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Play and drawing

Q: How does pretend play and symbolic representation link together?

Play & language first ways in which infants use symbols Symbols involve representation – one object must ‘stand for’ another Piaget maintained not acquired until at least 18 months

34 important questions on Play and drawing

Belsky & Most (1981) proposed a 12 stage sequence, what are the main stages?

Major stages:

Simple mouthing & manipulation

Functional play

- Using an object appropriately, e.g. roll cart on wheels

Pretend self

- E.g. pretend to use phone

Pretend other

- e.g. feed doll with a spoon

Substitution

- e.g. feed doll with stick as “bottle”

Sequence pretend

- Linking together different pretence schemes, e.g. feed doll then put to bed

What method do Belsky & Most (1981) use when studying stages of play?

Method: observation of 40 infants aged 7-21 months in their homes

---> Coding into this 12-step scheme showed it to be a valid Guttman scale - means that individuals who show any one step tend also to show all the steps below it

---> Evidence that it is a genuine developmental progression

According to Belsky & Most's investigating of stages of play, when does pretend play emerge?

In the 2nd year of life (around 13 months)

What are 3 examples of pretend play at 20-23 months?

- feeding toy bears
- eating pretend food
- dressing up

What is the paradox of pretence?

Leslie (1987): given such strong selective pressures to see the world veridically (i.e.see things for what they truly are), how can we explain the early appearance of pretence?

What can the study of imagination and pretence tell us about children’s understanding of mind?

What is the significance of imagination and pretence?

Pretence and play help to build important cognitive and social capacities –

Cognitive development (symbolic representation and language)
Social development (learning to play)
Social development (imaginary friends)

How does pretence link with cognition?

---> Pretence allows children to explore how the same object can be different things to different people
---> Leslie (1987): children need to be able to decouple representations from the objects they represent

---> Children’s use of one object to substitute for another shows a developing understanding of symbolism (cf. Piaget) = powerful concept

What does true symbolic (pretend) play involve?

Object substitution
(Vast majority of research has focused on symbolic play, rather than other forms of play)

What kind of objects can be used for pretend?

At first, the substitute object must bear strong similarity to the pretend object (Fein, 1979)
3- to 8-year-olds find pretend acts using props similar to referent easiest to understand (Bigham & Bourchier-Sutton, 2007)
Children younger than 3 have problems overriding the substitute object’s real function (Rubin et al., 1983)

---> think limits to substitution

How does pretend play and symbolic representation link together?

Play & language first ways in which infants use symbols
Symbols involve representation – one object must ‘stand for’ another
Piaget maintained not acquired until at least 18 months

What did Piaget propose in 1952?

Proposed a 2-stage theory of symbolic play (1-4 years and 4-7 years)

Maintained that play has two functions:
---> Consolidation of existing skills
---> Confidence & mastery

Piaget's Theory

Play enables child to explore complex social, emotional and intellectual issues, e.g. rules, justice, punishment, right vs. wrong
Thus, Piaget was alive to the important role of play in helping the child to cope and develop emotionally

We can be sure that all happenings, pleasant or unpleasant, in the child’s life will have repercussions on her dolls (1951)

How does pretence link with cognition in terms of language?

Pretend play develops in parallel with language (Tamis-LeMonda & Bornstein, 1989)
Language delay is associated with delay in pretend play (Bates et al., 1987)
Language is an essential tool for symbolic play

How does social environment influence pretence?

Seems that children have to learn how to play i.e. it is not innate
Turn-taking and complementary role play occur earlier in children who have experience of peers
Children who’d attended daycare or preschool were better at playing cooperatively (Harper & Huie, 1985)
Secure attachment predicts quality of later symbolic play (Meins & Russell, 1997)

What did Meins and Russell study in 1997?

---> Infant–mother attachment assessed at 12 month
---> Symbolic play at age 2 1/2 years
---> Solo play
---> Co-operative play with experimenter

Results

No security-related differences in children’s solo symbolic play
Securely attached children more able to incorporate suggestions of experimenter into their play
Secure children more socially flexible because of the template for interaction provided by a secure attachment

i.e. strong parental bond provides template for how to interact with others

What aids social understanding?

Evidence for causal link between collaborative symbolic play and children’s ToM skills (e.g., Meins et al., 1998)
Children with autism (CWA) rarely engage in symbolic play, although they understand the logic of pretence (Harris, 1993)
CWA understand the mechanics of pretence and object substitution, but pretence lacks fun, creativity and self-conscious awareness of pretending (Hobson et al. (2009)

Who studied imaginary companions? What did they find?

Ames & Learned, 1946

Study of 210 children found 41 had imaginary companions (11 of these children had imaginary animal companions)
Most children’s ages 2.5 – 4.5 years

What are imaginary companions an extreme example of? What were imaginary companions first thought of to show?

An extreme example of symbolic play and give children very rich additional opportunities for imagined social interaction

---> Previously believed to be an index of social or emotional disturbance---> Ames & Learned’s (1946) showed imaginary companions to be common, and suggested a part of normal development of imagination

What did Cohen & MacKeith (1991) document?

Cohen & MacKeith (1991) documented children who invented complex imaginary worlds from as early as age 3

What did Taylor (1988) find?

That imaginary companions are common – two thirds of children reported having an imaginary companion before age 7

What do children with imaginary companions show?

---> show better theory of mind skills (Taylor & Carlson, 1997)
---> are more likely to describe a best friend with reference to mental and emotional characteristics (Davis & Meins, 2010)
---> produce richer narratives in story-telling and recounting personally-experienced events (Trionfi & Reese, 2009)

What two factors does drawing depend on, and what does drawing show an understanding of?

---> Depends on visual perception and motor control
---> Depends on symbolic capacities
---> Can show understanding of others’ points of view

When do children usually start drawing?

Infants typically start scribbling towards end of first year (Cox, 1992) & continue to be eager artists until middle childhood or adolescence

What do children’s drawings provide a relatively continuous record of?

their visuo-motor abilities
their symbolic capacities
their abilities to understand other people’s perspectives and points of view (recall Theory or Mind lecture)

What did Kellogg (1969, 1970) claim to identify?

Twenty different basic scribbles (see slide 2, p. 6 lecture notes)

What do scribbles produce?

• Scribbles combine to produce the basic building blocks that go to make up
representational pictures

(Some children jump straight from scribbles to representational pictures (Golomb, 1981))

What experiment shows that scribbling isn’t inevitably followed by representational drawing?

Chimps scribble and can produce quite complex pictures which they can then name (“fortuitous realism”: Luquet, 1927)

---> But no evidence that these pictures were intended to represent anything beforehand (Morris, 1967; Gardner & Gardner, 1978)

What can be said about drawing the human figure?

• Among the earliest drawings with clear representational intent

• Typically emerge around 3 years (Cox & Parkin, 1986)

• Most common is the ‘tadpole figure’, where either the body is missing (Gibson, 1969), or head and body are merged (Arnheim, 1974)

---> By about 5 years, most children are drawing recognisable human bodies, with distinct arms and legs (Koppitz, 1968)

What two studies demonstrate that their is a difference between seeing vs. knowing?

Ricci (1887) first to note young children’s difficulties with drawing what they see
Clarke’s apple (Clarke, 1897)

---> when asked to draw a hatpin through an apple, young children draw the whole of the pin - later on the omit the middle section of the pin; but older children draw the model as they see it (see slide 5, p. 7)

Regarding seeing vs. knowing, what are the 2 types of realism?

Intellectual realism: (Lucquet, 1927): from ~ 4 to 8, children draw what they know is there

Visual realism: after ~ 8 (Freeman & Janikoun, 1972), children draw what they can see

When drawing, why do children make transparency, occlusion, and perspective errors?

Don’t understand points of view?
Don’t understand how projection works (perspective, occlusion)?
Want the object to be representational or symbolic?

---> Can give us clues to children’s understanding of the world

Note: Some aspects of children’s drawing may not be errors, but differences in the intended function of the picture
---> Children more concerned with symbolic function (representing what is really there) than appearance (showing how it really looks)

What did Ingram & Butterworth (1989) find?

Children as young as 3 can preserve something of the visual perspective of the drawer (occlusion, depth, spatial location) when objects are blocks with no symbolic significance
Intellectual realism quickly takes over when the blocks are given facial features

Regarding drawing, what develops over time?

Cognitive abilities?
e.g. Piaget: visual realism in drawing requires an understanding of perspective.

Representational capacities?
e.g. representing how an object appears from a specific viewpoint

Intention to draw as veridical representation rather than schematic/symbolic?
i.e. changing the intended function of the drawing

What are parallels with symbolic play?

• ~18 month start to override what they know and engage in symbolic acts

• But, problems until around 3 or 4 years when what they know conflicts with what the object looks like

• Children younger than 3 have problems overriding an object’s usual function (Rubin et al., 1983)

What are parallels with Theory of Mind?

Up to 4 years, children have problems overriding their own knowledge when predicting another person’s belief and behaviour (e.g. Wimmer & Perner, 1983)

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Developmental Psychology

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