think they really talked or anything. 0:23:25.080 --> 0:23:29.080 They just they were essentially animals that were invisible, you know. 0:23:29.160 --> 0:23:31.080 I also asked my mom about this. I was on 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:32.880 the phone with her last night and I was just checking. 0:23:32.880 --> 0:23:34.200 It was like, you know, it was like me and 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:36.359 my siblings, none of us had invisible friends that you 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:38.760 know of, right, And she's like no, But she shared 0:23:38.800 --> 0:23:41.480 that she had seven imaginary of friends when she was 0:23:41.520 --> 0:23:44.320 a child. Oh, and she was the eldest child. This 0:23:44.359 --> 0:23:47.600 would have been the I guess the early fifties, so 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:50.439 that that'll be worth keeping in mind as we proceed 0:23:50.440 --> 0:23:51.840