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Speaker 1: Hey you Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have

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Speaker 1: a vault episode for you. This one originally published one seven,

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. It is Pretend Play, Part one, the

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Speaker 1: first in a multi part series about the importance of

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Speaker 1: pretend play for human beings.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 3: And today we're going to begin a series of episodes

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Speaker 3: looking at the topic of pretend play. And yes, folks,

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Speaker 3: this is one of my Baby Looked at You topics,

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Speaker 3: inspired directly by watching my currently two year old daughter's

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Speaker 3: wonderful and frightening brain become ever more powerful by day. Lately,

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Speaker 3: she has been all about pretending. Sometimes it is pretending

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Speaker 3: to be things. Robert, I can't remember if I told

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Speaker 3: you about the Christmas Elf. Do you know the Christmas elth?

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Speaker 1: Do I know the Christmas Self? Well, there are many elves.

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Speaker 3: This is different than the one on the shelf. This

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Speaker 3: is the So my daughter pretends to be this thing

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Speaker 3: called the Christmas Elf, which mostly just like makes a

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Speaker 3: grotesque kind of gargoyle face and dances wildly to Black Sabbath.

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Speaker 3: That's what Christmas elth is.

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Speaker 1: Okay, well you're bringing her up right then. That seems

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Speaker 1: that seems more in keeping with some of the more

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Speaker 1: archaic forms of ELF that we've discussed on the show.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know, knowing me, that may sound like

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Speaker 3: a trained behavior, but this is just what naturally emerged

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Speaker 3: from her. I don't know where she got that. That's

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Speaker 3: what Christmas elf is. She's like data put on Black

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Speaker 3: Sabbath record, but it runs around dance into that. And

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Speaker 3: then one of the good pretending to be things the

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Speaker 3: other day was she was she's been playing with some

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Speaker 3: little doggies that she got for Christmas doggy toys, and

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Speaker 3: one of them is a begle. So you know, she

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Speaker 3: likes talking about the beagle and hearing about the beagle.

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Speaker 3: But she was talking to Rachel the other day and

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Speaker 3: she I think she was saying woof, woof, and Rachel said, oh,

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Speaker 3: are you a beagle right now? And she said no.

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Speaker 3: Tater Tot got very still. I don't know what exactly

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Speaker 3: are the properties one mimics when being a tater Tot

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Speaker 3: that I can't fully inhabit that mindset, but I admire

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Speaker 3: the ambition.

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Speaker 1: Well, I guess it is of the various fried and

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Speaker 1: or baked potato food products. So it's the tater tots

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Speaker 1: are the most canine of the bunch, so sure, yeah.

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Speaker 3: But a lot of it is. So there's a little

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Speaker 3: bit of pretending to be things, but a lot more

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Speaker 3: of it is what when we get into the research

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Speaker 3: later in this episode, is what is sometimes called replica play.

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Speaker 3: It is pretending with the aid of toys or props,

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Speaker 3: little agent toys, and making them pretend to do things.

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Speaker 3: So she's got a bunch of dinosaurs, and she loves

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Speaker 3: to make her dinosaurs go night night and then rapidly

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Speaker 3: wake up and then go night night again, over and

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Speaker 3: over in like a mind rendingly fast circadian rhythm. She

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Speaker 3: loves to have our little dinosaurs and creatures eat pizza.

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Speaker 3: And there's a lot of discussion of to what extent

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Speaker 3: they're sharing the pizza or not, or to what extent

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Speaker 3: they're keeping pieces of pizza to themselves. Sometimes they're eating

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Speaker 3: things that you can see there's like a physical prop

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Speaker 3: for the food. Sometimes they're just eating purely imaginary thing

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Speaker 3: so there's cake there that's invisible cake. And then the

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Speaker 3: past few days she's been into going on a boat

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Speaker 3: on the couch, which is a book on the couch cushion.

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Speaker 3: The couch cushion is the water and the book is

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Speaker 3: the boat. She puts various things on the boat, and

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Speaker 3: they get on and off the boat and see things

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Speaker 3: out on the water, and typically they're on a boat

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Speaker 3: trip to grandparents' house.

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Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, it's a magical time. My own child is

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Speaker 1: twelve going on thirteen now, so a lot of these,

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Speaker 1: you know, really awesome examples of imagination player are in

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Speaker 1: the past now, but my wife and I certainly look

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Speaker 1: back on them with a lot of funness, and some

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Speaker 1: of them are still things we frequently discussed in our

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Speaker 1: you know, day to day conversations, even a reference rather.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, I remember I remember various antics with these,

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Speaker 1: like old plastic dinosaur toys from my childhood, and so

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Speaker 1: those would eat those dinosaurs were always eating things. I

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Speaker 1: can't remember how much of it was real, how much

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Speaker 1: of it was imagined. And they wouldn't so much go

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Speaker 1: to sleep as they would occasionally go extinct. There was

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Speaker 1: some sort of a cosmic event that would make them

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Speaker 1: all go extinct, but you know then they'd be back

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Speaker 1: up and running before too long.

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Speaker 3: That's intense pretend. Yeah, yeah, facing the realities of nature

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Speaker 3: head on.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, you tell the story of the dinosaurs,

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Speaker 1: you got to tell the beginning on the end.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, look, ma, these are evolving into birds.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Well, we did touch on that aspect

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Speaker 1: of it too, but we also inevitably or I inevitably

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Speaker 1: ended up sort of busting out these sort of childhood

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Speaker 1: version of dinosaurs that I had growing up, which was

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Speaker 1: less about the bird thing and more about just catastrophic

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Speaker 1: fireballs and so forth and exploding volcanoes. I think we've

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Speaker 1: referenced before that, like almost all of those old paleo

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Speaker 1: art paleo art examples from childhood dinosaur books of like

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Speaker 1: the late seventies and the nineteen eighties, they all had

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Speaker 1: an erupting volcano in the background.

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Speaker 3: So it's actively erupting at the moment.

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Speaker 1: And it was kind of implied or I always thought like,

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Speaker 1: that's the end back there, it's what's happening. It's end

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Speaker 1: of days for the dinosaurs.

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Speaker 3: I think it's important to get both visions. Yeah, you know,

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Speaker 3: you get the long scale evolutionary EON's point of view,

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Speaker 3: and then you also get the scary part of fantage

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Speaker 3: of you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'm excited about these episodes though, getting into

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Speaker 1: imagination play. It's a topic that you know, I think

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Speaker 1: we've touched on before on the show, at least in passing.

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Speaker 1: There may be some very old episodes that deal with

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Speaker 1: some of the issues we're going to bring up here,

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Speaker 1: but it's it's going to be nice to really dive

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Speaker 1: into all of this.

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Speaker 3: A new Yeah, And I'm not sure yet how many

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Speaker 3: episodes we're going to go to in this series. We're

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Speaker 3: looking at least two, but maybe three or more if

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Speaker 3: the topic takes us there. But clearly this is a

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Speaker 3: rich subject. There's a lot of scientific research in this area,

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Speaker 3: but also just a lot of you know, interesting philosophical

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Speaker 3: thought going back centuries. So there's going to be a

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Speaker 3: lot to get into. But I thought a good place

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Speaker 3: to start would just be a good broad sort of

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Speaker 3: overview paper looking at the subject from a psychology, cognitive science,

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Speaker 3: and child development point of view. And I found a

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Speaker 3: good paper in that regard by Dina Skolnik Weisberg published

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Speaker 3: in the journal Cognitive Science in twenty fifteen called pretend play,

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Speaker 3: and so Rob, if you're ready, I thought we should

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Speaker 3: just go ahead and I've write into this paper and

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Speaker 3: talk about some of the topics brought up in it,

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Speaker 3: some of the research covered, and then we can branch

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Speaker 3: out from there.

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Speaker 1: All right, let's do it.

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Speaker 3: So we start with definitions. Weisberg defines pretend play as

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Speaker 3: any playful behavior that involves non literal action, so to paraphrase,

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Speaker 3: play that operates on the premise of a thing or

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Speaker 3: situation being other than what it literally is. So there

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Speaker 3: are types of play that are not pretend to play.

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Speaker 3: You can think of a game of tag or a

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Speaker 3: game of kickball. This is clearly play, but it's not

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Speaker 3: really pretend play because what you I mean. You could

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Speaker 3: imagine versions that involve pretend elements, But at the baseline,

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Speaker 3: this is a game that is taken literally. What the

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Speaker 3: children mostly think they're doing is playing the literal game.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, like a game of kickball is just a

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Speaker 1: game of kickball unless you do what I do distinctly

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Speaker 1: remember doing when I was a kid, is pretending that

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Speaker 1: kickball with some sort of like sci fi gladiatorial combats

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Speaker 1: and areo you know, and I think kids are probably

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Speaker 1: doing some more things today, like imagining it's squid games,

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Speaker 1: and so I guess it depends on the age, but

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Speaker 1: you know, dreaming it up a little bit, adding that

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Speaker 1: layer of imagination on top of it.

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Speaker 3: I recall specifically doing this with tag because I enjoyed

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Speaker 3: playing tag a lot, and my friends and I in

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Speaker 3: elementary school age played tag. But I remember I would

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Speaker 3: spice it up mentally, sometimes with the cooperation of others,

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Speaker 3: or maybe just in my own mind, by imagining myself

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Speaker 3: and other players as characters from movies I liked in

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Speaker 3: the context of tag. So like, I just saw the

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Speaker 3: movie Anaconda starring Ice Cube and jenn Phi Lopez, you know,

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Speaker 3: and and I am now pretending to be this character

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Speaker 3: from Anaconda as we play tag. You know, I was

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Speaker 3: probably that was probably too mature of a movie for

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Speaker 3: me at that point.

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Speaker 1: But we need to come back to Anaconda on a

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Speaker 1: weirdest cinema.

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Speaker 3: By the way, it's it's so good one of the

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Speaker 3: most unhinged performances of all time John Voyd in that movie.

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Speaker 1: All right, Right, so I think everybody gets where we're

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Speaker 1: going with this. Yeah, it's like there's like basically like

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Speaker 1: pure sport is not imaginative.

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Speaker 3: And then there are other kinds of play that once

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Speaker 3: again could break down either way. So building with blocks

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Speaker 3: could be pretend to play depending on how you're playing,

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Speaker 3: but it isn't necessarily you might just be building with blocks.

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Speaker 3: And so sometimes when I build with blocks with my daughter,

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Speaker 3: I the impression I get is that it's just about

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Speaker 3: building with blocks. You know, she wants to build a

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Speaker 3: big tower, make a bunch of blocks. But if you

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Speaker 3: think about it as we are building a skyscraper and

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Speaker 3: there are going to be people living inside it and

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Speaker 3: so forth, then I guess it is pretend play.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like you get into some of the bigger kid

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Speaker 1: uses of Legos. For example, I remember doing this, and

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Speaker 1: I've seen my child do this as well, where you

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Speaker 1: are really almost creating an imaginative fetish idea out of

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Speaker 1: the out of the blocks, you know, be it's some

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Speaker 1: sort of a character or a creature or you know,

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Speaker 1: in my case it was often some sort of a

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Speaker 1: robot or a mech suit, you know, whatever the case

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Speaker 1: may be. And it is about connecting blocks together and

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Speaker 1: building something, making a form. But then you were like

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Speaker 1: filling that form with more meaning via your imagination.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. But okay, so here's where like clear pretend

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Speaker 3: play comes in. When my child picks up an old

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Speaker 3: DVD player remote control that we took the batteries out

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Speaker 3: of and holds it up to her ear and says

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Speaker 3: that she is calling her grandmother on the phone, that's

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Speaker 3: definitely pretend play. At some level, she knows the remote

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Speaker 3: is not a phone, and you know, Nana does not

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Speaker 3: talk back to her, but she likes to pretend and

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Speaker 3: thinks it's very funny.

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Speaker 1: Yes. Yes, my child also did a lot of phone

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Speaker 1: pretend play as well, picking up various items, remote controls,

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Speaker 1: what have you, pretending their phones.

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Speaker 3: So that's a pretty clear case. Coming back to more

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Speaker 3: ambiguous cases. One that I think is huge is like

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Speaker 3: play fighting. Play fighting could be non pretend to play.

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Speaker 3: It could be understood as just literally a form of

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Speaker 3: kind of free form wrestling competition between children or kids

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Speaker 3: engaging in play fighting might be assuming the non literal

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Speaker 3: form of characters and a scenario.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, my mind here instantly goes to lightsaber fighting because

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Speaker 1: my own child did a lot of this and it

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Speaker 1: took different forms, right, Because if you're going to pretend

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Speaker 1: to fight with lightsabers. You can have a full official

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Speaker 1: lightsaber toy with an extendable plastic cone that serves as

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Speaker 1: the blade of the lightsaber or laser sort if you will.

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Speaker 1: But then then you can have just a pre made

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Speaker 1: hilt that you're pretending there is a light blade emanating from.

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Speaker 1: You can do what my child did and take foil

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Speaker 1: like roll of foil roll of saran wrap tubes, little

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Speaker 1: cardboard tubes, dress those up as lightsaber hilts, and then

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Speaker 1: you're fighting with those, pretending again that the blade is there.

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Speaker 1: Or you can do what I think a lot of

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Speaker 1: kids do, is you just pretend the hilt is there

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Speaker 1: as well, So like I can draw a lightsaber right

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Speaker 1: now and just go and you know, you know exactly

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Speaker 1: what I have in my hand, and you can engage

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Speaker 1: in battles. And so they are like different levels of

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Speaker 1: having any kind of like actual physical property there to

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Speaker 1: play off of.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So you can imagine there's sort of

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Speaker 3: different levels of extension of the imagination depending on what

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Speaker 3: physical props you're using or how far away the situation

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Speaker 3: or scenario or object you're imagining is from the physical reality.

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Speaker 3: So you know, there's a sort of greater imaginative leap

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Speaker 3: involved in taking a paper towel tube and saying that's

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Speaker 3: a lightsaber than holding like a toy painted up to

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Speaker 3: look like a real lightsaber and saying that's a real lightsaber.

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Speaker 3: Both involve some imagination, but one kind of is a

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Speaker 3: bigger leap. And then it's even a bigger leap to

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Speaker 3: take nothing at all, just you know, you're completely imagining

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Speaker 3: the presence of a prop in any case, and say

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Speaker 3: that's the lightsaber.

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Speaker 1: And then is it me with the lightsaber to your point?

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Speaker 1: Or am i obi wan? Am i anakin?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: And so forth. So, yeah, there's so many different levels

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Speaker 1: of the imagination to employ here.

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Speaker 3: So the purpose of this review by Weisberg was to

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Speaker 3: define pretend play, to differentiate it from other types of

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Speaker 3: playful activities, and then to kind of look at ways

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Speaker 3: that pretend to play fits into the development of various

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Speaker 3: cognitive and social skills in childhood. And since pretend play

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Speaker 3: seems to involve many of the same mental structures as

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Speaker 3: complex adult capacity is like counterfactual reasoning, theory of mind,

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Speaker 3: symbolic understanding, and so forth, looking at pretend to play

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Speaker 3: really could help us better understand many aspects of the

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Speaker 3: brain and the mind. So this review in particular looks

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Speaker 3: at the relationship between pretend play and symbolic understanding, theory

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Speaker 3: of mind, and counterfactual reasoning. I think we might save

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Speaker 3: at least one of those. I think the deeper exploration

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Speaker 3: of theory of mind for part two, because that gets

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Speaker 3: into a lot of other stuff. But I'm going to

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Speaker 3: try to talk about symbolic understanding and counterfactual reasoning today.

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Speaker 3: But the author kicks things off by trying to define

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Speaker 3: and characterize pretend to play itself. Now, even going back

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Speaker 3: a step, not just pretend to play, but play as

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Speaker 3: a concept has proven notoriously difficult for researchers. There's like

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Speaker 3: a whole literature arguing over what play is, What definition

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Speaker 3: best captures the essence of play? What do we mean

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Speaker 3: when we call something play? Which types of edgec count

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Speaker 3: and which do not. So play is just extremely variable

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Speaker 3: from child to child, across different cultures. Different people look

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Speaker 3: at the same activity and say that is play. No,

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Speaker 3: that's not play. So there's really no way to draw

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Speaker 3: a clean boundary around this concept that everybody's going to accept.

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Speaker 3: You will just have to sit with the fact that

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Speaker 3: some people are going to say, no, I don't agree

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Speaker 3: that that's what play is.

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Speaker 1: Right, And this is going to kind of continue through

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Speaker 1: our whole analysis of pretend play, because there's going to

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Speaker 1: be a lot of going back and forth. But will

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Speaker 1: some researchers say this classifies as such and such and

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Speaker 1: others disagree. Yeah, it just depends how you tease it apart.

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Speaker 3: Yes, that's certainly the case. I mean, we are in

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Speaker 3: the higher order sciences. We're more in the realm of

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Speaker 3: psychology and cognitive science and a lot of things. They're

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Speaker 3: just not as clean as they are in chemistry. Now,

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Speaker 3: one of the main criteria that seems to be common

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Speaker 3: to definitions of play is that it is what Weisberg

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Speaker 3: calls non instrumental activity. It has no immediate goal or

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Speaker 3: purpose other than enjoyment. So you might actually enjoy something

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Speaker 3: that is not play. Maybe you enjoy splitting logs into firewood.

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Speaker 3: But even if you do, most people would not think

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Speaker 3: of splitting wood as play because it has an immediate

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Speaker 3: functional goal. It's about transforming resources into a more usable form.

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Speaker 3: So even if I don't know you bring a spirit

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Speaker 3: of playfulness to your log splitting and you really enjoy

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Speaker 3: the activity. Most people don't look at that and say

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Speaker 3: that is play.

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Speaker 1: This is really interesting to think about this distinction, because

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Speaker 1: you know, I catch myself as what I like to

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Speaker 1: think is a pretty pro play adult, rationalizing that some

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Speaker 1: of my hobbies like many painting, for instance, rationalizing it

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Speaker 1: on the basis that while this is going to result

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Speaker 1: in something that can be utilized in another activity, generally

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Speaker 1: a social activity, and therefore it's not like there's not

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Speaker 1: this huge sunk cost to it. You know, it's not

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Speaker 1: a big waste of time, which you know, there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of false thinking and all of that, I think.

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Speaker 1: And likewise, yeah, you know, I've often thought about, or

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Speaker 1: at least I've thought about this more over the last

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Speaker 1: ten years or so, about how, you know, especially in

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Speaker 1: a very capitalist society, I think a lot of us

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Speaker 1: end up buying into this corrupting notion that if we're

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Speaker 1: good at something, if we or even if we just

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Speaker 1: enjoy something, if it brings us pleasure, well, then shouldn't

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Speaker 1: we be generating some profits off of our love or

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Speaker 1: our talent or what have you? You know, And I should

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Speaker 1: add the caveat you know, and there's nothing, absolutely nothing

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Speaker 1: wrong with turning your passion, your hobby, your talent into

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Speaker 1: a career or a side hustle making a few bucks

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Speaker 1: off of it here and there, even if you're just

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Speaker 1: sort of paying for part of that hobby. Certainly, yeah,

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Speaker 1: go wild. But we should also feel free to play

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Speaker 1: without having to deal with this inner voice saying, well,

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Speaker 1: you're not good enough at it unless you can somehow

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Speaker 1: transition that fun over into a profit. You know that

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Speaker 1: that any time spent having fun, anytime spent playing, is

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Speaker 1: like just wasted time. You know, it's okay to engage

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Speaker 1: in passions that pay only in fun, you know, or

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Speaker 1: maybe socialization. And this is a huge one for me too,

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Speaker 1: that I distinctly remember somebody sharing this with me several

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Speaker 1: years back, that you know, it's okay not to be

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Speaker 1: perfect at your passions and hobbies. You know, I think

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Speaker 1: a lot of times, like without even thinking about, without

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Speaker 1: even rationalizing that like out loud in our or or

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Speaker 1: you know, at a higher level of consciousness, you know,

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Speaker 1: we still sort of buy into this idea that it's like, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm a grown up. If I'm doing if I'm engaging

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Speaker 1: in play, well then can I turn this into a business.

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Speaker 1: Can I make it? You know, can I somehow rationalize

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Speaker 1: it through the almighty dollar so that that ends up

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Speaker 1: being how far removed we are as often are as

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Speaker 1: adults from like the pure childhood essence of play.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I fully agree with all that. In fact, you know,

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Speaker 3: people you may have heard some version of this advice before,

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Speaker 3: but I would go against the grain with people who say,

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Speaker 3: you know, find a way to get paid for doing

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Speaker 3: what you love, or you know, it's like, take your

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Speaker 3: passion and turn that into a job, because that may

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Speaker 3: mean that every day you get to do what you love,

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Speaker 3: or it may mean that what is something that you

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Speaker 3: used to love just gets turned into a chore.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And you know, certainly you hear stories about

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Speaker 1: people who seem perfectly content with turning their passion into

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Speaker 1: their job. But you also hear plenty of stories about

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Speaker 1: people who have the reverse situation, or the thing they

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Speaker 1: used to love has now become the thing they have

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Speaker 1: to do every day.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, I guess nobody can figure it out for

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Speaker 3: you whether that's going to be true in your case

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Speaker 3: or not, So you'll just have to experiment, but be

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Speaker 3: aware that that does happen.

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Speaker 1: But this is not a problem that the children have.

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Speaker 3: Correct though, I do want to stress while we're here

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Speaker 3: that though we most often associate play with childhood, I

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Speaker 3: think I've said on the show before that I think

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Speaker 3: play is the work of childhood. When children are playing,

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Speaker 3: they're doing their job. It does extend through the entire lifespan.

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Speaker 3: I mean, it's clear that even adults going all throughout

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Speaker 3: the lifetime engage in different types of play. There are games,

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Speaker 3: there's word play, construction play, role playing of various kinds.

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Speaker 3: So you know it doesn't stop after childhood. But clearly

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Speaker 3: childhood is the most intensive period of play in life. Now,

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Speaker 3: pretend play specifically has an extended definition that takes it

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Speaker 3: beyond just play generally, and Weisberg summarizes it as follows quote,

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Speaker 3: pretend play crucially involves some form of representation or acting

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Speaker 3: as if such that the behaviors or actions that take

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Speaker 3: place in a pretend game are not meant to literally

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Speaker 3: reflect reality. So there is some extent to which what

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Speaker 3: happens in pretend play is under good by the people

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Speaker 3: playing to not be literally real. Now, there are a

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Speaker 3: lot of different types of pretend play, and I got

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Speaker 3: interested in the taxonomy of these play These almost like

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Speaker 3: family trees of play type. And one that is very

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Speaker 3: familiar to most people is object substitution pretense. This is

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Speaker 3: treating one object as if it were another. So we

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Speaker 3: already mentioned the remote control is a telephone. It can't

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Speaker 3: actually place calls, but you hold it up to your head,

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Speaker 3: you say hello, you say ring, ring, you pretend to

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Speaker 3: call your grandmother, whatever.

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Speaker 1: Another one that I have to mention is, of course

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Speaker 1: stick is a gun. This one I remember encountering this

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Speaker 1: one a lot on the playground. Generally there you'd have

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Speaker 1: like one group of children in my recollection, you know,

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Speaker 1: playing peacefully, doing something cute, and then here come another

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Speaker 1: band of children and they have sticks, and then they

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Speaker 1: start firing sticks as if they are guns. Always a

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Speaker 1: hot discussion on parenting forums. So get ready for that one, Joe.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know that's coming. But at the same time,

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Speaker 3: I don't want I mean, I'm not thrilled about the

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Speaker 3: idea of sticks as guns. But at the same time,

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Speaker 3: I don't want to totally demonize conflict play. I mean,

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Speaker 3: I think there's probably some healthy amount of kind of

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Speaker 3: you know, the non bullying forms of kind of play

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Speaker 3: fighting and stuff that can be okay, but there's also

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Speaker 3: like you know, caretaking play, you know, treating the treating

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Speaker 3: the little plastic dinosaur as a baby.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Often a lot of I remember, a lot

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Speaker 1: of food preparation and foraging play.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, in fact, tying into

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Speaker 3: Christmas pretend play experiences. Just just recently, yeah, my daughter

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Speaker 3: has been big into making pretend food for her for

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Speaker 3: her babies and dinosaurs and everything to eat. And the

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Speaker 3: making of the pretend food is so chaotic, it's truly marvelous. Like,

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Speaker 3: you know, there's a little pretend pot and into it

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Speaker 3: goes the box of rice with the box and a

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Speaker 3: banana and a hot dog and a you know, grapes

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Speaker 3: and everything, and you're just imagining all of this together

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Speaker 3: and it's like, do you think that would taste good? Yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 3: But to jump out of the pretend mindset for a second.

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Speaker 3: One thing that Weissberg sort of specifies about object substitution

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Speaker 3: play is that in this kind of play, actions that

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Speaker 3: are directed toward the object do not actually affect the

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Speaker 3: object in the intended way. They take place, you know,

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Speaker 3: within what is called a pretend world or a pretend frame.

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Speaker 3: So when the child pretends to cook pretend food in

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Speaker 3: a you know, in a toy pod or something, the

435
00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:47,480
Speaker 3: food does not actually get heated to the point of

436
00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:53,920
Speaker 3: boiling or whatever. There's just generally a pretend logic of

437
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:58,960
Speaker 3: the effects of actions upon the object that is substituted. Now,

438
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:01,720
Speaker 3: coming back to a question and we raised earlier, sometimes

439
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:05,280
Speaker 3: it is not clear if a play behavior is pretend

440
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 3: play or just literal play. Like we brought up the

441
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:11,000
Speaker 3: idea of a child building with blocks, So they're building

442
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 3: a big stack of blocks. Are they just building a

443
00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:16,879
Speaker 3: big stack of blocks, or are they pretending to build

444
00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:21,600
Speaker 3: a structure that people live inside. Sometimes the distinction could

445
00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:25,679
Speaker 3: be blurry and fluid, easily switching back and forth between

446
00:24:25,680 --> 00:24:28,520
Speaker 3: the literal frame and the pretend frame. For you know,

447
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:30,639
Speaker 3: in one minute, it might be just a stack of blocks.

448
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:32,919
Speaker 3: The next minute, oh, it is a building full of people.

449
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:34,920
Speaker 3: Then they might forget it's a building full of people

450
00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:38,600
Speaker 3: and it's just blocks again. And this problem of temporal

451
00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 3: switching between literal play and pretend play can of course

452
00:24:42,600 --> 00:24:46,480
Speaker 3: create difficulties for researchers who want to study this same

453
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:49,800
Speaker 3: distinction with play fighting, right, Like, are we literally just wrestling,

454
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:52,639
Speaker 3: or am I Dwayne the Rock Johnson and your Jason

455
00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:53,719
Speaker 3: Stathum or whatever.

456
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:55,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting to think about how the switches

457
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 1: back and forth, not only with kids, but as adults

458
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:02,040
Speaker 1: like you know, you can think of some thing like writing.

459
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:05,280
Speaker 1: You know, at times writing can take on a feeling

460
00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:08,360
Speaker 1: of play, you know, where you're losing yourself in an

461
00:25:08,359 --> 00:25:12,119
Speaker 1: imaginative exercise. But then oh, you've got to stop and

462
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:16,640
Speaker 1: do a little grammar or a little bit of it work.

463
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:18,240
Speaker 1: I guess nowadays there and in the old days it

464
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:20,000
Speaker 1: would have been, oh, now I have to fix the typewriter.

465
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:24,479
Speaker 1: You know, are various tasks we engage in. We'll shift

466
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:26,400
Speaker 1: gears on this now.

467
00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 3: One question is when does this happen in childhood. The

468
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:33,359
Speaker 3: answer is it varies, but pretend play behavior most often

469
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:36,760
Speaker 3: starts to appear around eighteen months old or so, though

470
00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:40,439
Speaker 3: there's variation in the timeline, so you know, sometimes it's earlier,

471
00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 3: sometimes it's later. Usually, the earliest form of pretend play

472
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:49,200
Speaker 3: observed is what we were just talking about, its object substitution,

473
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:54,119
Speaker 3: pretending an object is something else. Now, interesting question is

474
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:57,120
Speaker 3: why does that come first, to come before these other

475
00:25:57,200 --> 00:26:00,239
Speaker 3: types of pretend play that I'm about to get in too.

476
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 3: Maybe we can come back to that later. A variation

477
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 3: on object substitution is what you already mentioned with the

478
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:10,960
Speaker 3: sort of the receding physical prop concept of the lightsaber

479
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 3: arising usually in early preschool years, maybe meaning around two

480
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:19,919
Speaker 3: to three years old, is object substitution involving invisible or

481
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:23,159
Speaker 3: non existent objects. So usually you get with a prop

482
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:26,960
Speaker 3: object substitution first. That might start around eighteen months or so,

483
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 3: and then you know, in the next couple of years

484
00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 3: you can get fully pretend phone, so it's not like

485
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:34,520
Speaker 3: I'm holding a remote and pretending it's a phone. There's

486
00:26:34,560 --> 00:26:36,639
Speaker 3: nothing in my hand, but I have a phone and

487
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:41,720
Speaker 3: I'm calling grandmother. Also in the early preschool years, Weisberg

488
00:26:41,760 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 3: says that kids start to make a distinction between two

489
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 3: different things. They distinguish between what's called enactment play versus

490
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 3: replica play, and so the difference goes like this enactment

491
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 3: play is like I dress up like Dad and pretend

492
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:01,159
Speaker 3: to cook dinner like him, possibly involving props. You know,

493
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 3: you might have a play kitchen and toy utensils and food,

494
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 3: or not involving these props, just doing it with the invisible,

495
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 3: but I am the one pretending with my body to

496
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:13,640
Speaker 3: be the something else versus replica play is I have

497
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 3: my doll cook dinner in a tiny kitchen in the dollhouse.

498
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:21,640
Speaker 3: Both are forms of pretend to play, but in enactment play,

499
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 3: the child is themselves playing the part, and in replica play,

500
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,400
Speaker 3: the child makes a physical avatar like a doll play

501
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:32,760
Speaker 3: the part. Now. Springboarding off of that, the paper gets

502
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:34,840
Speaker 3: into something that we may put off because I don't

503
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:36,640
Speaker 3: know if you want to say something about this now, Robb,

504
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:38,160
Speaker 3: or if you just want to save it for part two.

505
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:42,199
Speaker 3: But it does get into imaginary companions as well.

506
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:45,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, largely we'll save that for the next episode, but

507
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:47,880
Speaker 1: I will like briefly mention that you know, you can

508
00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:50,359
Speaker 1: you can still get into distinctions of what is an

509
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 1: imaginary friend, what is an imaginary companion, and how sometimes

510
00:27:55,000 --> 00:28:01,879
Speaker 1: personified objects are seen as examples of imaginary coons. So

511
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of these things where it's easy

512
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:08,880
Speaker 1: to think, oh, imaginary friend, that's a definitely one thing.

513
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:15,320
Speaker 1: It's definitely an invisible counterpart that a child has this

514
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:20,040
Speaker 1: imagined relationship with. But when you get into the particularly

515
00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 1: I was looking at one meta analysis that I'll reference

516
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:24,440
Speaker 1: in the next episode. It gets a little more complex

517
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:26,840
Speaker 1: than that, and there are different ways of again teasing

518
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 1: it apart.

519
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes there's a prop there too, Like a classic

520
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 3: example is Hobbes in Calvin and Hobbes. This is a

521
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:36,800
Speaker 3: understood to be in physical reality a stuffed animal, but

522
00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:40,040
Speaker 3: it is imagined by the child to be an entity

523
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:44,080
Speaker 3: with a consistent personality that the child interacts with over time,

524
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:46,280
Speaker 3: in which case it really is sort of a form

525
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:49,960
Speaker 3: of imaginary companion even though there is a physically existing prop.

526
00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes that prop I was reading, you know,

527
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 1: it can actually seem to enhance the imaginative aspect. So

528
00:28:56,800 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 1: you know, it might be tempting to think about it

529
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 1: in the reverse and think, well, this is here to

530
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:04,560
Speaker 1: sort of stand in for imagination, but no, it can

531
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:07,560
Speaker 1: often enhance it. And you know, man, you can go

532
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 1: wild with just that concept alone thinking about you know,

533
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 1: examples of various physical representations of deities and fantastic beings

534
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 1: and creatures, and you know, in many cases beings and

535
00:29:20,560 --> 00:29:24,040
Speaker 1: entities thought to have some level of reality to you know,

536
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 1: adult human practitioners of various religions and so forth. Throughout time,

537
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 1: and even down to various knick knacks and toys that

538
00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:34,880
Speaker 1: grown folks may have on their deaths at home or

539
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:38,240
Speaker 1: in the office. You know, an avatar of Godzilla, you

540
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 1: know that maybe enhances the reality of Godzilla.

541
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:44,480
Speaker 3: There's a concept Weisberg mentions in this paper that we

542
00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:45,920
Speaker 3: may want to come back to when we do the

543
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 3: full thing on imaginary companions. But it is the idea

544
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:56,360
Speaker 3: of paracosms, meaning quote, imaginary worlds occupied by many pretend

545
00:29:56,560 --> 00:30:01,240
Speaker 3: entities and subject to their own internal rule. So I

546
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 3: think that's sort of like extending the concept of an

547
00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:07,560
Speaker 3: imaginary companion to more like a whole world of potential

548
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 3: imaginary companions that you know, it's like a different world

549
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 3: that has its own rules and its own inhabitants, and

550
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:15,560
Speaker 3: I have imaginary access to it.

551
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 1: Wow, the unseen world. Yeah, I mean, it is almost

552
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 1: times startling to think about how closely all of this

553
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:26,520
Speaker 1: mirrors the more sort of we often think, you know,

554
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 1: complex systems of the real and the imagined, the real

555
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: and the mythic and so forth that adults have, like

556
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:36,960
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, it's already there, or at least

557
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: it's already well coming together. At a very early age. Yeah.

558
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:45,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, And actually that brings us to the next thing

559
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 3: from this paper I wanted to talk about, which is

560
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 3: the distinction between pretend and reality. So, for most children,

561
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 3: the peak density of pretend play is observed between the

562
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 3: ages of three and five, though as we've seen, it

563
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 3: starts earlier than that, and it really extends all throughout

564
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 3: life in more limited ways. But between three and five

565
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 3: is when most kids are doing the most pretending. There's

566
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 3: a lot going on, and so when that's happening, adults

567
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 3: around these children often find themselves wondering can kids tell

568
00:31:17,560 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 3: the difference between fantasy and reality? It's a kind of

569
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:24,239
Speaker 3: natural thing for parents to start. I don't know if

570
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 3: most parents actually worry about it, but to at least

571
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 3: kind of wonder, like, do they understand this isn't real?

572
00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 3: And though I think there are very natural reasons that

573
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:38,120
Speaker 3: adults wonder or even worry about this, Weisberg says that

574
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:42,680
Speaker 3: the research shows yes, generally, even quite young children have

575
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:47,200
Speaker 3: no trouble distinguishing between pretend facts and real facts, and

576
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 3: by a round age four, most children can explain that

577
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:54,840
Speaker 3: what happens in the pretend play is not quote real.

578
00:31:55,920 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 3: It seems that children do make more pretense reality confusion

579
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:04,240
Speaker 3: errors than adults, but they're still usually aware of the difference.

580
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:08,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, can it's understandable that as parents we

581
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 1: can be overprotective, overly protective, and we may we'll at

582
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: least sometimes question it and we'll think, well, did they

583
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:17,520
Speaker 1: really know what's real and what's not? What's to deal

584
00:32:17,520 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 1: with this imaginary friend? Who is this imaginary friend? And

585
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 1: then added on top of that, as I'll get into

586
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:26,920
Speaker 1: more in the next episode, is the Certainly, for a while,

587
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:30,920
Speaker 1: their imaginary friends were not seen as being a positive

588
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 1: aspect of childhood development. They were seen as a red flag.

589
00:32:37,320 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 1: And I think there's still a legacy of that sort

590
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 1: of in the popular mindset, you know, even though we've

591
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:45,840
Speaker 1: moved on from that view of things.

592
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, the stuff I was reading did not suggest imaginary

593
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:51,840
Speaker 3: companions were anything to worry about, and that they're extremely

594
00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 3: common somewhere, but depending on how you define it, somewhere

595
00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 3: between like a third to two thirds of kids under

596
00:32:56,800 --> 00:32:57,880
Speaker 3: seven have them.

597
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: Though it still can be weird when you hear about it.

598
00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: You know, you're like, oh, you have an imaginary friend,

599
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:05,719
Speaker 1: and you're speaking about them as if they're real and

600
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:08,120
Speaker 1: you know, and part of that is we've you know,

601
00:33:08,160 --> 00:33:09,800
Speaker 1: a lot of us have seen too many horror movies,

602
00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:12,360
Speaker 1: so that's where behind goes, you know. But no, it's

603
00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:16,000
Speaker 1: there's absolutely nothing wrong with it according to the current research.

604
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:18,920
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also studies of pretend to play have found

605
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:21,800
Speaker 3: that in general, children are quite good at what the

606
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 3: author of this paper calls quarantining, which means that like

607
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:31,000
Speaker 3: causal or mechanical understandings from a pretend to game do

608
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 3: not affect understandings in reality. So an example given in

609
00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 3: the paper is like a child will use a banana

610
00:33:38,240 --> 00:33:41,760
Speaker 3: as a pretend telephone, and they can be really into

611
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 3: this banana phone game, but it does not lead the

612
00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:48,120
Speaker 3: child to believe that bananas can actually place calls or

613
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 3: that real phones can be eaten. So they're able to

614
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 3: quarantine the implications of the pretend game and not let

615
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:58,719
Speaker 3: that affect their understanding of how the world works.

616
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 1: So that's one last thing your parents have to freak

617
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:04,440
Speaker 1: out about, is that pretend phone play will lead to

618
00:34:04,520 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 1: the eating of phones and the frenzied attempt to make

619
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:10,400
Speaker 1: calls on bananas.

620
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:12,719
Speaker 3: Now I was wondering, though, I mean, of course there

621
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:15,680
Speaker 3: might be individual cases where there is something you know

622
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 3: that's worth following up about, but in most cases it's

623
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:22,520
Speaker 3: not much to worry about. When kids are playing pretend,

624
00:34:22,600 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 3: they actually can basically tell the difference. So why do

625
00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 3: adults worry about this? I think one reason might just

626
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 3: be like the commitment with which children engage and pretend

627
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:36,799
Speaker 3: to play. It's a level of unself conscious gameness for

628
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:41,840
Speaker 3: enjoyment in a scenario that is difficult for adults to understand,

629
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 3: even if they're adults who are still pretty well practiced

630
00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:47,880
Speaker 3: in pretend play. Maybe you're an adult who does theater

631
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 3: and does D and D and stuff, so you pretend

632
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:53,520
Speaker 3: a lot more than most adults do. Still, you probably

633
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:57,440
Speaker 3: cannot really get in the level of gameness for pretend

634
00:34:57,600 --> 00:34:58,520
Speaker 3: that a child has.

635
00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:04,560
Speaker 1: Well, they just do it so earnestly and unashamedly, and

636
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:07,160
Speaker 1: at the same time as adults. I feel like we

637
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:12,840
Speaker 1: often compartmentalize our imagine worlds and our dreaming. Either it

638
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: is tied up with particular you know, acts and activities

639
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:21,880
Speaker 1: social or otherwise you know, creative endeavors, or we just

640
00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: kind of like, I don't know, we can be very

641
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:27,719
Speaker 1: hypocritical when we think about it. You know, like we

642
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:30,040
Speaker 1: may be spending you know, a large portion of our

643
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:33,000
Speaker 1: days reverting into some sort of a fantasy world, be

644
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:35,400
Speaker 1: it something we've dreamt up or something that has been

645
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:38,839
Speaker 1: dreampt up by authors and artists and so forth. But yeah,

646
00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:41,480
Speaker 1: it's a different scenario than to see it in the child.

647
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, I think there is

648
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:47,279
Speaker 1: this or at least I'm speaking mostly for my own

649
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:50,120
Speaker 1: part here, but you know, as a parent, you look

650
00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:54,520
Speaker 1: to your child, and especially during those early days, you

651
00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:59,520
Speaker 1: really want to hold on to and appreciate these like this,

652
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:02,319
Speaker 1: you know, pure imagination and all of these, you know,

653
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 1: various aspects of childhood. But at the same time, like

654
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:09,440
Speaker 1: you do want them to develop and grow, and you

655
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:11,799
Speaker 1: realize they will grow out of this and they will

656
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:18,520
Speaker 1: become ever become small adults, eventually entering into an adult world.

657
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:21,440
Speaker 1: So we're kind of like torn, you know, like we

658
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:23,480
Speaker 1: want them to change, but we the last thing we

659
00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: want is for them to change. Yeah, and it results

660
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:31,720
Speaker 1: probably in all sorts of again counterintuitive ideas and expectations.

661
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 1: And yeah, and we can also be hypocritical in the

662
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: way we judge things like the pursuit of fantasy.

663
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that tension is like one of the

664
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:44,399
Speaker 3: most classically I guess understood bittersweet things about being a parent. Yeah, yeah,

665
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:46,279
Speaker 3: it's just, yeah, you want them to grow up, but

666
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:46,760
Speaker 3: you don't.

667
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:50,520
Speaker 1: And then at the same time, yeah, you can't help

668
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:52,440
Speaker 1: but be a bit anxious and worrying and like, well

669
00:36:52,440 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 1: they will they ever know the difference between a banana

670
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 1: and a phone? Is this permanent or is this just

671
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:57,439
Speaker 1: a kid thing now.

672
00:36:57,680 --> 00:36:59,719
Speaker 3: On the other hand, to be fair, it is still

673
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:04,520
Speaker 3: found that children make more pretense reality distinction errors than

674
00:37:04,680 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 3: adults do, and parents and other adult caregivers do see

675
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:12,239
Speaker 3: some instances where children really can't seem to tell the

676
00:37:12,239 --> 00:37:16,720
Speaker 3: difference between imagination and reality, or where like something from

677
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 3: the imagination infects their reality. An example given in the

678
00:37:22,160 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 3: paper is like when an originally fun pretend monster game

679
00:37:27,880 --> 00:37:30,719
Speaker 3: becomes scary to the child. So, you know, like you're

680
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 3: running around playing monster Chase, where mom is a monster

681
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 3: and she's roaring and chasing the child around, and this

682
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:38,319
Speaker 3: is not a scary game to the child. The child

683
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:41,120
Speaker 3: thinks this is like very funny and very fun running

684
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,600
Speaker 3: around laughing, squealing. But then maybe one time after this

685
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:48,279
Speaker 3: game seemingly out of nowhere. The child becomes upset and

686
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:50,960
Speaker 3: says she's scared. She says, now she thinks there's a

687
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:53,239
Speaker 3: monster in her closet and she's scared to go to bed.

688
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: I mean, I still do this to myself occasionally, where

689
00:37:57,239 --> 00:37:59,959
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, that horror movie was fun till it wasn't.

690
00:38:00,200 --> 00:38:03,080
Speaker 3: No, yes, right, And it's not just fear. Also, you know,

691
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:05,799
Speaker 3: you can have like, oh, my toy Kitty Kat fell

692
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,440
Speaker 3: off the couch and she got hurt, and now I'm

693
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 3: actually sad. I'm like crying. So you know what's going

694
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:17,000
Speaker 3: on here? Well here, Weisberg doesn't fully know the answer,

695
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 3: but refers to a couple of other short papers addressing

696
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:21,600
Speaker 3: this issue of like what's happening when it seems like

697
00:38:21,719 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 3: kids when the imagination infects the understanding of reality. And

698
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:30,880
Speaker 3: one of the papers was by an author named Ted Ruffman,

699
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 3: published in the journal Developmental Science in two thousand and two,

700
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 3: called Pretense Reality Confusions in Children and Adults. I went

701
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:41,640
Speaker 3: and looked this up, and I'll try to quickly summarize

702
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:45,640
Speaker 3: what Ruffman thinks, but it's addressing issues like when the

703
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:50,399
Speaker 3: pretend monster has suddenly become scary and Ruffman says much

704
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 3: along the lines you were saying, Rob, it's helpful to

705
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:55,359
Speaker 3: look at adult analogies to better understand what's going on,

706
00:38:56,320 --> 00:38:59,800
Speaker 3: and one of the principles he brings up is availability

707
00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:04,880
Speaker 3: or salience. You know, adults also get scared after watching

708
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:08,279
Speaker 3: a horror movie for fun, despite fully understanding that the

709
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:11,719
Speaker 3: movie is not real and cannot hurt them. So you

710
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:15,279
Speaker 3: just finished watching New Nos Faratu or something, and you

711
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:18,560
Speaker 3: don't want to go downstairs by yourself. Is it because

712
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:21,719
Speaker 3: you can't tell the difference between fiction and reality. Probably not.

713
00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:25,760
Speaker 3: Ruffman argues that instead, the fear caused by a fictional

714
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:28,680
Speaker 3: horror movie is probably due to a combination of number

715
00:39:28,680 --> 00:39:30,799
Speaker 3: one emotion will come to that in a second, but

716
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:35,759
Speaker 3: also availability or salience, And in psychology these terms mean

717
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 3: essentially increased awareness of something. So, you know, a horror movie,

718
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:44,200
Speaker 3: even though you don't think the events of it are real,

719
00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:47,200
Speaker 3: it just sort of puts front of mind for you

720
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:53,200
Speaker 3: the idea of deadly threats and threatening other worldly encounters,

721
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:55,920
Speaker 3: whether or not you think they're actually likely to happen

722
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:58,600
Speaker 3: to you. Now, it's just high in your awareness, and

723
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 3: so that puts you on a for threats of whatever type.

724
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 3: The other thing is emotion. It's possible that what gets

725
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:09,280
Speaker 3: carried over from say, watching a movie, is a free,

726
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:13,160
Speaker 3: floating emotion without a reference in the real world. So again,

727
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:16,360
Speaker 3: you know that the events of the sad movie or

728
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 3: the scary movie are not literally true, but they give

729
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:22,560
Speaker 3: you an emotion that lingers, and then that emotion, without

730
00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:24,640
Speaker 3: a reference in your life, can just kind of get

731
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:28,240
Speaker 3: attached to whatever. This may happen even easier for children,

732
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:32,520
Speaker 3: because children may feel emotions even more intensely, and the

733
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 3: act of pretending itself tends to result in heightened emotions

734
00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:37,360
Speaker 3: for children.

735
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 1: I don't want to complicate things too much by bringing

736
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:42,239
Speaker 1: up dreams, but I feel like this is maybe more

737
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 1: pronounced for grown ups. In that situation where you wake

738
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 1: up from a disturbing dream and you still feel disturbed.

739
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:52,320
Speaker 1: You know you can't help but carry that over into

740
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:54,480
Speaker 1: at least the first portion of your morning, even though

741
00:40:54,480 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 1: you know that was a dream, and maybe even analysis

742
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: of the facts of the dream are just ridiculous, but

743
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:05,040
Speaker 1: the feeling remains. And I think I have encountered that

744
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: with films before as well, if they are particularly either

745
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 1: I'm particularly sensitive or the vibe is particularly strong in

746
00:41:12,560 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: a given film, or some combination of the two. So yeah,

747
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:19,800
Speaker 1: taking those two into account, I think helps me better

748
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:22,399
Speaker 1: understand where a child may be coming from when they

749
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:23,720
Speaker 1: have this situation occur.

750
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:26,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, But then there's a third thing, Ruffman brings up

751
00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 3: that I think is the So we have those similarities

752
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 3: with kids on those first two things, the emotion and

753
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:35,360
Speaker 3: the and the availability or salience, But then there's a

754
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:40,640
Speaker 3: big difference, which is our background knowledge. Ruffman points out that,

755
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 3: simply put, kids know less than adults about how the

756
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:46,400
Speaker 3: world works and what is in it, So it is

757
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:51,400
Speaker 3: actually less unreasonable than it seems two adults for children

758
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 3: to entertain implausible scenarios like there's a monster in my closet.

759
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:58,759
Speaker 3: By the time you're forty, you should be aware that

760
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:01,320
Speaker 3: this is actually not some thing that happens in reality.

761
00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:05,120
Speaker 3: They're not monsters in closets. But when you're three, it's

762
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,120
Speaker 3: reasonable to consider this is a still live option, like

763
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:11,399
Speaker 3: you don't have enough experience to reasonably rule that out.

764
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:17,239
Speaker 1: By the time you're forty though, like late thirties, still understandable.

765
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:22,160
Speaker 3: So this still does not necessarily mean that children have

766
00:42:22,400 --> 00:42:25,880
Speaker 3: confused what happens in a pretend game with what happens

767
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:28,880
Speaker 3: in reality. So you know, a child might worry that

768
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:31,960
Speaker 3: there's an unseen monster in the closet, but would probably

769
00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:35,360
Speaker 3: not worry that like, you know, mommy playing the monster

770
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:38,319
Speaker 3: chase game that that means mom literally turned into a

771
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:40,720
Speaker 3: monster when she was chasing the kid around and roaring.

772
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:42,880
Speaker 3: You know, there can just be kind of a vague

773
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:46,879
Speaker 3: infection of ideas from one to the other, even if

774
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:52,439
Speaker 3: you don't confuse the pretend scenario for a literal reality. Yeah.

775
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also worth caveating here though, that you know,

776
00:42:55,719 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 1: even as adults, we can still even though we know

777
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:01,719
Speaker 1: we know how the world works, it doesn't mean we

778
00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:05,319
Speaker 1: really know how the world works at all levels. And

779
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 1: we're also prone to latching on to best case scenarios

780
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:13,640
Speaker 1: and worst case scenarios as if those are the most

781
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:17,759
Speaker 1: most likely outcomes. So yeah, there's a lot of room

782
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:20,680
Speaker 1: for error in all of this. But yeah, I understand

783
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,839
Speaker 1: the basic idea here. Yeah, the kids just know less

784
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:28,440
Speaker 1: about the world, and they're able to they're more susceptible

785
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:38,920
Speaker 1: to the contagion of those ideas.

786
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 3: All right, From here, I want to skip over a

787
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:43,840
Speaker 3: few things in the paper and move on to talking

788
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 3: about a couple of the mental capacities that the author

789
00:43:47,080 --> 00:43:51,920
Speaker 3: of this paper mentioned as possibly being related to pretend

790
00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:54,720
Speaker 3: to play in childhood, and the three that the author

791
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 3: explores are symbolic understanding, theory of mind, and counterfactual reasoning.

792
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:02,399
Speaker 3: As I said, we might save theory of mind more

793
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:05,560
Speaker 3: for part two, but applying to all three of these concepts,

794
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 3: pretend play appears to have links to the development of

795
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:12,760
Speaker 3: these abilities, But there are a lot of questions about

796
00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:15,400
Speaker 3: how strong these links are and how they work, Like

797
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 3: should it be understood that pretend to play is causally

798
00:44:19,239 --> 00:44:24,280
Speaker 3: necessary for learning any of them? Or is it merely facilitative,

799
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 3: meaning making it easier or faster to learn them? Or

800
00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:30,719
Speaker 3: could they be working in the opposite direction, like the

801
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:37,400
Speaker 3: nascent beginnings of these capacities are what makes pretend play possible.

802
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:41,640
Speaker 3: Or could pretend play be what is called epiphenomenal, meaning

803
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 3: an unnecessary byproduct of these developing capacities, Like it doesn't

804
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 3: do anything itself, it just emerges because the brain can

805
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 3: do these things. Weisberg notes that this really is difficult

806
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 3: to study scientifically. It's hard to get really conclusive answers

807
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:00,680
Speaker 3: on a lot of these questions, especially because it is

808
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 3: hard to build robust and ethical experiments on this, Like

809
00:45:05,160 --> 00:45:08,399
Speaker 3: you can't really have control groups in which you force

810
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:12,360
Speaker 3: children to grow up without engaging and pretend play. That's

811
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:14,759
Speaker 3: not really ethical. So a lot of the ways we

812
00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:17,799
Speaker 3: would have of studying these questions are like indirect ways

813
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:19,920
Speaker 3: of looking at it and leave us with maybe helpful

814
00:45:19,960 --> 00:45:23,359
Speaker 3: but still incomplete evidence. So the first thing to look

815
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 3: at here is symbolic understanding. Pretend play is really interesting

816
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:32,759
Speaker 3: because it is symbolic in nature. And to come back

817
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:35,920
Speaker 3: to one example that shows this pretty easily, the usually

818
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:39,280
Speaker 3: the first acquired form of pretend play in child development

819
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:43,520
Speaker 3: object substitution. So the stick is a sword, the remote

820
00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 3: control is a phone, this wash cloth is a warm

821
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:51,520
Speaker 3: blanket for the baby dinosaur. Things stand in for other

822
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:54,879
Speaker 3: things that they in a literal sense, are not, though

823
00:45:54,880 --> 00:46:00,160
Speaker 3: they might be closer or further in physical form to

824
00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 3: the thing they're supposed to represent. You know, pretending a

825
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 3: baby doll is a baby is still a form of pretending,

826
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:08,680
Speaker 3: because even though a baby doll is made to be

827
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 3: is to look like a baby, it resembles a baby,

828
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:13,040
Speaker 3: it is not literally a baby. So like it, you know,

829
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:15,840
Speaker 3: when you feed it, it doesn't actually eat and so forth.

830
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:20,239
Speaker 1: But pretending a remote control is a phone, Like, that's

831
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:24,279
Speaker 1: that's rather straightforward. And actually, I mean really when you're

832
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:28,359
Speaker 1: super young, like, what's the difference between all of these

833
00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 1: various gadgets that your parents have in their house, right,

834
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:34,239
Speaker 1: I mean it's all just slightly different versions of the

835
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:34,799
Speaker 1: same thing.

836
00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:39,480
Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah, Yet, despite the general lack of understanding about

837
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:42,120
Speaker 3: you know, the intricacies of how a lot of devices

838
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:45,200
Speaker 3: work in real life, in pretend to play, I mean,

839
00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 3: a child can really learn to consistently, across time manipulate

840
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:53,480
Speaker 3: a symbolic object as if it were the thing it represented,

841
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 3: having the properties, functions, and effects of the pretend object.

842
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:00,680
Speaker 3: So like, you know, the child might not really understand

843
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 3: fully how a phone works, but they can keep treating

844
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:05,600
Speaker 3: the remote as a phone in place calls with it.

845
00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:08,640
Speaker 3: They might even try to FaceTime, you know, the like

846
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:12,400
Speaker 3: they'll they will go through activities that they've seen adults

847
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:16,799
Speaker 3: do with the phone. So what Weisberg notes that some

848
00:47:17,080 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 3: child development scholars dispute the extent to which pretend to

849
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:25,799
Speaker 3: play should be seen as strictly symbolic. Now, there are

850
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:28,759
Speaker 3: a couple of different frameworks here, different ways of thinking

851
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 3: about what pretending is in something like object substitution. Is

852
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:38,120
Speaker 3: it simply a behavior or is it actually a mentalistic

853
00:47:38,239 --> 00:47:42,760
Speaker 3: process of representation in the brain? Is it a mental state? Now?

854
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:47,880
Speaker 3: Weisberg explains the behavior view like this quote. When pretending

855
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 3: that a banana is a phone, one behaves as if

856
00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:53,680
Speaker 3: the banana was a phone and performs the actions with

857
00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:56,640
Speaker 3: the banana that would be appropriate if the banana was

858
00:47:56,680 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 3: a phone. No mentalizing is necessary for the game to proceed,

859
00:48:00,840 --> 00:48:04,880
Speaker 3: as the pretense is connected primarily to behaviors and not

860
00:48:05,080 --> 00:48:09,479
Speaker 3: necessarily to mental states or intentions. So in this view,

861
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:13,279
Speaker 3: the child does not actually need to have separate concepts

862
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:17,200
Speaker 3: of banana and phone and mentally apply the attributes of

863
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:20,200
Speaker 3: the phone to the banana, understanding that they are in

864
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:23,880
Speaker 3: fact different. Instead, they're just treating the banana as if

865
00:48:23,960 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 3: it were actually a phone. What is the support for

866
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:31,600
Speaker 3: this view, Well, Weisberg cites research where if you take

867
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 3: four year olds and five year olds, take these children

868
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:38,279
Speaker 3: and you show them a character hopping like a kangaroo,

869
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:41,759
Speaker 3: and then you tell the kids that the character who

870
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 3: hops like a kangaroo does not know what a kangaroo is.

871
00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:50,560
Speaker 3: And then you ask them, is the hopping character pretending

872
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:53,839
Speaker 3: to be a kangaroo? The majority of four and five

873
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:56,400
Speaker 3: year olds will say yes. In their view, the hopping

874
00:48:56,480 --> 00:48:59,880
Speaker 3: character is pretending to be a kangaroo, even if the

875
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:02,719
Speaker 3: character has never heard of a kangaroo and doesn't know

876
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:05,880
Speaker 3: what it is. Now, Actually, I think that's a really

877
00:49:05,880 --> 00:49:08,440
Speaker 3: interesting finding that might seem kind of subtle, And I

878
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:11,360
Speaker 3: don't know whether it proves the pure behavior view of

879
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 3: pretend to play, but I think that's just kind of

880
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:17,080
Speaker 3: an interesting result. Nonetheless, I don't think adults would make

881
00:49:17,080 --> 00:49:20,360
Speaker 3: the same judgment. I think if you asked adults, we

882
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:22,799
Speaker 3: would probably mostly say that you need to know what

883
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:25,919
Speaker 3: something is in order to pretend to be that thing.

884
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 3: But for a lot of four and five year olds

885
00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 3: know you only need to act like a thing to

886
00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 3: pretend to be it.

887
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, for adults, I feel like the revelation that the

888
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:39,400
Speaker 1: individual acting like a kangaroo doesn't know what a kangaroo is, like,

889
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:43,279
Speaker 1: that's potentially horrifying. Yeah, right, that makes things a lot

890
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:46,520
Speaker 1: more concerning. Yeah, But they're just like, well, yeah, they're

891
00:49:46,560 --> 00:49:49,440
Speaker 1: pretending to be a kangaroo. Of course they're pretending to

892
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:50,880
Speaker 1: be a kangaro. It doesn't matter if they don't know

893
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 1: what one is. They are pretending to be a kangaroo.

894
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:57,600
Speaker 3: But Weisberg argues that subsequent research on this question has

895
00:49:57,640 --> 00:50:00,560
Speaker 3: made the initial result maybe a little more complicated, and

896
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:04,400
Speaker 3: it's possible that this doesn't really tell us what's happening

897
00:50:04,840 --> 00:50:09,320
Speaker 3: when children pretend, but is instead addressing a second order

898
00:50:09,360 --> 00:50:15,680
Speaker 3: related question of how children conceptualize what pretending is, which

899
00:50:15,719 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 3: is an interesting question but a different one because like

900
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 3: a child may not actually be able to fully explain

901
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:25,520
Speaker 3: their own mental states when pretending. They might be doing

902
00:50:25,520 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 3: one thing when pretending, but when you ask a child

903
00:50:28,120 --> 00:50:30,920
Speaker 3: what pretending is, they'll tell you something kind of different.

904
00:50:31,320 --> 00:50:33,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an adult impulse too, to like, Okay,

905
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:36,439
Speaker 1: that thing you were doing, now, I'm going to ruin

906
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:39,560
Speaker 1: it by asking you to explain it, you know, like

907
00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:42,279
Speaker 1: they're just doing it. They're just engaging in the pretend play.

908
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:45,840
Speaker 3: Now. The other view, the mental symbolism view. This is

909
00:50:45,840 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 3: the view that says children are indeed engaging in mental

910
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:52,719
Speaker 3: symbolism when they play pretend, and in this case, the

911
00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:58,040
Speaker 3: game quote crucially requires understanding something about the mental states involved.

912
00:50:58,360 --> 00:51:01,760
Speaker 3: So that one is aware what is intended in the game.

913
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:05,400
Speaker 3: So under this view, it would be important to understand

914
00:51:05,400 --> 00:51:08,160
Speaker 3: that you are intending to pretend to be a kangaroo

915
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 3: in order to pretend to be a kangaroo. So in

916
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:13,160
Speaker 3: this view, like if a kid is playing the Banana

917
00:51:13,200 --> 00:51:16,560
Speaker 3: phone game, it is necessary that they understand and that

918
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:19,640
Speaker 3: all play partners understand that the banana is supposed to

919
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:24,040
Speaker 3: represent a phone. Now as evidence supporting this view, Weissberg

920
00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:29,640
Speaker 3: cites some other interesting experimental findings. One is experiments showing

921
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:34,120
Speaker 3: that kids in this preschool age can readily navigate a

922
00:51:34,120 --> 00:51:37,400
Speaker 3: bunch of different pretend to play episodes with different partners,

923
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:42,520
Speaker 3: which depends on keeping track of what each different play

924
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:47,520
Speaker 3: partner knows about what the play props represent. So maybe

925
00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:50,799
Speaker 3: Dad knows, but Mom does not know that this pile

926
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 3: of crayons is actually spaghetti and my dinosaurs are eating it.

927
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:59,439
Speaker 3: Mom would need to be informed that the crayons are spaghetti. Now,

928
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:01,840
Speaker 3: how can you tell that children have this ability to

929
00:52:02,200 --> 00:52:07,240
Speaker 3: navigate the different understandings Like this, children often get upset

930
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:11,320
Speaker 3: or protest when a play partner starts using a prop

931
00:52:11,719 --> 00:52:15,880
Speaker 3: literally instead of in its symbolic identity. So like if

932
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:18,920
Speaker 3: we're playing the crayons or spaghetti game and then I

933
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:22,640
Speaker 3: go pick up a spaghetti crayon and start drawing with it,

934
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:25,400
Speaker 3: the child is very likely to be like, no, that

935
00:52:25,520 --> 00:52:28,759
Speaker 3: is spaghetti, not a crayon. If you encountered this.

936
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:32,880
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely in these more abstract forms, but

937
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:37,840
Speaker 1: also in the case of stuffed animals or stuffies, like

938
00:52:37,920 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 1: what is the difference between a stuffed animal and a pillow?

939
00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:44,200
Speaker 1: Try and use a beloved stuffed animal as a pillow,

940
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 1: and the child will let you know.

941
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:49,960
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, classic, that's a great one. But so generally,

942
00:52:50,960 --> 00:52:54,719
Speaker 3: the children in this kind of example only protest like

943
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:58,160
Speaker 3: this if the play partner should be expected to know

944
00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:02,000
Speaker 3: about the substitution, So like if the person they're playing

945
00:53:02,000 --> 00:53:05,640
Speaker 3: with was present when the pretense began. So that's kind

946
00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:08,400
Speaker 3: of interesting. You know, the child will have more patience

947
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:11,640
Speaker 3: for somebody who just entered the picture and doesn't understand

948
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:15,640
Speaker 3: that the crayons are spaghetti. More evidence that pretend to

949
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:20,000
Speaker 3: play is mentally symbolic and not just behavioral. Some actions

950
00:53:20,040 --> 00:53:23,680
Speaker 3: observed and pretend to play only make sense if there

951
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:27,399
Speaker 3: is a symbolic representation, and do not make sense if

952
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:31,480
Speaker 3: the child were simply behaving as if the object really

953
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:36,960
Speaker 3: was the substitution object. Here's an example. You've got a

954
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:39,959
Speaker 3: little lego block and you decide it's a car, and

955
00:53:40,040 --> 00:53:43,160
Speaker 3: you are pushing the lego block around and saying room

956
00:53:43,239 --> 00:53:46,719
Speaker 3: vroom and making horn honking sounds. Children do stuff like

957
00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:50,200
Speaker 3: this all the time. Is that what a child does

958
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:53,920
Speaker 3: in relation to a real car, push it around and

959
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:57,040
Speaker 3: say vroom vroom. No, in a real car, the child

960
00:53:57,120 --> 00:54:00,360
Speaker 3: like gets inside and rides and maybe looks out the window.

961
00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:04,480
Speaker 3: There is no behavior to enact in relation to a

962
00:54:04,520 --> 00:54:08,400
Speaker 3: real car that is similar to pushing a tiny object

963
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:10,960
Speaker 3: around on the ground and making vrooming sounds and horn

964
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:14,479
Speaker 3: honking sounds with your mouth. This really only makes sense

965
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:17,719
Speaker 3: if the child understands that the block is not a

966
00:54:17,760 --> 00:54:22,759
Speaker 3: car but represents a car. So, in the end, Weisberg

967
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:26,280
Speaker 3: argues that the symbolic view of pretense is better supported

968
00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:29,560
Speaker 3: by the evidence. Now, what does this mean for the

969
00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:34,359
Speaker 3: broader idea of symbolic understanding and child development? Again, it's

970
00:54:34,360 --> 00:54:37,000
Speaker 3: hard to prove this kind of thing conclusively, but a

971
00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:40,279
Speaker 3: lot of researchers have suggested that there is a there's

972
00:54:40,320 --> 00:54:44,040
Speaker 3: a link between pretend play and symbolic thinking, and it

973
00:54:44,200 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 3: means that pretend play could be important for the development

974
00:54:47,680 --> 00:54:51,480
Speaker 3: of the most significant form of symbolic thinking in human culture,

975
00:54:51,520 --> 00:54:56,120
Speaker 3: which is language. Language is inherently symbolic because a word

976
00:54:56,400 --> 00:54:59,600
Speaker 3: is not the thing itself, it only represents the thing.

977
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:04,520
Speaker 3: So it may be that pretend play gives children a

978
00:55:04,640 --> 00:55:09,720
Speaker 3: chance to practice symbolic thinking, which in turn helps accelerate

979
00:55:09,800 --> 00:55:14,200
Speaker 3: their acquisition of language in early childhood. Some researchers apparently

980
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:16,960
Speaker 3: think this, but again, it's hard to disentangle the variables

981
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:20,520
Speaker 3: and see which direction if any of the causal relationship goes.

982
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 3: One thing is pretty clear is that pretending is not

983
00:55:24,640 --> 00:55:28,359
Speaker 3: necessary for language acquisition, but it may simply make it

984
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:33,480
Speaker 3: easier and faster. Weisberg briefly offers another interesting idea. This

985
00:55:33,560 --> 00:55:35,560
Speaker 3: is almost just an aside and a sentence, but it

986
00:55:35,680 --> 00:55:39,440
Speaker 3: really started working around in my brain. Weisberg writes, quote

987
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:44,040
Speaker 3: play may provide an especially facilitative environment for children to

988
00:55:44,160 --> 00:55:49,879
Speaker 3: experiment with new syntactic constructions. If I understand that right,

989
00:55:50,239 --> 00:55:55,520
Speaker 3: I think this means that because pretending during play allows

990
00:55:55,560 --> 00:56:00,360
Speaker 3: you to generate infinitely variable scenarios without ever having to

991
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:04,800
Speaker 3: leave your home or your normal routines. It encourages novel

992
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:09,440
Speaker 3: constructions of language based thought. So, in other words, a

993
00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:12,360
Speaker 3: child may literally do almost the same thing in the

994
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:16,560
Speaker 3: same place most days, but because playing pretend can create

995
00:56:16,680 --> 00:56:20,560
Speaker 3: weird novel situations with very little effort or risk, you

996
00:56:20,600 --> 00:56:24,319
Speaker 3: will be required to think and speak new sentences, which

997
00:56:24,360 --> 00:56:27,080
Speaker 3: is important as you get better at speaking and practice

998
00:56:27,120 --> 00:56:30,040
Speaker 3: your language skills. You know, under what other I was

999
00:56:30,120 --> 00:56:32,120
Speaker 3: just thinking about, Like what my daughter's doing in the

1000
00:56:32,160 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 3: past few days. She's like, she is making new weird

1001
00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:39,439
Speaker 3: sentences all the time, Like you know, little gholies, get

1002
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:42,960
Speaker 3: on boat and go on water and see red buoy

1003
00:56:43,080 --> 00:56:44,280
Speaker 3: and go to Nana's house.

1004
00:56:45,080 --> 00:56:47,479
Speaker 1: Little goolies, where did she pick up? Has she seen

1005
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:47,879
Speaker 1: the movie?

1006
00:56:47,960 --> 00:56:50,360
Speaker 3: No, not the movie. She's got she's got some little

1007
00:56:50,440 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 3: some little weird, little weird guys who are googlies.

1008
00:56:53,160 --> 00:56:55,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, that makes sense, but yeah, I mean this

1009
00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 1: is again this touches on one of the great things

1010
00:56:58,120 --> 00:57:01,560
Speaker 1: about being around children is that they are just such

1011
00:57:01,600 --> 00:57:06,440
Speaker 1: a font of wild creativity that grown ups typically just

1012
00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:10,680
Speaker 1: don't have as ready access to. Like I'm sure this

1013
00:57:10,760 --> 00:57:12,360
Speaker 1: is a story I've told on the show before, but

1014
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:15,160
Speaker 1: this was before I became a parent. I went to

1015
00:57:15,600 --> 00:57:18,080
Speaker 1: an improv show. It was like a local improv group,

1016
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:21,200
Speaker 1: and they were doing a kid's puppet show, but it

1017
00:57:21,240 --> 00:57:24,720
Speaker 1: was entirely improv and they would ask the children to

1018
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 1: give them ideas to then act out. And so even

1019
00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:32,880
Speaker 1: like seasoned improv group, like they were really you know,

1020
00:57:32,960 --> 00:57:35,000
Speaker 1: they were really rolling with some of these ideas. Like

1021
00:57:35,040 --> 00:57:39,800
Speaker 1: I distinctly remember one little girl saying Batman the girl

1022
00:57:40,160 --> 00:57:44,000
Speaker 1: as being one of the concepts. Anyway, that's just one example. Obviously,

1023
00:57:44,040 --> 00:57:45,920
Speaker 1: anyone who's been around children for any length of time

1024
00:57:45,920 --> 00:57:47,040
Speaker 1: can think of a hundred more.

1025
00:57:47,400 --> 00:57:50,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, they get they get weird. Yeah, did I already

1026
00:57:50,200 --> 00:57:53,240
Speaker 3: mention Mine is also right now obsessed with changing diapers

1027
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 3: on dinosaurs. On dinosaurs, the dinosaurs have diapers, and they

1028
00:57:57,600 --> 00:57:59,440
Speaker 3: often have poop needs to be changed.

1029
00:57:59,600 --> 00:58:02,040
Speaker 1: Well, you know, that's just sensible.

1030
00:58:02,280 --> 00:58:05,000
Speaker 3: Oh but quickly before we move off of the symbolic

1031
00:58:05,080 --> 00:58:09,320
Speaker 3: understanding thing, Weisberg the language is clearly the most important

1032
00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:13,160
Speaker 3: type of symbolic skills in human culture. Language is not

1033
00:58:13,200 --> 00:58:16,520
Speaker 3: the only symbolic skill practice through pretend to play another

1034
00:58:16,560 --> 00:58:20,320
Speaker 3: one the author mentions is quote reasoning with maps and

1035
00:58:20,360 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 3: scale models. That's the type of symbolic representation. You can

1036
00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:27,080
Speaker 3: think of a play space on the floor as really

1037
00:58:27,120 --> 00:58:30,600
Speaker 3: being much like a map, a scale representation of a

1038
00:58:30,640 --> 00:58:34,120
Speaker 3: topography or landscape in miniature on which you can sort

1039
00:58:34,160 --> 00:58:36,240
Speaker 3: of plot routes and act things out. And this is

1040
00:58:36,280 --> 00:58:38,200
Speaker 3: a big part of adult reasoning about how to get

1041
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:38,960
Speaker 3: around places.

1042
00:58:39,440 --> 00:58:42,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it makes sense since you consider

1043
00:58:42,840 --> 00:58:46,560
Speaker 1: that often a child's room contains multiple scale models, be

1044
00:58:46,680 --> 00:58:50,360
Speaker 1: they lego kits that have been as symboled or you know,

1045
00:58:50,600 --> 00:58:53,640
Speaker 1: or stuffies that are of vehicles. I mean, there are

1046
00:58:53,880 --> 00:58:57,080
Speaker 1: a million different variations of this obviously, but by having

1047
00:58:57,080 --> 00:58:59,560
Speaker 1: those objects in a space, it kind of turns that

1048
00:58:59,640 --> 00:59:02,440
Speaker 1: space into a kind of map or a miniaturized world.

1049
00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:15,439
Speaker 3: Totally. Okay, one more thing before we wrap up Part one.

1050
00:59:15,520 --> 00:59:19,640
Speaker 3: Here is Weissberg's exploration of the link between pretend play

1051
00:59:19,880 --> 00:59:26,160
Speaker 3: and counter factual reasoning. So counterfactual reasoning is reasoning based

1052
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:30,120
Speaker 3: on a premise that you do not accept as current reality.

1053
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:34,800
Speaker 3: So here's one. If cheetos were blue instead of orange,

1054
00:59:34,840 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 3: what color would your fingertips become after eating them? You

1055
00:59:38,200 --> 00:59:40,760
Speaker 3: know that cheetos are not actually blue, but you can

1056
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:45,320
Speaker 3: easily answer this question because you can reason counterfactually right,

1057
00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:53,400
Speaker 3: blue right, got it on the record. Yes, okay. So

1058
00:59:53,840 --> 00:59:57,400
Speaker 3: you know, as a comparison, imagine this banana war a phone,

1059
00:59:57,680 --> 01:00:02,360
Speaker 3: how would you use it. It's easy to see playing

1060
01:00:02,400 --> 01:00:07,080
Speaker 3: pretend as really almost exactly the same thing as counterfactual reasoning.

1061
01:00:07,120 --> 01:00:10,440
Speaker 3: You start with a premise that is not literal, it

1062
01:00:10,480 --> 01:00:12,600
Speaker 3: is different than how you think the world actually is,

1063
01:00:13,120 --> 01:00:15,280
Speaker 3: and then you act it out. You follow from there.

1064
01:00:15,640 --> 01:00:19,560
Speaker 3: But interestingly, studies have found that children in the so

1065
01:00:19,640 --> 01:00:21,920
Speaker 3: called high season of pretend to play, you know, this

1066
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:24,960
Speaker 3: period of like three to five years old, where they're

1067
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:28,360
Speaker 3: playing pretend all the time. Kids in this age range

1068
01:00:28,720 --> 01:00:32,880
Speaker 3: show a lot of difficulty with counterfactual reasoning and experiments.

1069
01:00:33,840 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 3: Some examples cited by Weisberg here. One is like an

1070
01:00:37,280 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 3: experiment where a kid watches a toy mouse go down

1071
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:44,400
Speaker 3: a little forked slide and then answers questions about it.

1072
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:48,040
Speaker 3: And so you can imagine. One condition is the child

1073
01:00:48,080 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 3: watches the mouse go down the fork in one direction,

1074
01:00:50,760 --> 01:00:53,720
Speaker 3: and then the experimenter asks, if the mouse goes down

1075
01:00:53,800 --> 01:00:56,520
Speaker 3: the opposite side of the fork next time, where will

1076
01:00:56,560 --> 01:00:59,320
Speaker 3: it end up? Kids do okay with this question? It's

1077
01:00:59,360 --> 01:01:02,960
Speaker 3: a hypothetic question. About a future event, and they've already

1078
01:01:03,000 --> 01:01:07,520
Speaker 3: seen how the slide works in principle, so they do okay. However,

1079
01:01:07,640 --> 01:01:11,640
Speaker 3: they have a lot more difficulty with almost exactly the

1080
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:16,600
Speaker 3: same question, but just if it's phrased as a counterfactual instead.

1081
01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:19,040
Speaker 3: So you show them the mouse going down one side

1082
01:01:19,080 --> 01:01:21,040
Speaker 3: of the fork, and then you ask them if the

1083
01:01:21,080 --> 01:01:24,400
Speaker 3: mouse had gone down the other way of the fork instead,

1084
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:28,040
Speaker 3: where would it have ended up. Apparently kids really struggle

1085
01:01:28,080 --> 01:01:31,440
Speaker 3: with this. Children at this age also really struggle with

1086
01:01:31,840 --> 01:01:36,960
Speaker 3: counterfactual syllogisms, like the blue Cheetos thing. Reasoning based on

1087
01:01:37,000 --> 01:01:41,000
Speaker 3: a counterfactual premise. So you can say something like, imagine

1088
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:45,080
Speaker 3: a world where cats bark instead of meowing. In this world,

1089
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:49,600
Speaker 3: Fluffy is a cat. Does Fluffy bark or meow? Preschoolers

1090
01:01:49,640 --> 01:01:51,919
Speaker 3: struggle with this as well. They seem to have a

1091
01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:56,680
Speaker 3: hard time ignoring their legitimate knowledge about the real world,

1092
01:01:56,760 --> 01:02:00,120
Speaker 3: which is that cats meow, they do not bark, And

1093
01:02:00,160 --> 01:02:02,840
Speaker 3: so the kids want to say Fluffy meows because they

1094
01:02:02,880 --> 01:02:04,000
Speaker 3: know that cats meow.

1095
01:02:04,600 --> 01:02:06,920
Speaker 1: I mean, I can see the difficulty because this is

1096
01:02:06,960 --> 01:02:09,800
Speaker 1: kind of like a bedrock understanding of reality, you know,

1097
01:02:11,000 --> 01:02:15,400
Speaker 1: and if you snatch that away and flip it around. Yeah,

1098
01:02:15,480 --> 01:02:18,080
Speaker 1: it takes a minute to recalibrate to that.

1099
01:02:18,560 --> 01:02:22,960
Speaker 3: So it's very interesting that counterfactual reasoning and playing pretend

1100
01:02:23,800 --> 01:02:26,520
Speaker 3: seem to us to be nearly the same thing. They're

1101
01:02:26,600 --> 01:02:29,640
Speaker 3: almost exactly the same thing, yet preschoolers tend to excel

1102
01:02:29,800 --> 01:02:33,280
Speaker 3: at one and struggle with the other. Genuine skill at

1103
01:02:33,320 --> 01:02:36,480
Speaker 3: counterfactual reasoning only seems to come online later with some

1104
01:02:36,600 --> 01:02:40,200
Speaker 3: effort and training. So one idea offered in this paper

1105
01:02:40,360 --> 01:02:45,640
Speaker 3: is the idea of implicit versus explicit understanding. So when

1106
01:02:45,920 --> 01:02:52,840
Speaker 3: pretending children engage an implicit or intuitive sense of counterfactual

1107
01:02:52,880 --> 01:02:56,800
Speaker 3: reasoning that's acted out through play in the body, But

1108
01:02:57,200 --> 01:03:02,920
Speaker 3: maybe what they struggle with is understanding counterfactual reasoning purely

1109
01:03:03,200 --> 01:03:07,040
Speaker 3: in words, which is why they're having trouble with syllogisms.

1110
01:03:07,120 --> 01:03:10,960
Speaker 3: That's one possibility, it's the explicit versus implicit. But also

1111
01:03:11,440 --> 01:03:14,000
Speaker 3: interesting thing is that some experiments have shown that you

1112
01:03:14,080 --> 01:03:20,520
Speaker 3: can improve preschooler's performance on counterfactual syllogisms simply by explaining

1113
01:03:20,560 --> 01:03:24,960
Speaker 3: the counterfactual element as pretend play. So you can imagine

1114
01:03:24,960 --> 01:03:27,520
Speaker 3: asking maybe a kid struggles with the you know the

1115
01:03:27,720 --> 01:03:30,560
Speaker 3: like you know, cats bark in this world what is

1116
01:03:30,600 --> 01:03:34,520
Speaker 3: Fluffy the cat say? Instead, you could say, Fluffy the

1117
01:03:34,560 --> 01:03:37,720
Speaker 3: cat is pretending to be a dog. When he is

1118
01:03:37,800 --> 01:03:40,520
Speaker 3: pretending to be a dog, does he bark or meow?

1119
01:03:42,480 --> 01:03:44,800
Speaker 3: So maybe this kind of thing can can kind of

1120
01:03:44,840 --> 01:03:49,320
Speaker 3: get through more more on the implicit wavelength, but anyway,

1121
01:03:50,080 --> 01:03:53,560
Speaker 3: Some researchers have argued that the adaptive function of pretend

1122
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:57,760
Speaker 3: play is exactly this about counterfactual reasoning. It's to prepare

1123
01:03:57,920 --> 01:04:02,200
Speaker 3: children for serious counter factual reasoning later in life. And

1124
01:04:02,480 --> 01:04:05,240
Speaker 3: I want to emphasize that counterfactual reasoning is not just

1125
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:09,680
Speaker 3: like high falutin philosophical thought experiments or you know, it's

1126
01:04:09,720 --> 01:04:11,880
Speaker 3: not just on that level. I mean, we engage in

1127
01:04:11,920 --> 01:04:16,760
Speaker 3: counterfactual reasoning every single day. One function of counterfactual reasoning

1128
01:04:16,800 --> 01:04:19,840
Speaker 3: that is very useful is to learn not only from

1129
01:04:19,960 --> 01:04:24,040
Speaker 3: mistakes made, but from mistakes almost made, or from the

1130
01:04:24,080 --> 01:04:26,880
Speaker 3: mistakes of others. So you can think, you can like

1131
01:04:27,400 --> 01:04:30,520
Speaker 3: go through an experience and then think, wow, if I

1132
01:04:30,560 --> 01:04:33,200
Speaker 3: had done it this other way, that could have gone

1133
01:04:33,240 --> 01:04:35,800
Speaker 3: really bad, and you can learn from that even though

1134
01:04:35,840 --> 01:04:38,800
Speaker 3: you didn't actually have that experience, you just know enough

1135
01:04:38,840 --> 01:04:41,200
Speaker 3: to know that you shouldn't have done that, and you

1136
01:04:41,240 --> 01:04:42,520
Speaker 3: won't do that in the future.

1137
01:04:43,040 --> 01:04:44,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point.

1138
01:04:44,680 --> 01:04:46,720
Speaker 3: Like who knows, maybe you know, you take the boat

1139
01:04:46,760 --> 01:04:49,920
Speaker 3: ride across the river even though you were thinking about swimming,

1140
01:04:49,960 --> 01:04:53,560
Speaker 3: and halfway across you see some crocodiles and you remember, like, oh,

1141
01:04:53,640 --> 01:04:56,560
Speaker 3: I can reason if I had swam instead of riding

1142
01:04:56,600 --> 01:04:59,600
Speaker 3: the boat, that would have been bad.

1143
01:04:59,720 --> 01:05:02,320
Speaker 1: There's a line and I figure which Cormick McCarthy book,

1144
01:05:02,360 --> 01:05:06,480
Speaker 1: But there's a character pondering all the worse luck their

1145
01:05:06,520 --> 01:05:08,360
Speaker 1: bad luck might have saved them from.

1146
01:05:08,520 --> 01:05:11,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now again, what's less clear is to

1147
01:05:11,960 --> 01:05:14,800
Speaker 3: what extent there is any kind of direct training effects.

1148
01:05:14,800 --> 01:05:17,439
Speaker 3: It seems plausible that Pretend to Play really does train

1149
01:05:17,560 --> 01:05:20,520
Speaker 3: the brain for counterfactual reasoning, but we don't know. But

1150
01:05:20,960 --> 01:05:24,840
Speaker 3: interesting thing to study and certainly plausible based on what

1151
01:05:24,880 --> 01:05:27,160
Speaker 3: we do know. Now, I think we're starting to run

1152
01:05:27,200 --> 01:05:29,040
Speaker 3: a little long, so this might be the place that

1153
01:05:29,080 --> 01:05:31,720
Speaker 3: we have to cut part one here. But obviously there's

1154
01:05:31,760 --> 01:05:33,360
Speaker 3: going to be a lot more to say about Pretend

1155
01:05:33,440 --> 01:05:36,840
Speaker 3: to Play in subsequent episodes, at least one more, we

1156
01:05:36,920 --> 01:05:37,920
Speaker 3: can promise you.

1157
01:05:38,640 --> 01:05:40,880
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I do have a few follow up questions,

1158
01:05:40,920 --> 01:05:43,680
Speaker 1: so before we close out, First of all, where do

1159
01:05:43,720 --> 01:05:46,320
Speaker 1: you stand on air guitar. You, being a person who

1160
01:05:46,400 --> 01:05:49,720
Speaker 1: actually plays a guitar, do you, as a grown up,

1161
01:05:49,920 --> 01:05:52,120
Speaker 1: engage in air guitar. Do you find yourself playing the

1162
01:05:52,120 --> 01:05:56,840
Speaker 1: air guitar whilst listening to music for at least moments,

1163
01:05:56,880 --> 01:05:58,040
Speaker 1: if not extended periods.

1164
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:00,880
Speaker 3: I don't know what this says about me, but really no,

1165
01:06:01,360 --> 01:06:04,040
Speaker 3: do not play air guitar at all. This no judgment

1166
01:06:04,040 --> 01:06:06,760
Speaker 3: against it. I'm fully supportive of air guitar behaviors, but

1167
01:06:06,800 --> 01:06:10,360
Speaker 3: I don't find myself doing it when I listen to music.

1168
01:06:10,480 --> 01:06:13,240
Speaker 3: I just I dance, but air guitar is not part

1169
01:06:13,280 --> 01:06:14,000
Speaker 3: of the repertoire.

1170
01:06:14,600 --> 01:06:15,959
Speaker 1: How about air drums?

1171
01:06:16,600 --> 01:06:19,560
Speaker 3: Oh, I do more of that. Interesting. I don't actually

1172
01:06:19,640 --> 01:06:22,520
Speaker 3: play the drums, but I'm more likely to act out

1173
01:06:22,560 --> 01:06:25,160
Speaker 3: playing drums without real drums there, yeah huh.

1174
01:06:25,240 --> 01:06:28,160
Speaker 1: Interesting Like if in the air tonight place, you're definitely

1175
01:06:28,200 --> 01:06:28,880
Speaker 1: gonna go do the.

1176
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:34,520
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, all the films, the fills in a gottadavida,

1177
01:06:34,560 --> 01:06:37,320
Speaker 3: the drum solo. I cannot listen to that drum solo

1178
01:06:37,360 --> 01:06:38,640
Speaker 3: without acting it out.

1179
01:06:38,840 --> 01:06:41,120
Speaker 1: I will catch myself doing air guitar, but then I

1180
01:06:41,120 --> 01:06:43,160
Speaker 1: get very self conscious because I'm like, I don't know

1181
01:06:43,200 --> 01:06:44,880
Speaker 1: how to play the guitar. What am I doing? I'm

1182
01:06:44,920 --> 01:06:47,880
Speaker 1: just very roughly mimicking things that I've seen before. And

1183
01:06:47,920 --> 01:06:49,440
Speaker 1: then I took my hands in my pockets.

1184
01:06:49,480 --> 01:06:51,560
Speaker 3: Don't let it hold you back now.

1185
01:06:51,680 --> 01:06:54,720
Speaker 1: And then my other follow up question, a pair of

1186
01:06:54,800 --> 01:07:00,240
Speaker 1: questions really or observations involve again the banana as a telephone.

1187
01:07:00,280 --> 01:07:03,520
Speaker 1: First of all, are kids still doing this? Because we

1188
01:07:03,560 --> 01:07:07,600
Speaker 1: should point out that telephones don't really look like bananas anymore,

1189
01:07:07,720 --> 01:07:10,600
Speaker 1: like telephone receivers used to have more of a banana

1190
01:07:10,760 --> 01:07:14,520
Speaker 1: shape to them. More and more, I feel like kids

1191
01:07:14,520 --> 01:07:19,040
Speaker 1: are not exposed to those sorts of telephones. They're seeing

1192
01:07:19,280 --> 01:07:22,560
Speaker 1: smartphones that look more like TV remote controls.

1193
01:07:22,720 --> 01:07:25,160
Speaker 3: That's interesting. Well, you know this in the paper, it

1194
01:07:25,240 --> 01:07:27,760
Speaker 3: was the bananas phone that was often cited. But I

1195
01:07:27,880 --> 01:07:30,240
Speaker 3: was using the example of the remotest phone because that

1196
01:07:30,360 --> 01:07:31,600
Speaker 3: is what happens in our house.

1197
01:07:32,080 --> 01:07:34,560
Speaker 1: Here's the other thing that comes to mind. The bananas

1198
01:07:34,640 --> 01:07:38,600
Speaker 1: phone definitely kills though, Like I feel like this is

1199
01:07:38,600 --> 01:07:43,000
Speaker 1: something that's definitely going to elicit laughter from grownups if

1200
01:07:43,040 --> 01:07:44,840
Speaker 1: a grown up does it, and if a kid does it,

1201
01:07:45,080 --> 01:07:46,720
Speaker 1: this is also going to get a lot of laughs

1202
01:07:46,720 --> 01:07:48,520
Speaker 1: out of Mom and dad. I wonder to what extent

1203
01:07:48,560 --> 01:07:49,880
Speaker 1: that is factored into anything.

1204
01:07:50,360 --> 01:07:53,200
Speaker 3: Pretend to Play is funnier when the reach is farther

1205
01:07:53,360 --> 01:07:55,480
Speaker 3: and when the literal object is food.

1206
01:07:56,720 --> 01:07:59,920
Speaker 1: Yes, because the food the food technology gap is greater,

1207
01:08:00,200 --> 01:08:02,280
Speaker 1: right yeah, and it you know, to get in you

1208
01:08:02,320 --> 01:08:05,200
Speaker 1: were getting into the question of like, okay, how would

1209
01:08:05,280 --> 01:08:08,040
Speaker 1: this work if it were a phone? Like that question

1210
01:08:08,200 --> 01:08:11,080
Speaker 1: is more ridiculous with the banana. How would the banana

1211
01:08:11,160 --> 01:08:16,760
Speaker 1: possibly function as a like fully grown telecommunication device? You

1212
01:08:16,800 --> 01:08:17,280
Speaker 1: know we can?

1213
01:08:17,840 --> 01:08:19,240
Speaker 3: So how do I put this on speaker?

1214
01:08:19,280 --> 01:08:22,400
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, all right, That's all I got. Those are

1215
01:08:22,400 --> 01:08:24,040
Speaker 1: the only follow up questions I did.

1216
01:08:24,320 --> 01:08:27,040
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, Well, folks, we're gonna have to cut

1217
01:08:27,080 --> 01:08:29,240
Speaker 3: part one there, but we will be back with more

1218
01:08:29,320 --> 01:08:31,000
Speaker 3: about Pretend to Play on Thursday.

1219
01:08:31,320 --> 01:08:34,800
Speaker 1: That's right, Bring your imaginary friend and we'll have a

1220
01:08:34,800 --> 01:08:37,400
Speaker 1: good old time, all right. In the meantime, we're just

1221
01:08:37,439 --> 01:08:39,639
Speaker 1: going to remind you stuff to blow your mind, primarily

1222
01:08:39,640 --> 01:08:42,679
Speaker 1: a science and culture podcast on Tuesdays and Thursdays, those

1223
01:08:42,680 --> 01:08:45,320
Speaker 1: are the core episode of publication. Dates. On Fridays, we

1224
01:08:45,360 --> 01:08:47,240
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a

1225
01:08:47,280 --> 01:08:50,599
Speaker 1: weird film on Weird House Cinema. On Wednesdays, we bust

1226
01:08:50,600 --> 01:08:53,680
Speaker 1: out a short form episode and yeah, that's generally how

1227
01:08:53,720 --> 01:08:56,719
Speaker 1: it works. If you're on Instagram, follow us at stb

1228
01:08:56,960 --> 01:08:57,960
Speaker 1: ym podcast.

1229
01:08:58,560 --> 01:09:02,040
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.

1230
01:09:02,320 --> 01:09:03,800
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1231
01:09:03,800 --> 01:09:06,200
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1232
01:09:06,240 --> 01:09:08,200
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1233
01:09:08,320 --> 01:09:11,000
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your

1234
01:09:11,040 --> 01:09:19,960
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

1235
01:09:20,040 --> 01:09:23,000
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1236
01:09:23,080 --> 01:09:25,840
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1237
01:09:26,000 --> 01:09:42,759
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.