Speaker 1: Hey you Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have
Speaker 1: a vault episode for you. This one originally published one seven,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. It is Pretend Play, Part one, the
Speaker 1: first in a multi part series about the importance of
Speaker 1: pretend play for human beings.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today we're going to begin a series of episodes
Speaker 3: looking at the topic of pretend play. And yes, folks,
Speaker 3: this is one of my Baby Looked at You topics,
Speaker 3: inspired directly by watching my currently two year old daughter's
Speaker 3: wonderful and frightening brain become ever more powerful by day. Lately,
Speaker 3: she has been all about pretending. Sometimes it is pretending
Speaker 3: to be things. Robert, I can't remember if I told
Speaker 3: you about the Christmas Elf. Do you know the Christmas elth?
Speaker 1: Do I know the Christmas Self? Well, there are many elves.
Speaker 3: This is different than the one on the shelf. This
Speaker 3: is the So my daughter pretends to be this thing
Speaker 3: called the Christmas Elf, which mostly just like makes a
Speaker 3: grotesque kind of gargoyle face and dances wildly to Black Sabbath.
Speaker 3: That's what Christmas elth is.
Speaker 1: Okay, well you're bringing her up right then. That seems
Speaker 1: that seems more in keeping with some of the more
Speaker 1: archaic forms of ELF that we've discussed on the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know, knowing me, that may sound like
Speaker 3: a trained behavior, but this is just what naturally emerged
Speaker 3: from her. I don't know where she got that. That's
Speaker 3: what Christmas elf is. She's like data put on Black
Speaker 3: Sabbath record, but it runs around dance into that. And
Speaker 3: then one of the good pretending to be things the
Speaker 3: other day was she was she's been playing with some
Speaker 3: little doggies that she got for Christmas doggy toys, and
Speaker 3: one of them is a begle. So you know, she
Speaker 3: likes talking about the beagle and hearing about the beagle.
Speaker 3: But she was talking to Rachel the other day and
Speaker 3: she I think she was saying woof, woof, and Rachel said, oh,
Speaker 3: are you a beagle right now? And she said no.
Speaker 3: Tater Tot got very still. I don't know what exactly
Speaker 3: are the properties one mimics when being a tater Tot
Speaker 3: that I can't fully inhabit that mindset, but I admire
Speaker 3: the ambition.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess it is of the various fried and
Speaker 1: or baked potato food products. So it's the tater tots
Speaker 1: are the most canine of the bunch, so sure, yeah.
Speaker 3: But a lot of it is. So there's a little
Speaker 3: bit of pretending to be things, but a lot more
Speaker 3: of it is what when we get into the research
Speaker 3: later in this episode, is what is sometimes called replica play.
Speaker 3: It is pretending with the aid of toys or props,
Speaker 3: little agent toys, and making them pretend to do things.
Speaker 3: So she's got a bunch of dinosaurs, and she loves
Speaker 3: to make her dinosaurs go night night and then rapidly
Speaker 3: wake up and then go night night again, over and
Speaker 3: over in like a mind rendingly fast circadian rhythm. She
Speaker 3: loves to have our little dinosaurs and creatures eat pizza.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of discussion of to what extent
Speaker 3: they're sharing the pizza or not, or to what extent
Speaker 3: they're keeping pieces of pizza to themselves. Sometimes they're eating
Speaker 3: things that you can see there's like a physical prop
Speaker 3: for the food. Sometimes they're just eating purely imaginary thing
Speaker 3: so there's cake there that's invisible cake. And then the
Speaker 3: past few days she's been into going on a boat
Speaker 3: on the couch, which is a book on the couch cushion.
Speaker 3: The couch cushion is the water and the book is
Speaker 3: the boat. She puts various things on the boat, and
Speaker 3: they get on and off the boat and see things
Speaker 3: out on the water, and typically they're on a boat
Speaker 3: trip to grandparents' house.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, it's a magical time. My own child is
Speaker 1: twelve going on thirteen now, so a lot of these,
Speaker 1: you know, really awesome examples of imagination player are in
Speaker 1: the past now, but my wife and I certainly look
Speaker 1: back on them with a lot of funness, and some
Speaker 1: of them are still things we frequently discussed in our
Speaker 1: you know, day to day conversations, even a reference rather.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I remember I remember various antics with these,
Speaker 1: like old plastic dinosaur toys from my childhood, and so
Speaker 1: those would eat those dinosaurs were always eating things. I
Speaker 1: can't remember how much of it was real, how much
Speaker 1: of it was imagined. And they wouldn't so much go
Speaker 1: to sleep as they would occasionally go extinct. There was
Speaker 1: some sort of a cosmic event that would make them
Speaker 1: all go extinct, but you know then they'd be back
Speaker 1: up and running before too long.
Speaker 3: That's intense pretend. Yeah, yeah, facing the realities of nature
Speaker 3: head on.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you tell the story of the dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: you got to tell the beginning on the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, ma, these are evolving into birds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Well, we did touch on that aspect
Speaker 1: of it too, but we also inevitably or I inevitably
Speaker 1: ended up sort of busting out these sort of childhood
Speaker 1: version of dinosaurs that I had growing up, which was
Speaker 1: less about the bird thing and more about just catastrophic
Speaker 1: fireballs and so forth and exploding volcanoes. I think we've
Speaker 1: referenced before that, like almost all of those old paleo
Speaker 1: art paleo art examples from childhood dinosaur books of like
Speaker 1: the late seventies and the nineteen eighties, they all had
Speaker 1: an erupting volcano in the background.
Speaker 3: So it's actively erupting at the moment.
Speaker 1: And it was kind of implied or I always thought like,
Speaker 1: that's the end back there, it's what's happening. It's end
Speaker 1: of days for the dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: I think it's important to get both visions. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: you get the long scale evolutionary EON's point of view,
Speaker 3: and then you also get the scary part of fantage
Speaker 3: of you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'm excited about these episodes though, getting into
Speaker 1: imagination play. It's a topic that you know, I think
Speaker 1: we've touched on before on the show, at least in passing.
Speaker 1: There may be some very old episodes that deal with
Speaker 1: some of the issues we're going to bring up here,
Speaker 1: but it's it's going to be nice to really dive
Speaker 1: into all of this.
Speaker 3: A new Yeah, And I'm not sure yet how many
Speaker 3: episodes we're going to go to in this series. We're
Speaker 3: looking at least two, but maybe three or more if
Speaker 3: the topic takes us there. But clearly this is a
Speaker 3: rich subject. There's a lot of scientific research in this area,
Speaker 3: but also just a lot of you know, interesting philosophical
Speaker 3: thought going back centuries. So there's going to be a
Speaker 3: lot to get into. But I thought a good place
Speaker 3: to start would just be a good broad sort of
Speaker 3: overview paper looking at the subject from a psychology, cognitive science,
Speaker 3: and child development point of view. And I found a
Speaker 3: good paper in that regard by Dina Skolnik Weisberg published
Speaker 3: in the journal Cognitive Science in twenty fifteen called pretend play,
Speaker 3: and so Rob, if you're ready, I thought we should
Speaker 3: just go ahead and I've write into this paper and
Speaker 3: talk about some of the topics brought up in it,
Speaker 3: some of the research covered, and then we can branch
Speaker 3: out from there.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it.
Speaker 3: So we start with definitions. Weisberg defines pretend play as
Speaker 3: any playful behavior that involves non literal action, so to paraphrase,
Speaker 3: play that operates on the premise of a thing or
Speaker 3: situation being other than what it literally is. So there
Speaker 3: are types of play that are not pretend to play.
Speaker 3: You can think of a game of tag or a
Speaker 3: game of kickball. This is clearly play, but it's not
Speaker 3: really pretend play because what you I mean. You could
Speaker 3: imagine versions that involve pretend elements, But at the baseline,
Speaker 3: this is a game that is taken literally. What the
Speaker 3: children mostly think they're doing is playing the literal game.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, like a game of kickball is just a
Speaker 1: game of kickball unless you do what I do distinctly
Speaker 1: remember doing when I was a kid, is pretending that
Speaker 1: kickball with some sort of like sci fi gladiatorial combats
Speaker 1: and areo you know, and I think kids are probably
Speaker 1: doing some more things today, like imagining it's squid games,
Speaker 1: and so I guess it depends on the age, but
Speaker 1: you know, dreaming it up a little bit, adding that
Speaker 1: layer of imagination on top of it.
Speaker 3: I recall specifically doing this with tag because I enjoyed
Speaker 3: playing tag a lot, and my friends and I in
Speaker 3: elementary school age played tag. But I remember I would
Speaker 3: spice it up mentally, sometimes with the cooperation of others,
Speaker 3: or maybe just in my own mind, by imagining myself
Speaker 3: and other players as characters from movies I liked in
Speaker 3: the context of tag. So like, I just saw the
Speaker 3: movie Anaconda starring Ice Cube and jenn Phi Lopez, you know,
Speaker 3: and and I am now pretending to be this character
Speaker 3: from Anaconda as we play tag. You know, I was
Speaker 3: probably that was probably too mature of a movie for
Speaker 3: me at that point.
Speaker 1: But we need to come back to Anaconda on a
Speaker 1: weirdest cinema.
Speaker 3: By the way, it's it's so good one of the
Speaker 3: most unhinged performances of all time John Voyd in that movie.
Speaker 1: All right, Right, so I think everybody gets where we're
Speaker 1: going with this. Yeah, it's like there's like basically like
Speaker 1: pure sport is not imaginative.
Speaker 3: And then there are other kinds of play that once
Speaker 3: again could break down either way. So building with blocks
Speaker 3: could be pretend to play depending on how you're playing,
Speaker 3: but it isn't necessarily you might just be building with blocks.
Speaker 3: And so sometimes when I build with blocks with my daughter,
Speaker 3: I the impression I get is that it's just about
Speaker 3: building with blocks. You know, she wants to build a
Speaker 3: big tower, make a bunch of blocks. But if you
Speaker 3: think about it as we are building a skyscraper and
Speaker 3: there are going to be people living inside it and
Speaker 3: so forth, then I guess it is pretend play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you get into some of the bigger kid
Speaker 1: uses of Legos. For example, I remember doing this, and
Speaker 1: I've seen my child do this as well, where you
Speaker 1: are really almost creating an imaginative fetish idea out of
Speaker 1: the out of the blocks, you know, be it's some
Speaker 1: sort of a character or a creature or you know,
Speaker 1: in my case it was often some sort of a
Speaker 1: robot or a mech suit, you know, whatever the case
Speaker 1: may be. And it is about connecting blocks together and
Speaker 1: building something, making a form. But then you were like
Speaker 1: filling that form with more meaning via your imagination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. But okay, so here's where like clear pretend
Speaker 3: play comes in. When my child picks up an old
Speaker 3: DVD player remote control that we took the batteries out
Speaker 3: of and holds it up to her ear and says
Speaker 3: that she is calling her grandmother on the phone, that's
Speaker 3: definitely pretend play. At some level, she knows the remote
Speaker 3: is not a phone, and you know, Nana does not
Speaker 3: talk back to her, but she likes to pretend and
Speaker 3: thinks it's very funny.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yes, my child also did a lot of phone
Speaker 1: pretend play as well, picking up various items, remote controls,
Speaker 1: what have you, pretending their phones.
Speaker 3: So that's a pretty clear case. Coming back to more
Speaker 3: ambiguous cases. One that I think is huge is like
Speaker 3: play fighting. Play fighting could be non pretend to play.
Speaker 3: It could be understood as just literally a form of
Speaker 3: kind of free form wrestling competition between children or kids
Speaker 3: engaging in play fighting might be assuming the non literal
Speaker 3: form of characters and a scenario.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mind here instantly goes to lightsaber fighting because
Speaker 1: my own child did a lot of this and it
Speaker 1: took different forms, right, Because if you're going to pretend
Speaker 1: to fight with lightsabers. You can have a full official
Speaker 1: lightsaber toy with an extendable plastic cone that serves as
Speaker 1: the blade of the lightsaber or laser sort if you will.
Speaker 1: But then then you can have just a pre made
Speaker 1: hilt that you're pretending there is a light blade emanating from.
Speaker 1: You can do what my child did and take foil
Speaker 1: like roll of foil roll of saran wrap tubes, little
Speaker 1: cardboard tubes, dress those up as lightsaber hilts, and then
Speaker 1: you're fighting with those, pretending again that the blade is there.
Speaker 1: Or you can do what I think a lot of
Speaker 1: kids do, is you just pretend the hilt is there
Speaker 1: as well, So like I can draw a lightsaber right
Speaker 1: now and just go and you know, you know exactly
Speaker 1: what I have in my hand, and you can engage
Speaker 1: in battles. And so they are like different levels of
Speaker 1: having any kind of like actual physical property there to
Speaker 1: play off of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So you can imagine there's sort of
Speaker 3: different levels of extension of the imagination depending on what
Speaker 3: physical props you're using or how far away the situation
Speaker 3: or scenario or object you're imagining is from the physical reality.
Speaker 3: So you know, there's a sort of greater imaginative leap
Speaker 3: involved in taking a paper towel tube and saying that's
Speaker 3: a lightsaber than holding like a toy painted up to
Speaker 3: look like a real lightsaber and saying that's a real lightsaber.
Speaker 3: Both involve some imagination, but one kind of is a
Speaker 3: bigger leap. And then it's even a bigger leap to
Speaker 3: take nothing at all, just you know, you're completely imagining
Speaker 3: the presence of a prop in any case, and say
Speaker 3: that's the lightsaber.
Speaker 1: And then is it me with the lightsaber to your point?
Speaker 1: Or am i obi wan? Am i anakin?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And so forth. So, yeah, there's so many different levels
Speaker 1: of the imagination to employ here.
Speaker 3: So the purpose of this review by Weisberg was to
Speaker 3: define pretend play, to differentiate it from other types of
Speaker 3: playful activities, and then to kind of look at ways
Speaker 3: that pretend to play fits into the development of various
Speaker 3: cognitive and social skills in childhood. And since pretend play
Speaker 3: seems to involve many of the same mental structures as
Speaker 3: complex adult capacity is like counterfactual reasoning, theory of mind,
Speaker 3: symbolic understanding, and so forth, looking at pretend to play
Speaker 3: really could help us better understand many aspects of the
Speaker 3: brain and the mind. So this review in particular looks
Speaker 3: at the relationship between pretend play and symbolic understanding, theory
Speaker 3: of mind, and counterfactual reasoning. I think we might save
Speaker 3: at least one of those. I think the deeper exploration
Speaker 3: of theory of mind for part two, because that gets
Speaker 3: into a lot of other stuff. But I'm going to
Speaker 3: try to talk about symbolic understanding and counterfactual reasoning today.
Speaker 3: But the author kicks things off by trying to define
Speaker 3: and characterize pretend to play itself. Now, even going back
Speaker 3: a step, not just pretend to play, but play as
Speaker 3: a concept has proven notoriously difficult for researchers. There's like
Speaker 3: a whole literature arguing over what play is, What definition
Speaker 3: best captures the essence of play? What do we mean
Speaker 3: when we call something play? Which types of edgec count
Speaker 3: and which do not. So play is just extremely variable
Speaker 3: from child to child, across different cultures. Different people look
Speaker 3: at the same activity and say that is play. No,
Speaker 3: that's not play. So there's really no way to draw
Speaker 3: a clean boundary around this concept that everybody's going to accept.
Speaker 3: You will just have to sit with the fact that
Speaker 3: some people are going to say, no, I don't agree
Speaker 3: that that's what play is.
Speaker 1: Right, And this is going to kind of continue through
Speaker 1: our whole analysis of pretend play, because there's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot of going back and forth. But will
Speaker 1: some researchers say this classifies as such and such and
Speaker 1: others disagree. Yeah, it just depends how you tease it apart.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's certainly the case. I mean, we are in
Speaker 3: the higher order sciences. We're more in the realm of
Speaker 3: psychology and cognitive science and a lot of things. They're
Speaker 3: just not as clean as they are in chemistry. Now,
Speaker 3: one of the main criteria that seems to be common
Speaker 3: to definitions of play is that it is what Weisberg
Speaker 3: calls non instrumental activity. It has no immediate goal or
Speaker 3: purpose other than enjoyment. So you might actually enjoy something
Speaker 3: that is not play. Maybe you enjoy splitting logs into firewood.
Speaker 3: But even if you do, most people would not think
Speaker 3: of splitting wood as play because it has an immediate
Speaker 3: functional goal. It's about transforming resources into a more usable form.
Speaker 3: So even if I don't know you bring a spirit
Speaker 3: of playfulness to your log splitting and you really enjoy
Speaker 3: the activity. Most people don't look at that and say
Speaker 3: that is play.
Speaker 1: This is really interesting to think about this distinction, because
Speaker 1: you know, I catch myself as what I like to
Speaker 1: think is a pretty pro play adult, rationalizing that some
Speaker 1: of my hobbies like many painting, for instance, rationalizing it
Speaker 1: on the basis that while this is going to result
Speaker 1: in something that can be utilized in another activity, generally
Speaker 1: a social activity, and therefore it's not like there's not
Speaker 1: this huge sunk cost to it. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: a big waste of time, which you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of false thinking and all of that, I think.
Speaker 1: And likewise, yeah, you know, I've often thought about, or
Speaker 1: at least I've thought about this more over the last
Speaker 1: ten years or so, about how, you know, especially in
Speaker 1: a very capitalist society, I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: end up buying into this corrupting notion that if we're
Speaker 1: good at something, if we or even if we just
Speaker 1: enjoy something, if it brings us pleasure, well, then shouldn't
Speaker 1: we be generating some profits off of our love or
Speaker 1: our talent or what have you? You know, And I should
Speaker 1: add the caveat you know, and there's nothing, absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with turning your passion, your hobby, your talent into
Speaker 1: a career or a side hustle making a few bucks
Speaker 1: off of it here and there, even if you're just
Speaker 1: sort of paying for part of that hobby. Certainly, yeah,
Speaker 1: go wild. But we should also feel free to play
Speaker 1: without having to deal with this inner voice saying, well,
Speaker 1: you're not good enough at it unless you can somehow
Speaker 1: transition that fun over into a profit. You know that
Speaker 1: that any time spent having fun, anytime spent playing, is
Speaker 1: like just wasted time. You know, it's okay to engage
Speaker 1: in passions that pay only in fun, you know, or
Speaker 1: maybe socialization. And this is a huge one for me too,
Speaker 1: that I distinctly remember somebody sharing this with me several
Speaker 1: years back, that you know, it's okay not to be
Speaker 1: perfect at your passions and hobbies. You know, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times, like without even thinking about, without
Speaker 1: even rationalizing that like out loud in our or or
Speaker 1: you know, at a higher level of consciousness, you know,
Speaker 1: we still sort of buy into this idea that it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm a grown up. If I'm doing if I'm engaging
Speaker 1: in play, well then can I turn this into a business.
Speaker 1: Can I make it? You know, can I somehow rationalize
Speaker 1: it through the almighty dollar so that that ends up
Speaker 1: being how far removed we are as often are as
Speaker 1: adults from like the pure childhood essence of play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I fully agree with all that. In fact, you know,
Speaker 3: people you may have heard some version of this advice before,
Speaker 3: but I would go against the grain with people who say,
Speaker 3: you know, find a way to get paid for doing
Speaker 3: what you love, or you know, it's like, take your
Speaker 3: passion and turn that into a job, because that may
Speaker 3: mean that every day you get to do what you love,
Speaker 3: or it may mean that what is something that you
Speaker 3: used to love just gets turned into a chore.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And you know, certainly you hear stories about
Speaker 1: people who seem perfectly content with turning their passion into
Speaker 1: their job. But you also hear plenty of stories about
Speaker 1: people who have the reverse situation, or the thing they
Speaker 1: used to love has now become the thing they have
Speaker 1: to do every day.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I guess nobody can figure it out for
Speaker 3: you whether that's going to be true in your case
Speaker 3: or not, So you'll just have to experiment, but be
Speaker 3: aware that that does happen.
Speaker 1: But this is not a problem that the children have.
Speaker 3: Correct though, I do want to stress while we're here
Speaker 3: that though we most often associate play with childhood, I
Speaker 3: think I've said on the show before that I think
Speaker 3: play is the work of childhood. When children are playing,
Speaker 3: they're doing their job. It does extend through the entire lifespan.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's clear that even adults going all throughout
Speaker 3: the lifetime engage in different types of play. There are games,
Speaker 3: there's word play, construction play, role playing of various kinds.
Speaker 3: So you know it doesn't stop after childhood. But clearly
Speaker 3: childhood is the most intensive period of play in life. Now,
Speaker 3: pretend play specifically has an extended definition that takes it
Speaker 3: beyond just play generally, and Weisberg summarizes it as follows quote,
Speaker 3: pretend play crucially involves some form of representation or acting
Speaker 3: as if such that the behaviors or actions that take
Speaker 3: place in a pretend game are not meant to literally
Speaker 3: reflect reality. So there is some extent to which what
Speaker 3: happens in pretend play is under good by the people
Speaker 3: playing to not be literally real. Now, there are a
Speaker 3: lot of different types of pretend play, and I got
Speaker 3: interested in the taxonomy of these play These almost like
Speaker 3: family trees of play type. And one that is very
Speaker 3: familiar to most people is object substitution pretense. This is
Speaker 3: treating one object as if it were another. So we
Speaker 3: already mentioned the remote control is a telephone. It can't
Speaker 3: actually place calls, but you hold it up to your head,
Speaker 3: you say hello, you say ring, ring, you pretend to
Speaker 3: call your grandmother, whatever.
Speaker 1: Another one that I have to mention is, of course
Speaker 1: stick is a gun. This one I remember encountering this
Speaker 1: one a lot on the playground. Generally there you'd have
Speaker 1: like one group of children in my recollection, you know,
Speaker 1: playing peacefully, doing something cute, and then here come another
Speaker 1: band of children and they have sticks, and then they
Speaker 1: start firing sticks as if they are guns. Always a
Speaker 1: hot discussion on parenting forums. So get ready for that one, Joe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know that's coming. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: I don't want I mean, I'm not thrilled about the
Speaker 3: idea of sticks as guns. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: I don't want to totally demonize conflict play. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think there's probably some healthy amount of kind of
Speaker 3: you know, the non bullying forms of kind of play
Speaker 3: fighting and stuff that can be okay, but there's also
Speaker 3: like you know, caretaking play, you know, treating the treating
Speaker 3: the little plastic dinosaur as a baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Often a lot of I remember, a lot
Speaker 1: of food preparation and foraging play.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, in fact, tying into
Speaker 3: Christmas pretend play experiences. Just just recently, yeah, my daughter
Speaker 3: has been big into making pretend food for her for
Speaker 3: her babies and dinosaurs and everything to eat. And the
Speaker 3: making of the pretend food is so chaotic, it's truly marvelous. Like,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a little pretend pot and into it
Speaker 3: goes the box of rice with the box and a
Speaker 3: banana and a hot dog and a you know, grapes
Speaker 3: and everything, and you're just imagining all of this together
Speaker 3: and it's like, do you think that would taste good? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 3: But to jump out of the pretend mindset for a second.
Speaker 3: One thing that Weissberg sort of specifies about object substitution
Speaker 3: play is that in this kind of play, actions that
Speaker 3: are directed toward the object do not actually affect the
Speaker 3: object in the intended way. They take place, you know,
Speaker 3: within what is called a pretend world or a pretend frame.
Speaker 3: So when the child pretends to cook pretend food in
Speaker 3: a you know, in a toy pod or something, the
Speaker 3: food does not actually get heated to the point of
Speaker 3: boiling or whatever. There's just generally a pretend logic of
Speaker 3: the effects of actions upon the object that is substituted. Now,
Speaker 3: coming back to a question and we raised earlier, sometimes
Speaker 3: it is not clear if a play behavior is pretend
Speaker 3: play or just literal play. Like we brought up the
Speaker 3: idea of a child building with blocks, So they're building
Speaker 3: a big stack of blocks. Are they just building a
Speaker 3: big stack of blocks, or are they pretending to build
Speaker 3: a structure that people live inside. Sometimes the distinction could
Speaker 3: be blurry and fluid, easily switching back and forth between
Speaker 3: the literal frame and the pretend frame. For you know,
Speaker 3: in one minute, it might be just a stack of blocks.
Speaker 3: The next minute, oh, it is a building full of people.
Speaker 3: Then they might forget it's a building full of people
Speaker 3: and it's just blocks again. And this problem of temporal
Speaker 3: switching between literal play and pretend play can of course
Speaker 3: create difficulties for researchers who want to study this same
Speaker 3: distinction with play fighting, right, Like, are we literally just wrestling,
Speaker 3: or am I Dwayne the Rock Johnson and your Jason
Speaker 3: Stathum or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting to think about how the switches
Speaker 1: back and forth, not only with kids, but as adults
Speaker 1: like you know, you can think of some thing like writing.
Speaker 1: You know, at times writing can take on a feeling
Speaker 1: of play, you know, where you're losing yourself in an
Speaker 1: imaginative exercise. But then oh, you've got to stop and
Speaker 1: do a little grammar or a little bit of it work.
Speaker 1: I guess nowadays there and in the old days it
Speaker 1: would have been, oh, now I have to fix the typewriter.
Speaker 1: You know, are various tasks we engage in. We'll shift
Speaker 1: gears on this now.
Speaker 3: One question is when does this happen in childhood. The
Speaker 3: answer is it varies, but pretend play behavior most often
Speaker 3: starts to appear around eighteen months old or so, though
Speaker 3: there's variation in the timeline, so you know, sometimes it's earlier,
Speaker 3: sometimes it's later. Usually, the earliest form of pretend play
Speaker 3: observed is what we were just talking about, its object substitution,
Speaker 3: pretending an object is something else. Now, interesting question is
Speaker 3: why does that come first, to come before these other
Speaker 3: types of pretend play that I'm about to get in too.
Speaker 3: Maybe we can come back to that later. A variation
Speaker 3: on object substitution is what you already mentioned with the
Speaker 3: sort of the receding physical prop concept of the lightsaber
Speaker 3: arising usually in early preschool years, maybe meaning around two
Speaker 3: to three years old, is object substitution involving invisible or
Speaker 3: non existent objects. So usually you get with a prop
Speaker 3: object substitution first. That might start around eighteen months or so,
Speaker 3: and then you know, in the next couple of years
Speaker 3: you can get fully pretend phone, so it's not like
Speaker 3: I'm holding a remote and pretending it's a phone. There's
Speaker 3: nothing in my hand, but I have a phone and
Speaker 3: I'm calling grandmother. Also in the early preschool years, Weisberg
Speaker 3: says that kids start to make a distinction between two
Speaker 3: different things. They distinguish between what's called enactment play versus
Speaker 3: replica play, and so the difference goes like this enactment
Speaker 3: play is like I dress up like Dad and pretend
Speaker 3: to cook dinner like him, possibly involving props. You know,
Speaker 3: you might have a play kitchen and toy utensils and food,
Speaker 3: or not involving these props, just doing it with the invisible,
Speaker 3: but I am the one pretending with my body to
Speaker 3: be the something else versus replica play is I have
Speaker 3: my doll cook dinner in a tiny kitchen in the dollhouse.
Speaker 3: Both are forms of pretend to play, but in enactment play,
Speaker 3: the child is themselves playing the part, and in replica play,
Speaker 3: the child makes a physical avatar like a doll play
Speaker 3: the part. Now. Springboarding off of that, the paper gets
Speaker 3: into something that we may put off because I don't
Speaker 3: know if you want to say something about this now, Robb,
Speaker 3: or if you just want to save it for part two.
Speaker 3: But it does get into imaginary companions as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, largely we'll save that for the next episode, but
Speaker 1: I will like briefly mention that you know, you can
Speaker 1: you can still get into distinctions of what is an
Speaker 1: imaginary friend, what is an imaginary companion, and how sometimes
Speaker 1: personified objects are seen as examples of imaginary coons. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of these things where it's easy
Speaker 1: to think, oh, imaginary friend, that's a definitely one thing.
Speaker 1: It's definitely an invisible counterpart that a child has this
Speaker 1: imagined relationship with. But when you get into the particularly
Speaker 1: I was looking at one meta analysis that I'll reference
Speaker 1: in the next episode. It gets a little more complex
Speaker 1: than that, and there are different ways of again teasing
Speaker 1: it apart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes there's a prop there too, Like a classic
Speaker 3: example is Hobbes in Calvin and Hobbes. This is a
Speaker 3: understood to be in physical reality a stuffed animal, but
Speaker 3: it is imagined by the child to be an entity
Speaker 3: with a consistent personality that the child interacts with over time,
Speaker 3: in which case it really is sort of a form
Speaker 3: of imaginary companion even though there is a physically existing prop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes that prop I was reading, you know,
Speaker 1: it can actually seem to enhance the imaginative aspect. So
Speaker 1: you know, it might be tempting to think about it
Speaker 1: in the reverse and think, well, this is here to
Speaker 1: sort of stand in for imagination, but no, it can
Speaker 1: often enhance it. And you know, man, you can go
Speaker 1: wild with just that concept alone thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: examples of various physical representations of deities and fantastic beings
Speaker 1: and creatures, and you know, in many cases beings and
Speaker 1: entities thought to have some level of reality to you know,
Speaker 1: adult human practitioners of various religions and so forth. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: and even down to various knick knacks and toys that
Speaker 1: grown folks may have on their deaths at home or
Speaker 1: in the office. You know, an avatar of Godzilla, you
Speaker 1: know that maybe enhances the reality of Godzilla.
Speaker 3: There's a concept Weisberg mentions in this paper that we
Speaker 3: may want to come back to when we do the
Speaker 3: full thing on imaginary companions. But it is the idea
Speaker 3: of paracosms, meaning quote, imaginary worlds occupied by many pretend
Speaker 3: entities and subject to their own internal rule. So I
Speaker 3: think that's sort of like extending the concept of an
Speaker 3: imaginary companion to more like a whole world of potential
Speaker 3: imaginary companions that you know, it's like a different world
Speaker 3: that has its own rules and its own inhabitants, and
Speaker 3: I have imaginary access to it.
Speaker 1: Wow, the unseen world. Yeah, I mean, it is almost
Speaker 1: times startling to think about how closely all of this
Speaker 1: mirrors the more sort of we often think, you know,
Speaker 1: complex systems of the real and the imagined, the real
Speaker 1: and the mythic and so forth that adults have, like
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, it's already there, or at least
Speaker 1: it's already well coming together. At a very early age. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And actually that brings us to the next thing
Speaker 3: from this paper I wanted to talk about, which is
Speaker 3: the distinction between pretend and reality. So, for most children,
Speaker 3: the peak density of pretend play is observed between the
Speaker 3: ages of three and five, though as we've seen, it
Speaker 3: starts earlier than that, and it really extends all throughout
Speaker 3: life in more limited ways. But between three and five
Speaker 3: is when most kids are doing the most pretending. There's
Speaker 3: a lot going on, and so when that's happening, adults
Speaker 3: around these children often find themselves wondering can kids tell
Speaker 3: the difference between fantasy and reality? It's a kind of
Speaker 3: natural thing for parents to start. I don't know if
Speaker 3: most parents actually worry about it, but to at least
Speaker 3: kind of wonder, like, do they understand this isn't real?
Speaker 3: And though I think there are very natural reasons that
Speaker 3: adults wonder or even worry about this, Weisberg says that
Speaker 3: the research shows yes, generally, even quite young children have
Speaker 3: no trouble distinguishing between pretend facts and real facts, and
Speaker 3: by a round age four, most children can explain that
Speaker 3: what happens in the pretend play is not quote real.
Speaker 3: It seems that children do make more pretense reality confusion
Speaker 3: errors than adults, but they're still usually aware of the difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, can it's understandable that as parents we
Speaker 1: can be overprotective, overly protective, and we may we'll at
Speaker 1: least sometimes question it and we'll think, well, did they
Speaker 1: really know what's real and what's not? What's to deal
Speaker 1: with this imaginary friend? Who is this imaginary friend? And
Speaker 1: then added on top of that, as I'll get into
Speaker 1: more in the next episode, is the Certainly, for a while,
Speaker 1: their imaginary friends were not seen as being a positive
Speaker 1: aspect of childhood development. They were seen as a red flag.
Speaker 1: And I think there's still a legacy of that sort
Speaker 1: of in the popular mindset, you know, even though we've
Speaker 1: moved on from that view of things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the stuff I was reading did not suggest imaginary
Speaker 3: companions were anything to worry about, and that they're extremely
Speaker 3: common somewhere, but depending on how you define it, somewhere
Speaker 3: between like a third to two thirds of kids under
Speaker 3: seven have them.
Speaker 1: Though it still can be weird when you hear about it.
Speaker 1: You know, you're like, oh, you have an imaginary friend,
Speaker 1: and you're speaking about them as if they're real and
Speaker 1: you know, and part of that is we've you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of us have seen too many horror movies,
Speaker 1: so that's where behind goes, you know. But no, it's
Speaker 1: there's absolutely nothing wrong with it according to the current research.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also studies of pretend to play have found
Speaker 3: that in general, children are quite good at what the
Speaker 3: author of this paper calls quarantining, which means that like
Speaker 3: causal or mechanical understandings from a pretend to game do
Speaker 3: not affect understandings in reality. So an example given in
Speaker 3: the paper is like a child will use a banana
Speaker 3: as a pretend telephone, and they can be really into
Speaker 3: this banana phone game, but it does not lead the
Speaker 3: child to believe that bananas can actually place calls or
Speaker 3: that real phones can be eaten. So they're able to
Speaker 3: quarantine the implications of the pretend game and not let
Speaker 3: that affect their understanding of how the world works.
Speaker 1: So that's one last thing your parents have to freak
Speaker 1: out about, is that pretend phone play will lead to
Speaker 1: the eating of phones and the frenzied attempt to make
Speaker 1: calls on bananas.
Speaker 3: Now I was wondering, though, I mean, of course there
Speaker 3: might be individual cases where there is something you know
Speaker 3: that's worth following up about, but in most cases it's
Speaker 3: not much to worry about. When kids are playing pretend,
Speaker 3: they actually can basically tell the difference. So why do
Speaker 3: adults worry about this? I think one reason might just
Speaker 3: be like the commitment with which children engage and pretend
Speaker 3: to play. It's a level of unself conscious gameness for
Speaker 3: enjoyment in a scenario that is difficult for adults to understand,
Speaker 3: even if they're adults who are still pretty well practiced
Speaker 3: in pretend play. Maybe you're an adult who does theater
Speaker 3: and does D and D and stuff, so you pretend
Speaker 3: a lot more than most adults do. Still, you probably
Speaker 3: cannot really get in the level of gameness for pretend
Speaker 3: that a child has.
Speaker 1: Well, they just do it so earnestly and unashamedly, and
Speaker 1: at the same time as adults. I feel like we
Speaker 1: often compartmentalize our imagine worlds and our dreaming. Either it
Speaker 1: is tied up with particular you know, acts and activities
Speaker 1: social or otherwise you know, creative endeavors, or we just
Speaker 1: kind of like, I don't know, we can be very
Speaker 1: hypocritical when we think about it. You know, like we
Speaker 1: may be spending you know, a large portion of our
Speaker 1: days reverting into some sort of a fantasy world, be
Speaker 1: it something we've dreamt up or something that has been
Speaker 1: dreampt up by authors and artists and so forth. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a different scenario than to see it in the child.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, I think there is
Speaker 1: this or at least I'm speaking mostly for my own
Speaker 1: part here, but you know, as a parent, you look
Speaker 1: to your child, and especially during those early days, you
Speaker 1: really want to hold on to and appreciate these like this,
Speaker 1: you know, pure imagination and all of these, you know,
Speaker 1: various aspects of childhood. But at the same time, like
Speaker 1: you do want them to develop and grow, and you
Speaker 1: realize they will grow out of this and they will
Speaker 1: become ever become small adults, eventually entering into an adult world.
Speaker 1: So we're kind of like torn, you know, like we
Speaker 1: want them to change, but we the last thing we
Speaker 1: want is for them to change. Yeah, and it results
Speaker 1: probably in all sorts of again counterintuitive ideas and expectations.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and we can also be hypocritical in the
Speaker 1: way we judge things like the pursuit of fantasy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that tension is like one of the
Speaker 3: most classically I guess understood bittersweet things about being a parent. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just, yeah, you want them to grow up, but
Speaker 3: you don't.
Speaker 1: And then at the same time, yeah, you can't help
Speaker 1: but be a bit anxious and worrying and like, well
Speaker 1: they will they ever know the difference between a banana
Speaker 1: and a phone? Is this permanent or is this just
Speaker 1: a kid thing now.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, to be fair, it is still
Speaker 3: found that children make more pretense reality distinction errors than
Speaker 3: adults do, and parents and other adult caregivers do see
Speaker 3: some instances where children really can't seem to tell the
Speaker 3: difference between imagination and reality, or where like something from
Speaker 3: the imagination infects their reality. An example given in the
Speaker 3: paper is like when an originally fun pretend monster game
Speaker 3: becomes scary to the child. So, you know, like you're
Speaker 3: running around playing monster Chase, where mom is a monster
Speaker 3: and she's roaring and chasing the child around, and this
Speaker 3: is not a scary game to the child. The child
Speaker 3: thinks this is like very funny and very fun running
Speaker 3: around laughing, squealing. But then maybe one time after this
Speaker 3: game seemingly out of nowhere. The child becomes upset and
Speaker 3: says she's scared. She says, now she thinks there's a
Speaker 3: monster in her closet and she's scared to go to bed.
Speaker 1: I mean, I still do this to myself occasionally, where
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, that horror movie was fun till it wasn't.
Speaker 3: No, yes, right, And it's not just fear. Also, you know,
Speaker 3: you can have like, oh, my toy Kitty Kat fell
Speaker 3: off the couch and she got hurt, and now I'm
Speaker 3: actually sad. I'm like crying. So you know what's going
Speaker 3: on here? Well here, Weisberg doesn't fully know the answer,
Speaker 3: but refers to a couple of other short papers addressing
Speaker 3: this issue of like what's happening when it seems like
Speaker 3: kids when the imagination infects the understanding of reality. And
Speaker 3: one of the papers was by an author named Ted Ruffman,
Speaker 3: published in the journal Developmental Science in two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: called Pretense Reality Confusions in Children and Adults. I went
Speaker 3: and looked this up, and I'll try to quickly summarize
Speaker 3: what Ruffman thinks, but it's addressing issues like when the
Speaker 3: pretend monster has suddenly become scary and Ruffman says much
Speaker 3: along the lines you were saying, Rob, it's helpful to
Speaker 3: look at adult analogies to better understand what's going on,
Speaker 3: and one of the principles he brings up is availability
Speaker 3: or salience. You know, adults also get scared after watching
Speaker 3: a horror movie for fun, despite fully understanding that the
Speaker 3: movie is not real and cannot hurt them. So you
Speaker 3: just finished watching New Nos Faratu or something, and you
Speaker 3: don't want to go downstairs by yourself. Is it because
Speaker 3: you can't tell the difference between fiction and reality. Probably not.
Speaker 3: Ruffman argues that instead, the fear caused by a fictional
Speaker 3: horror movie is probably due to a combination of number
Speaker 3: one emotion will come to that in a second, but
Speaker 3: also availability or salience, And in psychology these terms mean
Speaker 3: essentially increased awareness of something. So, you know, a horror movie,
Speaker 3: even though you don't think the events of it are real,
Speaker 3: it just sort of puts front of mind for you
Speaker 3: the idea of deadly threats and threatening other worldly encounters,
Speaker 3: whether or not you think they're actually likely to happen
Speaker 3: to you. Now, it's just high in your awareness, and
Speaker 3: so that puts you on a for threats of whatever type.
Speaker 3: The other thing is emotion. It's possible that what gets
Speaker 3: carried over from say, watching a movie, is a free,
Speaker 3: floating emotion without a reference in the real world. So again,
Speaker 3: you know that the events of the sad movie or
Speaker 3: the scary movie are not literally true, but they give
Speaker 3: you an emotion that lingers, and then that emotion, without
Speaker 3: a reference in your life, can just kind of get
Speaker 3: attached to whatever. This may happen even easier for children,
Speaker 3: because children may feel emotions even more intensely, and the
Speaker 3: act of pretending itself tends to result in heightened emotions
Speaker 3: for children.
Speaker 1: I don't want to complicate things too much by bringing
Speaker 1: up dreams, but I feel like this is maybe more
Speaker 1: pronounced for grown ups. In that situation where you wake
Speaker 1: up from a disturbing dream and you still feel disturbed.
Speaker 1: You know you can't help but carry that over into
Speaker 1: at least the first portion of your morning, even though
Speaker 1: you know that was a dream, and maybe even analysis
Speaker 1: of the facts of the dream are just ridiculous, but
Speaker 1: the feeling remains. And I think I have encountered that
Speaker 1: with films before as well, if they are particularly either
Speaker 1: I'm particularly sensitive or the vibe is particularly strong in
Speaker 1: a given film, or some combination of the two. So yeah,
Speaker 1: taking those two into account, I think helps me better
Speaker 1: understand where a child may be coming from when they
Speaker 1: have this situation occur.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But then there's a third thing, Ruffman brings up
Speaker 3: that I think is the So we have those similarities
Speaker 3: with kids on those first two things, the emotion and
Speaker 3: the and the availability or salience, But then there's a
Speaker 3: big difference, which is our background knowledge. Ruffman points out that,
Speaker 3: simply put, kids know less than adults about how the
Speaker 3: world works and what is in it, So it is
Speaker 3: actually less unreasonable than it seems two adults for children
Speaker 3: to entertain implausible scenarios like there's a monster in my closet.
Speaker 3: By the time you're forty, you should be aware that
Speaker 3: this is actually not some thing that happens in reality.
Speaker 3: They're not monsters in closets. But when you're three, it's
Speaker 3: reasonable to consider this is a still live option, like
Speaker 3: you don't have enough experience to reasonably rule that out.
Speaker 1: By the time you're forty though, like late thirties, still understandable.
Speaker 3: So this still does not necessarily mean that children have
Speaker 3: confused what happens in a pretend game with what happens
Speaker 3: in reality. So you know, a child might worry that
Speaker 3: there's an unseen monster in the closet, but would probably
Speaker 3: not worry that like, you know, mommy playing the monster
Speaker 3: chase game that that means mom literally turned into a
Speaker 3: monster when she was chasing the kid around and roaring.
Speaker 3: You know, there can just be kind of a vague
Speaker 3: infection of ideas from one to the other, even if
Speaker 3: you don't confuse the pretend scenario for a literal reality. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also worth caveating here though, that you know,
Speaker 1: even as adults, we can still even though we know
Speaker 1: we know how the world works, it doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: really know how the world works at all levels. And
Speaker 1: we're also prone to latching on to best case scenarios
Speaker 1: and worst case scenarios as if those are the most
Speaker 1: most likely outcomes. So yeah, there's a lot of room
Speaker 1: for error in all of this. But yeah, I understand
Speaker 1: the basic idea here. Yeah, the kids just know less
Speaker 1: about the world, and they're able to they're more susceptible
Speaker 1: to the contagion of those ideas.
Speaker 3: All right, From here, I want to skip over a
Speaker 3: few things in the paper and move on to talking
Speaker 3: about a couple of the mental capacities that the author
Speaker 3: of this paper mentioned as possibly being related to pretend
Speaker 3: to play in childhood, and the three that the author
Speaker 3: explores are symbolic understanding, theory of mind, and counterfactual reasoning.
Speaker 3: As I said, we might save theory of mind more
Speaker 3: for part two, but applying to all three of these concepts,
Speaker 3: pretend play appears to have links to the development of
Speaker 3: these abilities, But there are a lot of questions about
Speaker 3: how strong these links are and how they work, Like
Speaker 3: should it be understood that pretend to play is causally
Speaker 3: necessary for learning any of them? Or is it merely facilitative,
Speaker 3: meaning making it easier or faster to learn them? Or
Speaker 3: could they be working in the opposite direction, like the
Speaker 3: nascent beginnings of these capacities are what makes pretend play possible.
Speaker 3: Or could pretend play be what is called epiphenomenal, meaning
Speaker 3: an unnecessary byproduct of these developing capacities, Like it doesn't
Speaker 3: do anything itself, it just emerges because the brain can
Speaker 3: do these things. Weisberg notes that this really is difficult
Speaker 3: to study scientifically. It's hard to get really conclusive answers
Speaker 3: on a lot of these questions, especially because it is
Speaker 3: hard to build robust and ethical experiments on this, Like
Speaker 3: you can't really have control groups in which you force
Speaker 3: children to grow up without engaging and pretend play. That's
Speaker 3: not really ethical. So a lot of the ways we
Speaker 3: would have of studying these questions are like indirect ways
Speaker 3: of looking at it and leave us with maybe helpful
Speaker 3: but still incomplete evidence. So the first thing to look
Speaker 3: at here is symbolic understanding. Pretend play is really interesting
Speaker 3: because it is symbolic in nature. And to come back
Speaker 3: to one example that shows this pretty easily, the usually
Speaker 3: the first acquired form of pretend play in child development
Speaker 3: object substitution. So the stick is a sword, the remote
Speaker 3: control is a phone, this wash cloth is a warm
Speaker 3: blanket for the baby dinosaur. Things stand in for other
Speaker 3: things that they in a literal sense, are not, though
Speaker 3: they might be closer or further in physical form to
Speaker 3: the thing they're supposed to represent. You know, pretending a
Speaker 3: baby doll is a baby is still a form of pretending,
Speaker 3: because even though a baby doll is made to be
Speaker 3: is to look like a baby, it resembles a baby,
Speaker 3: it is not literally a baby. So like it, you know,
Speaker 3: when you feed it, it doesn't actually eat and so forth.
Speaker 1: But pretending a remote control is a phone, Like, that's
Speaker 1: that's rather straightforward. And actually, I mean really when you're
Speaker 1: super young, like, what's the difference between all of these
Speaker 1: various gadgets that your parents have in their house, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it's all just slightly different versions of the
Speaker 1: same thing.
Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah, Yet, despite the general lack of understanding about
Speaker 3: you know, the intricacies of how a lot of devices
Speaker 3: work in real life, in pretend to play, I mean,
Speaker 3: a child can really learn to consistently, across time manipulate
Speaker 3: a symbolic object as if it were the thing it represented,
Speaker 3: having the properties, functions, and effects of the pretend object.
Speaker 3: So like, you know, the child might not really understand
Speaker 3: fully how a phone works, but they can keep treating
Speaker 3: the remote as a phone in place calls with it.
Speaker 3: They might even try to FaceTime, you know, the like
Speaker 3: they'll they will go through activities that they've seen adults
Speaker 3: do with the phone. So what Weisberg notes that some
Speaker 3: child development scholars dispute the extent to which pretend to
Speaker 3: play should be seen as strictly symbolic. Now, there are
Speaker 3: a couple of different frameworks here, different ways of thinking
Speaker 3: about what pretending is in something like object substitution. Is
Speaker 3: it simply a behavior or is it actually a mentalistic
Speaker 3: process of representation in the brain? Is it a mental state? Now?
Speaker 3: Weisberg explains the behavior view like this quote. When pretending
Speaker 3: that a banana is a phone, one behaves as if
Speaker 3: the banana was a phone and performs the actions with
Speaker 3: the banana that would be appropriate if the banana was
Speaker 3: a phone. No mentalizing is necessary for the game to proceed,
Speaker 3: as the pretense is connected primarily to behaviors and not
Speaker 3: necessarily to mental states or intentions. So in this view,
Speaker 3: the child does not actually need to have separate concepts
Speaker 3: of banana and phone and mentally apply the attributes of
Speaker 3: the phone to the banana, understanding that they are in
Speaker 3: fact different. Instead, they're just treating the banana as if
Speaker 3: it were actually a phone. What is the support for
Speaker 3: this view, Well, Weisberg cites research where if you take
Speaker 3: four year olds and five year olds, take these children
Speaker 3: and you show them a character hopping like a kangaroo,
Speaker 3: and then you tell the kids that the character who
Speaker 3: hops like a kangaroo does not know what a kangaroo is.
Speaker 3: And then you ask them, is the hopping character pretending
Speaker 3: to be a kangaroo? The majority of four and five
Speaker 3: year olds will say yes. In their view, the hopping
Speaker 3: character is pretending to be a kangaroo, even if the
Speaker 3: character has never heard of a kangaroo and doesn't know
Speaker 3: what it is. Now, Actually, I think that's a really
Speaker 3: interesting finding that might seem kind of subtle, And I
Speaker 3: don't know whether it proves the pure behavior view of
Speaker 3: pretend to play, but I think that's just kind of
Speaker 3: an interesting result. Nonetheless, I don't think adults would make
Speaker 3: the same judgment. I think if you asked adults, we
Speaker 3: would probably mostly say that you need to know what
Speaker 3: something is in order to pretend to be that thing.
Speaker 3: But for a lot of four and five year olds
Speaker 3: know you only need to act like a thing to
Speaker 3: pretend to be it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for adults, I feel like the revelation that the
Speaker 1: individual acting like a kangaroo doesn't know what a kangaroo is, like,
Speaker 1: that's potentially horrifying. Yeah, right, that makes things a lot
Speaker 1: more concerning. Yeah, But they're just like, well, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: pretending to be a kangaroo. Of course they're pretending to
Speaker 1: be a kangaro. It doesn't matter if they don't know
Speaker 1: what one is. They are pretending to be a kangaroo.
Speaker 3: But Weisberg argues that subsequent research on this question has
Speaker 3: made the initial result maybe a little more complicated, and
Speaker 3: it's possible that this doesn't really tell us what's happening
Speaker 3: when children pretend, but is instead addressing a second order
Speaker 3: related question of how children conceptualize what pretending is, which
Speaker 3: is an interesting question but a different one because like
Speaker 3: a child may not actually be able to fully explain
Speaker 3: their own mental states when pretending. They might be doing
Speaker 3: one thing when pretending, but when you ask a child
Speaker 3: what pretending is, they'll tell you something kind of different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an adult impulse too, to like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that thing you were doing, now, I'm going to ruin
Speaker 1: it by asking you to explain it, you know, like
Speaker 1: they're just doing it. They're just engaging in the pretend play.
Speaker 3: Now. The other view, the mental symbolism view. This is
Speaker 3: the view that says children are indeed engaging in mental
Speaker 3: symbolism when they play pretend, and in this case, the
Speaker 3: game quote crucially requires understanding something about the mental states involved.
Speaker 3: So that one is aware what is intended in the game.
Speaker 3: So under this view, it would be important to understand
Speaker 3: that you are intending to pretend to be a kangaroo
Speaker 3: in order to pretend to be a kangaroo. So in
Speaker 3: this view, like if a kid is playing the Banana
Speaker 3: phone game, it is necessary that they understand and that
Speaker 3: all play partners understand that the banana is supposed to
Speaker 3: represent a phone. Now as evidence supporting this view, Weissberg
Speaker 3: cites some other interesting experimental findings. One is experiments showing
Speaker 3: that kids in this preschool age can readily navigate a
Speaker 3: bunch of different pretend to play episodes with different partners,
Speaker 3: which depends on keeping track of what each different play
Speaker 3: partner knows about what the play props represent. So maybe
Speaker 3: Dad knows, but Mom does not know that this pile
Speaker 3: of crayons is actually spaghetti and my dinosaurs are eating it.
Speaker 3: Mom would need to be informed that the crayons are spaghetti. Now,
Speaker 3: how can you tell that children have this ability to
Speaker 3: navigate the different understandings Like this, children often get upset
Speaker 3: or protest when a play partner starts using a prop
Speaker 3: literally instead of in its symbolic identity. So like if
Speaker 3: we're playing the crayons or spaghetti game and then I
Speaker 3: go pick up a spaghetti crayon and start drawing with it,
Speaker 3: the child is very likely to be like, no, that
Speaker 3: is spaghetti, not a crayon. If you encountered this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely in these more abstract forms, but
Speaker 1: also in the case of stuffed animals or stuffies, like
Speaker 1: what is the difference between a stuffed animal and a pillow?
Speaker 1: Try and use a beloved stuffed animal as a pillow,
Speaker 1: and the child will let you know.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, classic, that's a great one. But so generally,
Speaker 3: the children in this kind of example only protest like
Speaker 3: this if the play partner should be expected to know
Speaker 3: about the substitution, So like if the person they're playing
Speaker 3: with was present when the pretense began. So that's kind
Speaker 3: of interesting. You know, the child will have more patience
Speaker 3: for somebody who just entered the picture and doesn't understand
Speaker 3: that the crayons are spaghetti. More evidence that pretend to
Speaker 3: play is mentally symbolic and not just behavioral. Some actions
Speaker 3: observed and pretend to play only make sense if there
Speaker 3: is a symbolic representation, and do not make sense if
Speaker 3: the child were simply behaving as if the object really
Speaker 3: was the substitution object. Here's an example. You've got a
Speaker 3: little lego block and you decide it's a car, and
Speaker 3: you are pushing the lego block around and saying room
Speaker 3: vroom and making horn honking sounds. Children do stuff like
Speaker 3: this all the time. Is that what a child does
Speaker 3: in relation to a real car, push it around and
Speaker 3: say vroom vroom. No, in a real car, the child
Speaker 3: like gets inside and rides and maybe looks out the window.
Speaker 3: There is no behavior to enact in relation to a
Speaker 3: real car that is similar to pushing a tiny object
Speaker 3: around on the ground and making vrooming sounds and horn
Speaker 3: honking sounds with your mouth. This really only makes sense
Speaker 3: if the child understands that the block is not a
Speaker 3: car but represents a car. So, in the end, Weisberg
Speaker 3: argues that the symbolic view of pretense is better supported
Speaker 3: by the evidence. Now, what does this mean for the
Speaker 3: broader idea of symbolic understanding and child development? Again, it's
Speaker 3: hard to prove this kind of thing conclusively, but a
Speaker 3: lot of researchers have suggested that there is a there's
Speaker 3: a link between pretend play and symbolic thinking, and it
Speaker 3: means that pretend play could be important for the development
Speaker 3: of the most significant form of symbolic thinking in human culture,
Speaker 3: which is language. Language is inherently symbolic because a word
Speaker 3: is not the thing itself, it only represents the thing.
Speaker 3: So it may be that pretend play gives children a
Speaker 3: chance to practice symbolic thinking, which in turn helps accelerate
Speaker 3: their acquisition of language in early childhood. Some researchers apparently
Speaker 3: think this, but again, it's hard to disentangle the variables
Speaker 3: and see which direction if any of the causal relationship goes.
Speaker 3: One thing is pretty clear is that pretending is not
Speaker 3: necessary for language acquisition, but it may simply make it
Speaker 3: easier and faster. Weisberg briefly offers another interesting idea. This
Speaker 3: is almost just an aside and a sentence, but it
Speaker 3: really started working around in my brain. Weisberg writes, quote
Speaker 3: play may provide an especially facilitative environment for children to
Speaker 3: experiment with new syntactic constructions. If I understand that right,
Speaker 3: I think this means that because pretending during play allows
Speaker 3: you to generate infinitely variable scenarios without ever having to
Speaker 3: leave your home or your normal routines. It encourages novel
Speaker 3: constructions of language based thought. So, in other words, a
Speaker 3: child may literally do almost the same thing in the
Speaker 3: same place most days, but because playing pretend can create
Speaker 3: weird novel situations with very little effort or risk, you
Speaker 3: will be required to think and speak new sentences, which
Speaker 3: is important as you get better at speaking and practice
Speaker 3: your language skills. You know, under what other I was
Speaker 3: just thinking about, Like what my daughter's doing in the
Speaker 3: past few days. She's like, she is making new weird
Speaker 3: sentences all the time, Like you know, little gholies, get
Speaker 3: on boat and go on water and see red buoy
Speaker 3: and go to Nana's house.
Speaker 1: Little goolies, where did she pick up? Has she seen
Speaker 1: the movie?
Speaker 3: No, not the movie. She's got she's got some little
Speaker 3: some little weird, little weird guys who are googlies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, that makes sense, but yeah, I mean this
Speaker 1: is again this touches on one of the great things
Speaker 1: about being around children is that they are just such
Speaker 1: a font of wild creativity that grown ups typically just
Speaker 1: don't have as ready access to. Like I'm sure this
Speaker 1: is a story I've told on the show before, but
Speaker 1: this was before I became a parent. I went to
Speaker 1: an improv show. It was like a local improv group,
Speaker 1: and they were doing a kid's puppet show, but it
Speaker 1: was entirely improv and they would ask the children to
Speaker 1: give them ideas to then act out. And so even
Speaker 1: like seasoned improv group, like they were really you know,
Speaker 1: they were really rolling with some of these ideas. Like
Speaker 1: I distinctly remember one little girl saying Batman the girl
Speaker 1: as being one of the concepts. Anyway, that's just one example. Obviously,
Speaker 1: anyone who's been around children for any length of time
Speaker 1: can think of a hundred more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they get they get weird. Yeah, did I already
Speaker 3: mention Mine is also right now obsessed with changing diapers
Speaker 3: on dinosaurs. On dinosaurs, the dinosaurs have diapers, and they
Speaker 3: often have poop needs to be changed.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, that's just sensible.
Speaker 3: Oh but quickly before we move off of the symbolic
Speaker 3: understanding thing, Weisberg the language is clearly the most important
Speaker 3: type of symbolic skills in human culture. Language is not
Speaker 3: the only symbolic skill practice through pretend to play another
Speaker 3: one the author mentions is quote reasoning with maps and
Speaker 3: scale models. That's the type of symbolic representation. You can
Speaker 3: think of a play space on the floor as really
Speaker 3: being much like a map, a scale representation of a
Speaker 3: topography or landscape in miniature on which you can sort
Speaker 3: of plot routes and act things out. And this is
Speaker 3: a big part of adult reasoning about how to get
Speaker 3: around places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it makes sense since you consider
Speaker 1: that often a child's room contains multiple scale models, be
Speaker 1: they lego kits that have been as symboled or you know,
Speaker 1: or stuffies that are of vehicles. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: a million different variations of this obviously, but by having
Speaker 1: those objects in a space, it kind of turns that
Speaker 1: space into a kind of map or a miniaturized world.
Speaker 3: Totally. Okay, one more thing before we wrap up Part one.
Speaker 3: Here is Weissberg's exploration of the link between pretend play
Speaker 3: and counter factual reasoning. So counterfactual reasoning is reasoning based
Speaker 3: on a premise that you do not accept as current reality.
Speaker 3: So here's one. If cheetos were blue instead of orange,
Speaker 3: what color would your fingertips become after eating them? You
Speaker 3: know that cheetos are not actually blue, but you can
Speaker 3: easily answer this question because you can reason counterfactually right,
Speaker 3: blue right, got it on the record. Yes, okay. So
Speaker 3: you know, as a comparison, imagine this banana war a phone,
Speaker 3: how would you use it. It's easy to see playing
Speaker 3: pretend as really almost exactly the same thing as counterfactual reasoning.
Speaker 3: You start with a premise that is not literal, it
Speaker 3: is different than how you think the world actually is,
Speaker 3: and then you act it out. You follow from there.
Speaker 3: But interestingly, studies have found that children in the so
Speaker 3: called high season of pretend to play, you know, this
Speaker 3: period of like three to five years old, where they're
Speaker 3: playing pretend all the time. Kids in this age range
Speaker 3: show a lot of difficulty with counterfactual reasoning and experiments.
Speaker 3: Some examples cited by Weisberg here. One is like an
Speaker 3: experiment where a kid watches a toy mouse go down
Speaker 3: a little forked slide and then answers questions about it.
Speaker 3: And so you can imagine. One condition is the child
Speaker 3: watches the mouse go down the fork in one direction,
Speaker 3: and then the experimenter asks, if the mouse goes down
Speaker 3: the opposite side of the fork next time, where will
Speaker 3: it end up? Kids do okay with this question? It's
Speaker 3: a hypothetic question. About a future event, and they've already
Speaker 3: seen how the slide works in principle, so they do okay. However,
Speaker 3: they have a lot more difficulty with almost exactly the
Speaker 3: same question, but just if it's phrased as a counterfactual instead.
Speaker 3: So you show them the mouse going down one side
Speaker 3: of the fork, and then you ask them if the
Speaker 3: mouse had gone down the other way of the fork instead,
Speaker 3: where would it have ended up. Apparently kids really struggle
Speaker 3: with this. Children at this age also really struggle with
Speaker 3: counterfactual syllogisms, like the blue Cheetos thing. Reasoning based on
Speaker 3: a counterfactual premise. So you can say something like, imagine
Speaker 3: a world where cats bark instead of meowing. In this world,
Speaker 3: Fluffy is a cat. Does Fluffy bark or meow? Preschoolers
Speaker 3: struggle with this as well. They seem to have a
Speaker 3: hard time ignoring their legitimate knowledge about the real world,
Speaker 3: which is that cats meow, they do not bark, And
Speaker 3: so the kids want to say Fluffy meows because they
Speaker 3: know that cats meow.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can see the difficulty because this is
Speaker 1: kind of like a bedrock understanding of reality, you know,
Speaker 1: and if you snatch that away and flip it around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it takes a minute to recalibrate to that.
Speaker 3: So it's very interesting that counterfactual reasoning and playing pretend
Speaker 3: seem to us to be nearly the same thing. They're
Speaker 3: almost exactly the same thing, yet preschoolers tend to excel
Speaker 3: at one and struggle with the other. Genuine skill at
Speaker 3: counterfactual reasoning only seems to come online later with some
Speaker 3: effort and training. So one idea offered in this paper
Speaker 3: is the idea of implicit versus explicit understanding. So when
Speaker 3: pretending children engage an implicit or intuitive sense of counterfactual
Speaker 3: reasoning that's acted out through play in the body, But
Speaker 3: maybe what they struggle with is understanding counterfactual reasoning purely
Speaker 3: in words, which is why they're having trouble with syllogisms.
Speaker 3: That's one possibility, it's the explicit versus implicit. But also
Speaker 3: interesting thing is that some experiments have shown that you
Speaker 3: can improve preschooler's performance on counterfactual syllogisms simply by explaining
Speaker 3: the counterfactual element as pretend play. So you can imagine
Speaker 3: asking maybe a kid struggles with the you know the
Speaker 3: like you know, cats bark in this world what is
Speaker 3: Fluffy the cat say? Instead, you could say, Fluffy the
Speaker 3: cat is pretending to be a dog. When he is
Speaker 3: pretending to be a dog, does he bark or meow?
Speaker 3: So maybe this kind of thing can can kind of
Speaker 3: get through more more on the implicit wavelength, but anyway,
Speaker 3: Some researchers have argued that the adaptive function of pretend
Speaker 3: play is exactly this about counterfactual reasoning. It's to prepare
Speaker 3: children for serious counter factual reasoning later in life. And
Speaker 3: I want to emphasize that counterfactual reasoning is not just
Speaker 3: like high falutin philosophical thought experiments or you know, it's
Speaker 3: not just on that level. I mean, we engage in
Speaker 3: counterfactual reasoning every single day. One function of counterfactual reasoning
Speaker 3: that is very useful is to learn not only from
Speaker 3: mistakes made, but from mistakes almost made, or from the
Speaker 3: mistakes of others. So you can think, you can like
Speaker 3: go through an experience and then think, wow, if I
Speaker 3: had done it this other way, that could have gone
Speaker 3: really bad, and you can learn from that even though
Speaker 3: you didn't actually have that experience, you just know enough
Speaker 3: to know that you shouldn't have done that, and you
Speaker 3: won't do that in the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 3: Like who knows, maybe you know, you take the boat
Speaker 3: ride across the river even though you were thinking about swimming,
Speaker 3: and halfway across you see some crocodiles and you remember, like, oh,
Speaker 3: I can reason if I had swam instead of riding
Speaker 3: the boat, that would have been bad.
Speaker 1: There's a line and I figure which Cormick McCarthy book,
Speaker 1: But there's a character pondering all the worse luck their
Speaker 1: bad luck might have saved them from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now again, what's less clear is to
Speaker 3: what extent there is any kind of direct training effects.
Speaker 3: It seems plausible that Pretend to Play really does train
Speaker 3: the brain for counterfactual reasoning, but we don't know. But
Speaker 3: interesting thing to study and certainly plausible based on what
Speaker 3: we do know. Now, I think we're starting to run
Speaker 3: a little long, so this might be the place that
Speaker 3: we have to cut part one here. But obviously there's
Speaker 3: going to be a lot more to say about Pretend
Speaker 3: to Play in subsequent episodes, at least one more, we
Speaker 3: can promise you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I do have a few follow up questions,
Speaker 1: so before we close out, First of all, where do
Speaker 1: you stand on air guitar. You, being a person who
Speaker 1: actually plays a guitar, do you, as a grown up,
Speaker 1: engage in air guitar. Do you find yourself playing the
Speaker 1: air guitar whilst listening to music for at least moments,
Speaker 1: if not extended periods.
Speaker 3: I don't know what this says about me, but really no,
Speaker 3: do not play air guitar at all. This no judgment
Speaker 3: against it. I'm fully supportive of air guitar behaviors, but
Speaker 3: I don't find myself doing it when I listen to music.
Speaker 3: I just I dance, but air guitar is not part
Speaker 3: of the repertoire.
Speaker 1: How about air drums?
Speaker 3: Oh, I do more of that. Interesting. I don't actually
Speaker 3: play the drums, but I'm more likely to act out
Speaker 3: playing drums without real drums there, yeah huh.
Speaker 1: Interesting Like if in the air tonight place, you're definitely
Speaker 1: gonna go do the.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, all the films, the fills in a gottadavida,
Speaker 3: the drum solo. I cannot listen to that drum solo
Speaker 3: without acting it out.
Speaker 1: I will catch myself doing air guitar, but then I
Speaker 1: get very self conscious because I'm like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to play the guitar. What am I doing? I'm
Speaker 1: just very roughly mimicking things that I've seen before. And
Speaker 1: then I took my hands in my pockets.
Speaker 3: Don't let it hold you back now.
Speaker 1: And then my other follow up question, a pair of
Speaker 1: questions really or observations involve again the banana as a telephone.
Speaker 1: First of all, are kids still doing this? Because we
Speaker 1: should point out that telephones don't really look like bananas anymore,
Speaker 1: like telephone receivers used to have more of a banana
Speaker 1: shape to them. More and more, I feel like kids
Speaker 1: are not exposed to those sorts of telephones. They're seeing
Speaker 1: smartphones that look more like TV remote controls.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. Well, you know this in the paper, it
Speaker 3: was the bananas phone that was often cited. But I
Speaker 3: was using the example of the remotest phone because that
Speaker 3: is what happens in our house.
Speaker 1: Here's the other thing that comes to mind. The bananas
Speaker 1: phone definitely kills though, Like I feel like this is
Speaker 1: something that's definitely going to elicit laughter from grownups if
Speaker 1: a grown up does it, and if a kid does it,
Speaker 1: this is also going to get a lot of laughs
Speaker 1: out of Mom and dad. I wonder to what extent
Speaker 1: that is factored into anything.
Speaker 3: Pretend to Play is funnier when the reach is farther
Speaker 3: and when the literal object is food.
Speaker 1: Yes, because the food the food technology gap is greater,
Speaker 1: right yeah, and it you know, to get in you
Speaker 1: were getting into the question of like, okay, how would
Speaker 1: this work if it were a phone? Like that question
Speaker 1: is more ridiculous with the banana. How would the banana
Speaker 1: possibly function as a like fully grown telecommunication device? You
Speaker 1: know we can?
Speaker 3: So how do I put this on speaker?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, all right, That's all I got. Those are
Speaker 1: the only follow up questions I did.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, Well, folks, we're gonna have to cut
Speaker 3: part one there, but we will be back with more
Speaker 3: about Pretend to Play on Thursday.
Speaker 1: That's right, Bring your imaginary friend and we'll have a
Speaker 1: good old time, all right. In the meantime, we're just
Speaker 1: going to remind you stuff to blow your mind, primarily
Speaker 1: a science and culture podcast on Tuesdays and Thursdays, those
Speaker 1: are the core episode of publication. Dates. On Fridays, we
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film on Weird House Cinema. On Wednesdays, we bust
Speaker 1: out a short form episode and yeah, that's generally how
Speaker 1: it works. If you're on Instagram, follow us at stb
Speaker 1: ym podcast.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
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