Life-span pretend play in two communities

This article was downloaded by: [24.136.8.253]On: 01 July 2014, At: 09:09Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Mind, Culture, and ActivityPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hmca20

Life-Span Pretend Play in TwoCommunitiesAnthony Peronea & Artin Göncüb

a University of Washington Tacomab University of Illinois at ChicagoPublished online: 27 Jun 2014.

To cite this article: Anthony Perone & Artin Göncü (2014): Life-Span Pretend Play in TwoCommunities, Mind, Culture, and Activity, DOI: 10.1080/10749039.2014.922584

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2014.922584

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hmca20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/10749039.2014.922584

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2014.922584

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Mind, Culture, and Activity, 00: 1–21, 2014Copyright © Regents of the University of California

on behalf of the Laboratory of Comparative Human CognitionISSN 1074-9039 print / 1532-7884 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10749039.2014.922584

Life-Span Pretend Play in Two Communities

Anthony PeroneUniversity of Washington Tacoma

Artin GöncüUniversity of Illinois at Chicago

Two studies sought to determine if pretend play has occurred throughout the lifespans of two com-munities of young Western adults. First, 10 improvisers were asked to define the words “play” and“pretend,” recount episodes of pretend play in their early childhood, elementary school, adolescence,and adulthood, and relate the benefits of their engagement in pretend play. Second, 49 graduate stu-dents answered open-ended and dichotomous-response questionnaire items modeled after the firststudy. In both studies, participants offered meanings of pretend and play that align with definitions ofchildren’s play and offered personal, life-span episodes and benefits of pretend play.

Statements in the Western world such as “Play is the work of the child” or “It’s just child’splay” suggest that play is considered both essential for and particular to young children’s devel-opment. Despite the common belief that play is an activity only of young children, there isburgeoning conceptual and empirical work that discusses the possibility that one type of play,pretend play, is present and possible not only in early childhood but also in later periods ofdevelopment (e.g., Holzman, 2009; Singer & Singer, 1990; E. D. Smith & Lillard, 2012). As per-formers and educators, we have engaged in pretend play with adolescents and other adults andhave witnessed the important contributions pretend play makes to both development and edu-cation (e.g., Perone, 1994, 2011). Motivated by this emerging scholarship and our personalexperiences, we designed an interview study conducted with improvisers, and a questionnairestudy conducted with graduate students, with the goal of seeking preliminary empirical sup-port for our thesis that pretend play is a lifelong, developmental, and educational activity. Theparticipants were recruited from two different communities that, from our perspective, were likelyto value pretend play and consider it of benefit to their learning and development. Data were gath-ered, based on the participants’ perspectives, to describe how and why they engaged in pretend

Correspondence should be sent to Anthony Perone, Division of Social, Behavioral, and Human Sciences,Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington Tacoma, Campus Box 358436, 1900 Commerce Street,Tacoma, WA 98402. E-mail: [email protected]

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014

2 PERONE AND GÖNCÜ

play across four developmental periods: early childhood, elementary school, adolescence, andadulthood.

Previous research has privileged young children’s pretend play and frequently ignored thepossibility that pretend play may be present in the lives of older children, adolescents, and adults.This bias appears, in part, to be rooted in Western cultural practices and prominent develop-mental theories. In both, sharp distinctions are made between play and nonplay activities, onone hand, and childhood and adulthood, on the other. With respect to Western cultural practices,play is seen as an appropriate activity for childhood that is substituted by other activities such aswork during adulthood. These distinctions shape and are shaped by how we characterize theseactivities. For example, play activities have been defined as intrinsically motivated, engaging,open-ended, and respite from income-producing, externally driven activities of any sort (P. K.Smith & Vollstedt, 1985). In contrast, work is often considered uninspiring and forced upon us(Terr, 1999). As such, Western cultural practices deem voluntary and free-flowing play activi-ties as appropriate for childhood, whereas work is seen as required and appropriate in adulthood.This dichotomy ignores the possibility that, for example, children may engage in work for similarreasons as do adults and adults may engage in play for similar reasons as do children (Rogoff,2003). It also ignores the fact that play and work may coincide: Income-producing activity mayembrace playfulness, and play itself may be the source of income. In our view, practices thatassume qualitative differences between childhood and adulthood overlook important continuitiesin play.

Similar to cultural practices, prominent developmental theories maintain sharp distinctionsbetween different developmental stages and the activities appropriate within particular stages.For example, Piaget (1962) stated that pretend play serves the needs of the egocentric self asrepresentational assimilation during the preoperational stage, whereby children re-create non-play experiences in pretend play with the purpose of mastering them. During the elementaryschool years, however, play disappears with the advent of concrete operations giving way tological thinking. In a similar vein, Vygotsky (1978) claimed that play is the leading activityduring early childhood serving as a zone of proximal development whereby young childrenengage in explorations that they are not able to do outside of play. For example, children intheir pretend play practice roles such as motherhood with the purpose of developing fuller under-standings of them (Göncü & Gaskins, 2011). However, play is replaced by school work duringthe elementary school years when children delve into the mastery of scientific concepts. For bothPiaget and Vygotsky, then, pretend play serves as an activity of meaning-making emanating fromaffectively significant idiosyncratic and personal experiences only during early childhood. Thisreading of Piaget and Vygotsky has inspired research that focuses on the presence, development,and benefits of pretend play in early childhood and tends to adopt and advance the perspec-tive that pretend play is limited to early childhood (e.g., Fein, 1981; Vasta, Haith, & Miller,1999).

Our work, however, is based on a conceptualization of life-span pretend play as any open-ended, voluntary, and agentive transformation that is stimulated by modifications of the featuresof activities that are culturally-historically situated. This conceptualization includes three impor-tant aspects of pretend play. First, it considers the simulative “as if” quality of transformation,such as when players substitute one object with another to serve a particular function (e.g., a

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014

LIFE-SPAN PRETEND PLAY 3

rock becomes a piece of jewelry), rename a physical location (e.g., an empty lot becomes abattlefield), or change their voices to adopt a pretend role (e.g., Superman). Although these exam-ples illustrate transformation occurring in young children’s pretend play (e.g., Garvey, 1990;Haight & Miller, 1993), transformation of this kind has also been extended to the activity ofolder children, teens, and adults (e.g., Holzman, 1997) and is the subject of inquiry in the presentresearch.

Second, this definition embraces the ludic aspect of pretend play. Human beings enjoyengaging in pretend play because it is empowering to create worlds based on players’ needs,experiences, and interests. It is this empowering feature of pretend play that makes it enjoy-able (Huizinga, 1949). For example, children enjoy re-creating stories—such as with literature orthe media—because such activity enables them to create their own versions and have fun whiledoing so (Baumer, Ferholt, & Lecusay, 2005; Paley, 1981). We expect that pretend play and theenjoyment that emanates from it are not limited to childhood but may be present throughout thelifespan.

Third, our definition encompasses the developmental aspects of pretend play that necessi-tate transformation of the activity itself and the development of the players. With respect to thetransformation of pretend play activity, pretend play may exist throughout the lifespan, but thestructure of the activity itself, that is, the episodes, play partners, play objects, and/or play loca-tions, may not remain constant across all episodes or across all times in the life span. For example,a young child may “play house” with her peers at her early childhood program and may useprops such as toy kitchen appliances and dolls. This child, now an adult, may see herself “play-ing house” when she visits her significant other, with whom she does not live, and where theycollaboratively engage in everyday home-making activities, such as cooking. Together they may“play house,” that is, they pretend that they live together and in doing so, as Vygotsky wouldlikely concur, explore their roles and their expectations should the opportunity to cohabitate inthe future arise. “Playing house,” thus, may be a life-span activity for this individual to continu-ally explore and represent future roles as parent or significant other. At the same time, the activityof “playing house” transforms over the course of the life span for this individual with respect tothe play partners involved, the objects used, and the locations in which it occurs.

In addition, the types of pretend play activity in early childhood with which we are famil-iar in the Western world (such as “playing house”) may give way to engagement in otherimaginative activities later on in the life span, such as computer simulation and online gaming(Brougère, 1999), live action role play (Rognli, 2008), philosophizing (Lillard, 2001), impro-visation in everyday talk (Sawyer, 2001, 2003), religion (Finkel, Swartwout, & Sosis, n.d.),visual art (Franklin, 1994), and the literary arts and hard sciences (John-Steiner, 1997, 2000;Taylor & Mannering, 2007). These and other activities beyond early childhood may in fact berepresentational and enjoyable in a manner similar to the pretend play of young children.

Finally, the players themselves are transformed as a result of engagement in pretend playacross multiple developmental domains and contexts. In other words, they grow, as Vygotsky(1978, p. 102) said, “a head taller” than themselves, at once being both who they are and whothey are becoming in their communities of practice (cf. Holzman, 2009). In what follows, weexplore these possible life-span continuities and transformations of and in pretend play activitywith members of two different communities.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


STUDY 1

Improvisers’ Reflections in Interviews

Göncü and Perone (2005) offered a conceptualization of pretend play as a life-span activity thatconstitutes the background and the justification for Study 1. This conceptualization is borne outof similarities between social pretend play during childhood and improvisational theater (improv)during adulthood. Seham (2001) defined improv as “a form of unscripted performance that usesaudience suggestions to initiate or shape scenes or plays created spontaneously and cooperativelyaccording to agreed-upon rules or game structures, in the presence of an audience—frequentlyresulting in comedy” (p. xvii). Similarly, Napier (2004) defined improv as “getting on a stageand making stuff up as you go along” (p. 1). A close examination of social pretend play in earlychildhood and improv in adulthood reveals striking similarities between them with respect totheir cultural, definitional, and performance features; their psychological origins; social/dialogicfunctions; and developmental consequences.

With regard to their definitional features, both social pretend play and improv are free-flowingand social activities in which the meaning of the here and now gains an imaginative importance.Children’s pretend play is akin to the principal forms of improv, namely, short and long form.Short-form improv (Spolin, 1963) consists of games similar to turn-taking games whereby par-ticipants collectively contribute to the construction of the activity. An example of a short-formgame is “One Word Story,” where, inspired by an audience member’s suggestion of a title, anensemble of improvisers tells a brief, improvised story. Each member of the ensemble, in turn,offers one word at a time, and in doing so strings together words to make sentences, questions,or perhaps exclamations to create a total narrative in situ (Halpern, Close, & Johnson, 1994).Long-form improv (Halpern et al., 1994) consists of many different, possibly related imaginativescenes that develop spontaneously within a form established beforehand, the content of which isdeveloped over the course of the improv performance. A signature long-form in improv, knownas the “Harold,” is created based on an audience suggestion and comprises an opening game, aseries of scenes, and intermittent group games developed over an approximately 20- to 30-minperformance.

Performance-wise, both children’s pretend play and improv take place in an emergent mannerand neither performance requires an audience. Although there appears to be a distinction betweenthe performers and the audience in improv, their roles are always fluid. The audience’s partici-pation in the initiation and/or development of a game or long-form is essential, thus blurring thetraditional distinctions between the stage and the hall and between the audience and performers(cf. Libera, 2004). In this sense, the different kinds of roles adopted by the actors and the audi-ence in improv can be likened to the performance roles as actors, directors, and spectators freelyadopted by children in pretend play.

With regard to psychological origins, we take the lead from Vygotsky (1978), who stated that“play is more nearly a recollection of something that has actually happened rather than imagi-nation. It is more memory in action than a novel situation” (p. 103). In support of Vygotsky’sclaim, personal testimonials of improvisers suggest that adults’ engagement in improv can be anopportunity to re-create and give new meaning to personal experiences. For example, the founderof the Compass Theater, David Shepherd, provided a powerful example in support of the claimthat adults explore issues of affective significance in pretend play such as improv:

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


When Elaine May [well-known improviser] would play a Jewish mother or Mike Nichols [well-known improviser] would play a businessman or when Shelley Berman [well-known improviser]would play a delicatessen father—these were people who were living out their liberation from theirfamilies. They were in analysis and they were using the stage of The Compass to liberate themselvesfrom a whole lot of shit they had fallen into. (Sweet, 1978, pp. 5–6)

Shepherd suggested that pretend play in the form of improv is an opportunity for actors, like Mayand Nichols, to use the stage of The Compass not only to create emergent theater but also to basesuch theater on the narratives of their own lives, much like when young children draw upon theirexperiences with family, in the community, and from the media to shape their own pretend playepisodes.

In a similar vein, consistent with Piaget’s (1962) claim that engagement in pretend play derivesfrom the need to illustrate mastery, informal reports of improv performers reveal similar needs.For example, improviser Shelley Berman stated that doing improv helped her learn

all the language that had been so mysterious to me when I studied with Uta Hagen [acting teacher] . . .

all these things . . . had been a problem for me before. But suddenly, as I worked in improvisation, Ibegan to realize how to go about getting some of the things I had done intuitively in the past. (Sweet,1978, p. 124)

Berman contended that her engagement in improv facilitated her awareness and solidified expe-riences she had previously had with formal acting classes, thus affording her opportunities toconfirm and illustrate her mastery of skills.

With regard to the dialogic nature of pretend and improv, not only are both activities oftenperformed with partners but also both young children and adults provide evidence of a desireto construct intersubjective, imaginative worlds in their activities. The conversational strategiesto construct and maintain shared imaginative activities manifest remarkable similarities. Youngchildren in play through their turnabouts (Göncü & Kessel, 1984) and adults in improv throughtheir “yes, and . . .” statements (Halpern et al., 1994) maintain the play dialogue. Both turnaboutsand “yes, and . . .” statements are implicit and explicit tools, respectively, for children and adultsto agree with and build upon verbal and nonverbal offers made available by their play partners.In both cases, one player acknowledges the offer of another player and adds a new expectationto advance the play episode. For example, if either a young child or an improviser says, “I ama watermelon,” the response to maintain the play episode would be expressed in a partner’sturnabout (or “yes and . . .” statement) acknowledging, agreeing, and building upon the initialverbal statement. In this example, the partner may respond with, “Yes, and I am a pineapple.”

Regarding the psychological features of social pretend play and improv, a third similaritybetween these two activities is that both of them may yield important developmental benefits indifferent domains of functioning. Becoming something or someone other than the self results incognitive, affective, and linguistic benefits (Hirsch-Pasek, Michnick Golinkoff, Berk, & Singer,2009; Pellegrini, 1984), creativity (Caposella, 2000; Vygotsky, 1987), and imagination (Harris,2007; Kavanaugh, 2006) for young children. Although limited, existing research with elemen-tary school children indicates that pretend play also exists and is beneficial (e.g., Baker-Sennett,Matusov, & Rogoff, 1992). In adolescence and adulthood, pretend play may exist in risk takingas when youth try out personal transformation with respect to constructs such as time, experi-ence, cultural narratives, social positioning, and parental constraints (Lightfoot, 1997), or whenadults engage in private speech with imaginary, improvised conversations at the gravesite of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


loved ones (Josephs, 1998), improvised speech in everyday conversations (Sawyer, 2003), andimprovisational play in business and psychotherapy (Holzman, 2009).

Motivated by these similarities, we aimed to offer initial empirical findings that suggest thatpretend play exists in all periods of development and that it may not be limited to social pre-tend play in early childhood or improv in adulthood. However, based on the similarities drawnbetween social pretend play and improv, we conducted the first study with improvisers; it seemednatural to inquire first about the presence of pretense in the lives of those who engage in thisactivity. Based upon on our initial conceptualization, we expected that improvisers would provideexamples of pretend play over the course of their development and would provide examples ofhow they have benefitted from pretending. To address our expectations, we conducted an inter-view study with open-ended questions because improvisers’ training, rehearsal, performance,and feedback are always accomplished via emergent, verbal conversations. Furthermore, printedmaterials (e.g., Coleman, 1990) and documentaries (e.g., Jaime & Pacocha, 2002) about impro-visation also incorporate interviews. Therefore, employment of a free-flowing interview contextwas deemed to be the most appropriate way of learning from them and honoring the playfuldialogues to which they are accustomed.

Methods

Participants

The participants were 10 (five female, five male) European American adults (age range =21–38, average age = 27) who had had between 1 year and 10 years of improv experience. Twowere theater professionals (e.g., improviser or actor), six were pursuing a career in improv andscripted theater but at the time of the interview were employed in other positions (e.g., administra-tive positions or in food service), and two had full-time positions in careers other than in improvor scripted theater (e.g., counseling and law) but improvised as a hobby. Nine participants had atleast an undergraduate degree.

Procedure

The first author announced the study at an improv training center and received referrals froma colleague who is an improviser. He then contacted interested participants by telephone and/ore-mail. Those who responded and expressed interest in participating selected a time and locationto meet with the first author individually for an approximately hour-long interview.

The interview was guided by a semistructured protocol that had three parts. The goal of Part 1was to learn the participants’ definitions of “play” and “pretend” (e.g., “How would you define‘play’?”). The goal of Part 2 was to determine the presence and development of pretend playactivities across four times in the life span (i.e., during early childhood, elementary school,adolescence, and adulthood). For each pretend play activity at any time in a participant’s life,questions about the activity focused primarily on who engaged in the activity (e.g., alone or withsiblings), with what objects (e.g., toys or objects in nature), and where such activity took place(e.g., at home or outside). Frequency (how often) questions were not addressed, but we assumedthat the episode occurred at least once and served as evidence that pretend play occurred at a

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


particular time in the participant’s life span. The goal of Part 3 was to learn about the meaningand benefits of their pretend play activities throughout life (e.g., “What are important lessons youhave learned from your experiences with play/improv?”).

Transcriptions and Reliability

The first two interviews were transcribed verbatim to identify the content for coding. Afterhaving reviewed these transcriptions, we decided to summarize the remaining eight interviewsbecause our analyses did not rely on the dialogue per se but on the content of responses.A template was then created to correspond to the three sections of the interview protocol (i.e.,Definitions, Developmental Processes, and Reflection on the Meaning and Benefits). With eachsection of the interview, the first author summarized responses with bullet points and/or shortsentences.

Three kinds of reliability were obtained. First, the participants were invited to review theirtranscription or summary with the purpose of confirming that the summaries reflected the inter-views as the participants envisioned them. Six participants elected to do so and offered onlyminor revisions. Second, a doctoral student listened to the interviews and reviewed the remainingfour summaries to make sure that the summaries adequately reflected the interviews. No dis-agreements or omissions were identified. Finally, another doctoral student took these same foursummaries and acted to confirm interrater reliability with the first author regarding the codingcategories for the third section reported next. The percentage agreement was 90. The differenceswere resolved by discussion.

Coding

Codes were developed using a grounded theory approach that involved a systematic way oftransforming responses into successively refined systems of coding and categorizing data (Strauss& Corbin, 1990). For our purposes, this process involved listening to the interviews and reviewingthe summaries in order to locate similar responses, name these responses with a coding category(and, if needed, subcategories), and assign frequencies to them. Code labels and frequencies wererefined throughout the data analysis and reliability exercises. Only categories that were mentionedby at least two participants (20%) at any time in the life span are included, and categories are notnecessarily mutually exclusive. For the first section, Definitions, two categories emerged out ofthe participants’ definitions of “play”: Fun, as expressed in statements about play as an enjoy-able activity, and Creative, as expressed in statements about play as an inventive activity. Twocategories emerged out of their definitions of “pretend”: Imaginative, as expressed in statementsabout pretend as an activity of invention and construction, and Escapism/Alternate Reality, asexpressed in statements about pretend as an activity of temporarily leaving a current reality toengage in a pleasant, make-believe reality.

For the second section of the interview protocol, Developmental Processes, codes were devel-oped about social participation in pretend play, pretend play objects, and pretend play locations.Two categories of social participation were named: Solitary and Social. This distinction refersto the absence or presence, respectively, of other human participants in pretend play episodes.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


Social pretend play episodes were broken down into two subcategories based on play partners:family (e.g., siblings) and nonfamily (e.g., friends).

Three categories for pretend play objects were created, two of which were identified in the pre-vious literature—Animation and Substitution (i.e., attributing living characteristics to inanimateobjects and having one object represent another, respectively). The third category, not identifiedin the previous literature, was called Catalyst. It was defined as the use of an object to create apretend play episode that does not include the object itself. For example, a participant’s use of avideo game system enables entry into the pretend world of the video game was coded as catalyst.Two categories for pretend play locations were created: Homes (e.g., home of the participant)and Public Settings (e.g., school).

For the third section of the interview protocol, Reflection on the Meaning and Benefits,we created four nonmutually exclusive categories: Personal, Interpersonal, Adaptability, andPerformance. As we exemplify in the Results section, Personal benefits are defined as improvedself-perceptions, Interpersonal benefits are defined as improved communication and relationshipswith others, Adaptability benefits are defined as improved cognitive and affective flexibility, andPerformance benefits are defined as factors that favorably impact improv activity.

Results and Discussion

Part 1—Definitions

Seven participants defined “play” as Fun and four as Creative. For example, one participantsaid, “Play for me means creation in general, but fun creation.” Four participants defined “pre-tend” as Imaginative and nine defined it as Escapism/Alternate Reality as seen in responses,respectively, such as “anytime you use your imagination to create a scenario that is real but youbelieve it enough that you can play with the boundaries of that scenario” and “taking somethingthat is real and thinking of it in a way you’d prefer . . . changing things to the way you’d likeit.” As the participants’ definitions across the board also included pretend play’s creative, ludic,and imaginative aspects (P. K. Smith & Vollstedt, 1985), we inferred that the participants wereworking with definitions of play and pretend that aligned with definitions used in the literaturefor children’s pretend play. We also considered their self-reported episodes at any point in theirlifespan as both aligning with their own definitions and as evidence of pretend play.

Part 2—Features of the Episodes of Pretend Play Across the Lifespan

For our present purposes, the most important finding is that all the participants stated thatpretend play activity had taken place at each of the four times in their life spans. The themesof episodes of pretend play across the life span can be situated in four trends. The first trend ischaracterized by pretend play that has a similar structure (i.e., similar partners, objects, and loca-tions) and similar meaning to the individual throughout the life span. For example, one improviserexpressed episodes of her lifelong solitary pretend play with her reflection in the mirror of herjewelry box. This reflection (of herself) was “another,” an imaginary friend with whom she couldplay and have conversations during times in her life when she felt alone, despondent, or powerlessbut whose frequency of interactions would diminish when she felt connected, content, and strong.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


A second trend of pretend play activity is shaped by episodes that have a similar meaning tothe individuals but a structure that has changed over the course of the life span. For instance,one improviser explored moral questions in his pretend play. In early childhood, he created pre-tend play episodes with his brothers adopting characters such as knights, cowboys, and RobinHood, where he would wonder, “What should I do as Robin Hood? Should I steal from the rich?How else could I help?” In his elementary school years, he recalled adopting Star Wars charac-ters with his brothers, emphasizing the morality of the characters such as playing the evil DarthVader as good, as redeemed. Also, playing with GI Joe figures, he explored issues such as whatwould happen if the mercenary were offered more money to switch sides; would he do it? Duringadolescence, he moved from action figures to role-playing games such as Masquerade, a vampire-based role playing game, where he explored the morality of dark or dubious characters. Finally,in adulthood, he engaged in his exploration of morality via online role-playing games that tookplace with others in his college dormitory.

A third trend of episodes reflects a similar structure yet whose meaning has changed through-out the life span. For example, an improviser referred to playing alone in her mother’s closet as achild to dress up in her mother’s clothing as a means of “trying on” characters at home and with-out much purpose but now enters her own closet as an adult without adopting a character. As anadult, she enjoys trying on her own clothes as a form of pretend play (i.e., who she is becomingor how she [re]presents herself with respect to her choice of outfit), but now the specific goal ofsuch play is to prepare to socialize outside of her home and have fun with her peers.

Finally, the fourth trend can be characterized by pretend activity whose structure and meaninghave changed over the life span. For example, one improviser considered much of his pretendplay activity in early childhood and elementary school as a way to feel powerful when feelingpowerless, controlled, isolated, or unattractive. At those times, he achieved his aims by engagingin pretend play activities with action figures and in martial arts, compensating for the emotionalinjuries he suffered from in nonplay situations. He stated,

[In the elementary school years] you don’t have much power with your parents and then you go toschool and you’re not very listened to or liked, and so what you do is . . . create new realities. “Well,this one’s not doing it for me, but there’s this other one in my mind that’s really great. So that’s therewhere I wanna go; that’s where I wanna play.”

His feelings of isolation and/or powerlessness dissipated, however, in adulthood and currentlydo not factor into his main forms of pretend play, namely, improv, video games, and practicinghis religion. To sum up, these four trends suggest a spectrum of how pretend play episodes occurthroughout the life spans of these improvisers. In what follows, the improvisers’ life-span pretendplay with respect to partners, props, and places is discussed.

The improvisers’ pretend play: Partners, props, and places. Improvisers played bothalone and with others all throughout their lives (see Table 1). Also, at all developmental periods,social pretend play occurred with family and nonfamily members. Family members includedparents and siblings during the early childhood and elementary school years. For example, oneimproviser shared an early childhood example of pretend play with her father creating “OogaBooga Land,” an imaginary place right outside their front door where they explored the areaof Ooga Booga Land and found who had lived in this imaginary land, playing as if there wereexplorers discovering this new community. During the elementary school years, one improviser

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


TABLE 1Pretend Play Partners Across the Lifespan—Improvisers and Graduate Students

Early Childhood Elementary Adolescence Adulthood

Partner Study 1 Study 2 Study 1 Study 2 Study 1 Study 2 Study 1 Study 2

Solitary 5 32 8 34 6 30 8 28Siblings 8 45 5 46 3 34 2 37Parents 6 40 5 27 0 16 0 26Friends 5 48 8 49 8 48 6 46Classmates 0 N/A 2 N/A 7 N/A 10 N/ARoommates 0 N/A 0 N/A 0 N/A 3 N/AImaginary companions N/A 7 N/A 4 N/A 1 N/A 2Other caregivers (e.g.,

grandparents)N/A 40 N/A 29 N/A 7 N/A 11

Teachers N/A 18 N/A 12 N/A 8 N/A 11Cousinsa N/A 15 N/A 12 N/A 4 N/A 3Petsa N/A 12 N/A 8 N/A 4 N/A 3Significant othera N/A 0 N/A 0 N/A 0 N/A 13

Note. N/A = cells without any frequencies denote that the categories represented in these cells were not mentionedin that given study.

aAdditional category supplied by graduate student participants.

recalled playing with her brothers (and their friends) pretending they were “digging a tunnel toChina”; another improviser recalled playing “Bible Charades” where he and his family members(including parents) acted out stories and characters from the Bible for other family members toguess. During adolescence and adulthood, only a few participants reported playing with siblings,but not one of them pretended with their parents. For example, the improviser who engaged inBible Charades now engages in charades on Skype with his siblings, where they use sounds andgestures to represent examples of media or literature. In all times in the life span, nonfamilymembers included friends and classmates.

With respect to props, animation objects, such as dolls and action figures, were cited by someimprovisers during early childhood and the elementary school years (see Table 2). However, dur-ing adolescence and adulthood they were not used in support of pretense. Animation props in theform of costumes were mentioned with varying frequencies during the four periods of develop-ment. For example, one improviser in her adolescence, along with her friend, participated in anactivity called “Meet me in costume in five minutes.” One person called the other with the direc-tive to join her outside in whatever costume they could create at home within 5 min. Substitutionprops such as Objects in nature and Household objects were mentioned with regard to earlychildhood and the elementary school years but not during adolescence or adulthood. However,some improvisers began improv training and performance during adolescence and mentionedhow the use of the body and/or voice substitutes for physical objects in their improv perfor-mances. Some improvisers mentioned engagement in formal theater productions and mentionedtheater props that were used. Finally, catalyst props were used in all four developmental periodsto varying degrees. For example, regarding early childhood, one improviser said, “I learned toread about that time period [early childhood]. To me that goes along with it, reading. It’s likea huge imagination user. Even if they give you a picture to look at you can imagine everything

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


TABLE 2Pretend Play Objects Across the Lifespan—Improvisers and Graduate Students


Object Study 1 Study 2 Study 1 Study 2 Study 1 Study 2 Study 1 Study 2

Dolls/Action figures 6 48 4 44 0 8 0 8Toys N/A 47 N/A 48 N/A 21 N/A 30Costumes 3 37 3 35 7 17 3 25Theater props 0 N/A 2 N/A 7 N/A 3 N/AObjects in nature 2 42 2 40 0 18 0 20Household objects 3 46 2 43 0 39 0 12Body/Voice (to create

imaginary objects)0 N/A 0 N/A 3 N/A 10 N/A

Imaginary objects N/A 29 N/A 21 N/A 5 N/A 12Books/Reading materials 3 N/A 4 N/A 4 N/A 6 N/AVideo/Computer gamesa 1 1 2 2 4 10 3 8Drugs/Alcohola 0 N/A 0 N/A 2 N/A 3 N/ABoard games/cardsa N/A 0 N/A 5 N/A 10 N/A 13Sports equipmenta N/A 2 N/A 3 N/A 18 N/A 5


aAdditional category supplied by graduate student participants.

else that goes with it.” Beginning in early childhood, catalyst props also included use of videogames. In adolescence and adulthood, drug and alcohol use was cited as a catalyst for pretendplay activity. For example, one improviser mentioned that engagement in drug use helps herwrite about and enter into the imaginary worlds she creates through her fiction and comedysketches.

With respect to settings, pretend play took place at the homes of improvisers all throughouttheir lives (see Table 3). For instance, one improviser mentioned playing at home with his sisteras if they were “Pound Puppies” trying to escape their father who was the “pound keeper.” Also,most improvisers played at the homes of their friends until adulthood at which time no pretendplay occurred at friends’ homes. An illustration of this is an improviser who stated that in hiselementary school years and early adolescence, he and his friends pretended at his friend’s houseto be wrestlers. Pretend play occurred in public settings, such as outdoors during early child-hood and theaters and church during the elementary school years. During adolescence, publicsettings included outdoors and schools where teasing and gossip served as pretend play in whichpeers would create and joke about imaginary romantic relationships with classmates or withfamous adults. School activities in adolescence, such as Odyssey of the Mind, illustrate pretensein the creation of skits (e.g., of different historical periods). Theaters were also mentioned by fiveimprovisers. During adulthood, public settings included outdoor and school play. Theaters werementioned by all 10 improvisers. Finally, work/internship experiences were mentioned by fiveimprovisers, as evidenced by one who spoke of his playful experiences as a temp charged withputting up flyers and another who wrote and performed in a parody of the Iran Contra Scandalfor the farewell event of her law school internship.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


TABLE 3Pretend Play Locations Across the Lifespan—Improvisers and Graduate Students


Location Study 1 Study 2 Study 1 Study 2 Study 1 Study 2 Study 1 Study 2

Home 9 49 9 49 5 47 9 46Home of other family

membersN/A 44 N/A 44 N/A 26 N/A 33

Home of friends 2 38 3 46 3 44 0 44School 2 42 4 43 9 30 2 18Outdoor spaces 6 45 6 47 3 42 2 39Theaters 0 N/A 2 N/A 5 N/A 10 N/AChurch 0 15 2 16 0 11 0 3Work/Internship 0 N/A 0 N/A 0 N/A 5 N/A


Part 3—Benefits of the Episodes of Pretend Play Across the Life Span

Of the four categories created—Personal, Interpersonal, Adaptability, and Performance—thefirst three were mentioned by all participants and the final category was mentioned by seven ofthem. Personal benefits were expressed in statements about learning about one’s needs, thoughts,and emotions (e.g., “Pretending to be someone else helps you learn more about yourself and seeyourself as a character”), about feeling secure in one’s actions (e.g., “If I make a mistake, it’s OK.I am not so hard on myself”), about the ability to author and accomplish goals (e.g., “I realizedI have the guts to do [improv]”), and about the capacity to speak more comfortably and freely(e.g., “I speak out more and get out of my head”).

Interpersonal benefits were expressed in statements reflecting a commitment to create andsustain play with others (e.g., “I am a receptionist. . . . When the phone rings, I’ll answer thephone in a different voice or greet people in weird ways”); awareness of others’ thoughts, emo-tions, and physical locations (e.g., “I understand where [other people] are coming from and howto relate to them”); being affectively open with others (e.g., “I give people a chance earlier onnow; I trust more readily”); improved capacity to pay attention to the content and meaning of theverbal expression of others (e.g., “I was not a good listener before. I was not able to do my jobwell until I began this art form”); the ability to better develop, orally relate, and assess narrativeswith others (e.g., “I am better now at being able to conceive of stories and how they advance insatisfactory and unsatisfactory ways”); and the valuable contributions of members of a group toaccomplish a shared task (e.g., “I have learned to be a better member of a group”).

Adaptability benefits were communicated in statements about entering into and being resilientin situations in the face of challenges (e.g., “When you realize you can fail and you’re just fine,particularly when you’re with a supportive group, you can just go laugh and realize how shittythat was . . . and then get out there and do the next scene”); about envisioning novel approachesto situations and activities (e.g., “I am more creative with my work now”); and about producingmany, possibly effective options to address challenging situations (e.g., “I think of every optionnow: not just A, B, and C but from A to Z”).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


Performance benefits were expressed in such ways as incorporating improv performance rulesinto practice (e.g., “I learned the importance of ‘yes, and’ statements, not asking questions, andnot denying an improviser’s offers”), enhancing the range and specificity of improv characters(e.g., “I am more specific in my play: character choices, details, and motivations for the char-acters”), and feeling positive based on their improv performances (e.g., “I like being recognizedwhen I have a good show”). In summary, the improvisers expressed that their engagement inpretend play, particularly improv, afforded them opportunities to develop themselves and theirrelationships across multiple developmental domains (e.g., social-emotional and cognitive) andin contexts such as at school, work, and/or improv theaters.

In sum, this first study revealed three important findings: First, consistent with our expecta-tion, the improvisers’ definitions of pretend and play embodied similar aspects of the meaningsattributed to young children’s pretend play, that is, as a creative, pleasant, and representationalactivity. However, the adults’ examples of pretend play illustrated that similar definitions could beapplied, for example, to doll and action figure play in early childhood, “digging a hole to China”and battle scenes in elementary school, “Meet me in costume in five minutes,” drug use, andjoking/teasing in adolescence, and improv and parody in adulthood. Second, the improvisers’examples illustrated that pretend play activity flexibly exists in all stages of life with regard toits structure and themes with different partners, with different props, and in different settings.Third, the improvisers consistently related that pretend play over the course of their own livescreated opportunities for growth across multiple developmental domains (e.g., social-emotionaland linguistic) and diverse contexts (e.g., at home, work, and school).

Although the first study revealed that pretend play is a life-span activity, it may be argued thatour results are descriptive of only the pretend play experiences of these 10 improvisers. Suchresults obtained from this sample of people who dedicate themselves to performing onstage maynot apply to other communities. Therefore, we conducted a second study using a questionnaireto generate evidence of pretend play throughout the life spans of another community, graduatestudents.

STUDY 2

Graduate Students’ Reflections in Questionnaires

The community of the second study was graduate students in the field of education. The majorityof the students were attending a teacher education program in early childhood and elementaryeducation. This community was chosen because these graduate students were attending programsthat contend that pretend play is an activity with educational and developmental benefits foryoung children. As an extension of this, we were interested if teachers of young children, whovalue pretend play in the lives of their students, also recognize its presence and value throughouttheir own lives.

For this particular community, we opted to administer a questionnaire. We conducted a ques-tionnaire study for several reasons. First, we could ask all the questions included in the interviewprotocol in a questionnaire. After having established that our interview questions were appro-priate and meaningful for adults, we could transform the interview protocol to a questionnaire inorder for it to be applicable to graduate students. Second, graduate students are used to responding

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


to questionnaires. Therefore, using one proved to be appropriate for this community. Third, ques-tionnaires are less time-consuming than interviews and could be used with a larger sample toinvestigate our hypothesis that pretend play is a beneficial, life-span activity. A pilot run of ourlife-span questionnaire was given to 45 graduate students. Minor content and formatting revisionswere made based on this pilot run, and graduate students were again selected as the sample forthis second study.

Methods

Participants

A total of 49 students (40 female, nine male) participated in the study. The majority self-identified as Caucasian/European American; there were 11 participants who self-identified asnon-White and three who did not answer the item. The age range of the participants was 23 to48 (average age = 30). A convenient sampling approach was used. Participants were recruited inperson (during class sessions) or via e-mail.

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire had three sections: Definitions, Developmental Processes, and Benefits ofpretend play activities. In the Definitions section, respondents were asked to supply their defini-tions of “play” and “pretend play.” In the Developmental Processes section, as in the first study,the participants were asked to state pretend play partners, objects, and locations in the same fourdevelopmental periods. In this section, respondents could select “Yes,” “No,” or “Do Not Recall”to differentiate between the presence of, absence of, or failure to recall, respectively, a particularpretend play partner, object, or location in each of the four times in the life span. Respondentswere given the option of supplying partners, objects, and/or locations that were not listed. Also,at the end of all items for each developmental period, another supply item asked respondents tonarrate a favorite or most memorable pretend play activity of that particular time in their lives, ifapplicable.

In the third part, Benefits of pretend play activities, 15 items about the developmental conse-quences of pretend play across the life span were presented with the response options of “Agree,”“Disagree,” and “Does Not Apply.” The developmental benefits expressed in the items weredetermined on the basis of the responses offered by participants in the first study. For exam-ple, we included items about personal and interpersonal benefits (e.g., enhancing self-confidenceor listening skills). In addition, we added items about possible benefits of pretend play on skilldevelopment in formal schooling (e.g., literacy and math) and opinions on contributions of pre-tend play to general human development (e.g., “Pretend play is an important activity for humanbeings”). Respondents were invited at the conclusion of Part 3 to supply additional benefits oftheir pretend play activity that were not included in the questionnaire items.

Basic demographic information (e.g., gender, year of birth, and ethnicity) was requested at theend of the questionnaire. The language of the items was chosen based on suggestions of effectiveitem development per Thorndike (2005). Suggestions for formatting the directions, the items, anddemographic data were taken from Fanning (2005) and from expert review of a colleague.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


Coding

Nonmutually exclusive codes were developed for the first, open-ended section of the question-naire in a comparable manner as the interview study. For Part 1, three related categories emergedout of the participants’ definitions of “play”: Fun, as expressed in statements about play as anenjoyable activity (e.g., “Play is any activity that brings joy or a sense of ‘fun’”), Interactive, ascommunicated in statements about play as a relational activity (e.g., “Play usually involves inter-action between two or more people”), and Voluntary, as evidenced in statements about play as anoncompulsory activity (e.g., “a fun activity that I’m not required to do”). Two related categoriesemerged out of their definitions of “pretend play”: Imaginative, as expressed in statements aboutpretend as an activity of creativity and fantasy (e.g., “Any activity in which an imaginary compo-nent is present”), and Escapism/Alternate Reality, as manifested in statements about pretend asan activity of temporarily leaving a current reality to engage in a different, often preferred, real-ity (e.g., “the act of ‘escaping’ reality—even for just a few moments—through various activitiesand/or thoughts”). Only categories that were mentioned by at least 10 participants (20%) at anytime in the life span are included, and categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Results and Discussion

Part 1—Definitions

Thirty-two graduate students defined “play” as Fun, 18 defined it as Interactive, and 13 asVoluntary. Twenty-eight graduate students defined “pretend play” as Imaginative, and 15 offereddefinitions related to Escapism/Alternate Reality. Based on these responses, and with a similarapproach as in the first study, we assumed that the participants overall and across categories wereworking with definitions of “play” and “pretend play” that were akin to the definitions in theliterature on children’s pretend play (e.g., Caillois, 1961) and would use these definitions whenanswering the items in Parts 2 and 3, as discussed next.

Part 2—Features of the Episodes of Pretend Play Across the Lifespan

Consistent with our expectation, the results revealed important similarities in pretend playacross the life span. The most significant finding of the study is that pretend play, as the graduatestudents defined it, has been a life-span activity for almost all of them. All 49 graduate studentsstated that they engaged in pretend play activity in early childhood and the elementary schoolyears, 47 engaged in pretend play activity in adolescence, and 46 graduate students engaged inpretend play activity in adulthood.

Throughout early childhood, the elementary school years, adolescence, and adulthood, theparticipants reported engaging in pretend play alone and with others (see Table 1). For instance,one graduate student wrote that as an older child and adolescent he played soccer outside aloneand pretended “to beat an entire team of opponents” by scoring the winning goal. However, moreparticipants reported playing with others than playing alone. In all developmental periods, theparticipants played with family and nonfamily members. What is most interesting is that whenpretend play occurred with family members, the relational identity of the pretend play partners

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


remained unchanged: At all times in the life span, siblings were the most frequently chosenpartners followed by parents, other caregivers such as grandparents, and cousins. Another findingthat has indicated consistency across these four developmental periods occurred with regard toplay partners who were not family members. A quick glance at Table 1 reveals, in all periods,when pretend play occurred with nonfamily members, it occurred with friends.

With regard to props, Table 2 suggests similarities in the use of props across the fourdevelopmental periods; graduate students used animation objects such as toys or costumes andsubstitution objects such household objects or objects in nature (e.g., blankets and chairs to makea fort or to play house). During early childhood and the elementary school years, there was agreater tendency to rely on toys, dolls, and action figures. During adolescence and adulthood,pretend play was reported to occur with less frequent use of these objects but included exam-ples such as using household objects to reenact the game show “Supermarket Sweep” and usingcostumes and sexual toys. There was a tendency to use imaginary objects, the voice to createdifferent accents, and catalysts such as the computer game Second Life; one participant wrotethat in playing in and with Second Life, he gets to “go to different environments and with otherpeople online, but as a character.”

Finally, with regard to settings at all times in the life span, pretend play tended to occur mostlyat the participants’ homes, and often at the homes of relatives and of friends (see Table 3). Forexample, a graduate student wrote that after she and her friends go shopping for clothes, they goto one another’s houses and wear the clothes they bought, acting as models. In addition, pretendplay outside of the home occurred outdoors, at school, or at church. All together, these findingsoffer support to our thesis that pretend play occurs all throughout the lifespan and that it includesmany examples of partners, props, and places.

Part 3—Benefits of Pretend Play Activities

Overall, the respondents found pretend play activity to be an important and developmentalactivity, such as to help them learn new information (46), deal with issues in their life (41),improve their self-confidence (35), and relax them (39). Many also found it improved their inter-personal skills (44), story-telling abilities (41), listening skills (34), and public speaking skills(27). Benefits such as problem solving (46) and creativity (47) were also well supported by thegraduate students.

The participants did not see the benefit of engaging in pretend play to improve their literacyand math skills. Only 28 graduate students stated that pretend play had benefited their literacyskills, and only 12 of them agreed that pretend play had benefited their math skills. This is,perhaps, not surprising. The graduate students may have already considered themselves profi-cient in these areas and may not have attributed their proficiency to their life-span pretend play.Instead, they may have needed items that elicited their perceptions of the role of pretend playin their current academic and professional lives. For example, items in this section could haveaddressed the role of pretend play in preparation for their practicum or in their ability to developcurricula or plan lessons. In contrast, the general benefit items, namely, pretend play as benefi-cial to development, as enjoyable, and as an important activity for human beings, were almostunanimously reported with 47, 49, and 49 respondents doing so, respectively. Few pretend play

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


benefits were written in by the respondents, and there were none that were written in by at least10 respondents.

The second study revealed three important findings. First, consistent with our expectation,the 49 graduate students’ definitions of play and pretend play embodied similar aspects of themeanings attributed to young children’s pretend play. Like the improvisers, the graduate students’definitions of pretend and play illustrated that a similar definition as proffered in the literature onchildren’s pretense could be applied to a host of episodes, such as doll and action figure play inearly childhood and the elementary school years, but also, for example, reenacting game showsin adolescence and modeling clothes, sexual play, or playing with accents in adulthood. Second,the graduate students’ examples illustrated that pretend play activity flexibly exists in all stagesof life with regard to its structure of different partners, with different objects, and in differentsettings. Third, the participants consistently related that pretend play across their life spans hascreated opportunities for growth across multiple developmental domains (e.g., social-emotionaland linguistic) and diverse contexts (e.g., at home, work, and school).

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Despite previous claims that pretend play is an activity only of early childhood, the findings ofthe present study offer initial support for the emerging conceptualization of pretend play as a life-span activity. The responses of all the improvisers and nearly all the graduate students supportedour thesis that pretend play is a life-span activity and suggested that pretend play is a beneficial,adaptive activity for adults as well as for young children.

These findings enable us to proffer four substantive and methodological points. First, it isimportant to note that although the words used to define “play” and “pretend (play)” were sim-ilar to those in the literature, the participants’ own meanings of these words revealed in ourparticipant-driven method set the stage for the participants to freely share relevant episodesin their lives. Their definitions of these words indicate developmental and possible contex-tual variations in the conceptualization of pretend play that remain to be examined in researchwith different communities of adults. In our own investigation of these two communities, onlythe graduate students addressed the noncompulsory aspect of play, whereas both communitiesaddressed an aspect of escapism or the creation of alternate reality in their understandings of theword “pretend.”

Second, with respect to the structural features of pretend play, our findings challenge seminalresearch (e.g., Parten, 1932; Piaget, 1962) that conceptualized solitary pretense as a primarilyrudimentary activity giving way to social pretend play in childhood. Both improvisers and grad-uate students in our study reported that solitary pretend play has been a lifelong and adaptiveactivity for them. In addition, the members of these two communities reported that pretend playis also a life-span social activity; this finding highlights the need for future investigations intothe partners throughout the life span with whom people organize and structure their pretend play.Regarding object use, animation, substitution, catalyst, and imaginary objects existed for bothgroups and, again, highlights the need for future research in this area to build upon the presenceand purpose of props in life-span pretend play. As for the locations, the participants in both com-munities recalled pretend play in both home and public settings, suggesting that any location,provided one or more players were present, could be a possible place for pretend play. Additional

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


inquiry may seek to learn the factors, apart from the players, that support particular locations toemerge as places for and of pretense.

Third, extending the previous results on children, both the improvisers and graduate studentsreported that pretend play activity has been beneficial and developmental for them throughouttheir life spans. There appears to be opportunities via pretend play activities to contend withissues of affective significance and to develop new perspectives of the world, the self, and others.Pretend play has helped the participants be and become who they are, be able to construct andreconstruct themselves, and create and sustain relationships. Although pretend play experiencesare rare in a current educational climate that does not see the importance of such activity in thecurriculum, instruction, and assessment of learners beyond early childhood (Holzman, 2009), ourresearch suggests that children and adults alike perceive benefits from this activity and suggeststhat pretend play activities based on learners’ interests and needs be incorporated into formallearning environments across the lifespan and other contexts such as work. Although the adultsin our studies did not strongly endorse the impact of pretend play on their academic skills, theynonetheless pointed to essential social and emotional consequences of pretend play that haveaided in engaging their interests and building their relationships. Additional inquiry may seek toexplore learners’ suggestions for incorporating pretend play into formal learning environments.In addition, future research should consider how learners’ pretend play (a) may shape dynamic,local instruction instead of adopting a standards-based approach; (b) may build meaningful, col-laborative classroom community, rather than teacher-led or top-down instruction; and (c) mayengender effective, learner-centered assessments that replace standardized, cognitive-linguisticfocused, written examinations. The outcomes of this future research may provide support foreducational policy that expands options for curriculum building, instructional approaches, andassessment instruments that incorporate learners’ interests in and experiences with pretend play.

Fourth, and building upon the previous points, it appears that there is a life-span need for par-ticipants to engage in pretense to make meaning of their lives, to (re)present their experiences, andto shape their current and future activities with(in) communities of practice. It is this proactiveand reflective meaning making that anchors and substantiates pretend play as a life-span, ben-eficial activity and the retrospective method employed in this work. Additional research couldexplore if and how members of communities make meaning of their lives, if they deem pretenseactivity as a means to do so, and why. For example, it would be important to examine what expe-riences of adolescents and adults, lived or imagined, become the subject of their pretend play andthe specific function(s) served. In this sense, it would be invaluable to examine further if adoles-cents’ and adults’ pretend play is an exercise of the mastery of past experience as Piaget claimedand the anticipation of future experience as Vygotsky stated.

When considering these possible lines of research, scholars should consider communitiesunderrepresented in this area of inquiry (e.g., adults from non–European American communities)and adopt an emic, community, and sociocultural perspective (Rogoff, 2003) of pretend play asa life-span, beneficial activity. It behooves us to learn from and about members of different com-munities not only to advance our understandings of the complexity and diversity of pretend playin this world but also to avoid deferring to stereotypes, claiming generalizations, or adoptinghegemonic practices. Sensitive to this diversity, research on life-span pretend play across com-munities should employ myriad methods and analyses that align with not only scholars’ researchquestions but also practices of the communities with whom they aim to interact.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014


In addition to the retrospective, life-span approach, additional methods could be employed,such as longitudinal studies (e.g., across more than one developmental period) or observations ofand/or participation in the pretend play in which members of communities engage. Essential toany method adopted is learning from the members of the community the meanings such playfulactivity has for them. These suggestions are borne out of our own initial work in this area, as itintimates that a researcher-only focus on the pretend play of young children is insufficient andthat we should address the players’ meanings and stance on their pretend play activity in ways thatare significant to and created with them. By integrating the perspectives of the player(s) with thatof researcher(s), newer perspectives on the complex, diverse, and beneficial activity emerging inchildhood as “pretend play” may continue to surface and result in it being better understood andbetter situated in contexts across the life span. It is this participant-driven, collaborative approachto inquiry on this topic that we deem essential, momentous, and just, if we are to honor com-munities’ practices, avoid the seductive aim for generalizations across communities, and movebeyond a limited perspective of our lives as merely qualitatively distinct across developmentalperiods. Instead, we encourage scholars to cocreate meanings with participants about how theirlives are continuous and transformative representations of who they are and who they are becom-ing; in other words, how in and through pretend play, they are performing “a head taller” thanthemselves throughout their lives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research reported in this article was presented at meetings of the American EducationalResearch Association (2007, 2008, 2010), The Association for the Study of Play (2010), and TheInternational Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (2008). We acknowledge WendyHighland and Marcy Hochberg for their assistance in the preparation of this manuscript.

REFERENCES

Baker-Sennett, J., Matusov, E., & Rogoff, B. (1992). Social processes of creativity and planning: Illustrated by children’splaycrafting. In P. Light & G. Butterworth (Eds.), Context and cognition: Ways of learning and knowing (pp. 93–114).Hertfordshire, UK: Harvester-Wheatsheaf.

Baumer, S., Ferholt, B., & Lecusay, R. (2005). Promoting narrative competence through adult-child joint pretense:Lessons from the Scandinavian educational practice of playworld. Cognitive Development, 20, 576–590.

Brougère, G. (1999, June). Some elements relating to children’s play and adult simulation/gaming. Simulation andGaming, 30, 134–147.

Caillois, R. (1961). Man, play and games. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.Caposella, A. (2000). Are children really more creative than adults? An examination of Lev Vygotsky’s theory. Claremont

Reading Conference Yearbook, pp. 48–57.Coleman, J. (1990). The Compass: The improvisational theatre that revolutionized American comedy. Chicago, IL:

University of Chicago Press.Fanning, E. (2005). Formatting a paper-based survey questionnaire: Best Practice. Practical Assessment Research and

Evaluation, 10(12). Retrieved from http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=10&n=12Fein, G. G. (1981, December). Pretend play in childhood: An integrative review. Child Development, 52, 1095–1118.Finkel, D. N., Swartwout, P., & Sosis, R. (n.d.). The socio-religious brain: A developmental model. Retrieved from http://

www.anth.uconn.edu/faculty/sosis/publications/socioreligiousbrain.pdf

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014

http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=10&n=12

http://www.anth.uconn.edu/faculty/sosis/publications/socioreligiousbrain.pdf

http://www.anth.uconn.edu/faculty/sosis/publications/socioreligiousbrain.pdf


Franklin, M. B. (1994, Summer). Art, play and symbolization in childhood and beyond: Reconsidering connections.Teachers College Record, 95, 526–541.

Garvey, C. (1990). Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Göncü, A., & Gaskins, S. (2011). Comparing and extending Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s understandings of play: Symbolic

play as individual, sociocultural, and educational interpretation. In A. D. Pellegrini (Ed.), Oxford handbook of thedevelopment of play (pp. 48–57). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Göncü, A., & Kessel, F. S. (1984). Children’s play: A contextual-functional perspective. In F. S. Kessel & A. Göncü(Eds.), Analyzing children’s play dialogues: New directions for child development (Vol. 25, pp. 5–22). San Francisco,CA: Jossey-Bass.

Göncü, A., & Perone, A. (2005, September). Pretend play as a life-span activity. Topoi, 24, 137–147.Haight, W. L., & Miller, P. J. (1993). Pretending at home: Early development in a sociocultural context. Albany, NY:

State University of New York Press.Halpern, C., Close, D., & Johnson, K. (1994). Truth in comedy: The manual of improvisation. Colorado Springs, CO:

Meriwether.Harris, P. L. (2007). Hard work for the imagination. In A. Göncü & S. Gaskins (Eds.), Play and development:

Evolutionary, sociocultural, and functional perspectives (pp. 205–225). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Hirsh-Pasek, K., Michnick Golinkoff, R., Berk, L. E., & Singer, D. G. (2009). A mandate for playful learning in

preschool: Presenting the evidence. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Holzman, L. (1997). Schools for growth: Radical alternatives to current educational models. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Holzman, L. (2009). Vygotsky at work and play. New York, NY: Routledge.Huizinga, J. (1949). Homo ludens: A study of the play-element in culture. London, UK: Routledge & Keegan Paul.Jaime, C. (Producer/Director), & Pacocha, J. (Producer/Director). (2002). The delmonic interviews [Documentary].

(Available from Cesar Jaime, IO Theater 3541 N. Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60657)John-Steiner, V. (1997). Notebooks of the mind (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.John-Steiner, V. (2000). Creative collaboration. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Josephs, I. E. (1998). Constructing oneself in the city of the silent: Dialogue, symbols, and the role of “as if” in self-

development. Human Development, 41, 180–195.Kavanaugh, R. D. (2006). Pretend play. In B. Spodek & O.N. Saracho (Eds.), Handbook of research on the education of

young children (pp. 269–278). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Libera, A. (2004). The Second City almanac of improvisation. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Lightfoot, C. (1997). The culture of adolescent risk-taking. New York, NY: Guilford.Lillard, A. (2001). Pretend play as twin earth: A social-cognitive analysis. Developmental Review, 21, 495–531.Napier, M. (2004). Improvise: Scene from the inside out. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Paley, V. G. (1981). Wally’s stories: Conversations in the kindergarten. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Parten, M. B. (1932). Social participation among pre-school children. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,

27, 243.Pellegrini, A. D. (1984). The effect of dramatic play on children’s generation of cohesive text. Discourse Processes, 7,

57–67.Perone, A. (1994). Autonomy, awareness, and action: Learning and teaching languages through drama (Unpublished

undergraduate honors thesis). Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.Perone, A. (2011). Improvising with adult English language learners. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), Structure and improvisation

in creative teaching (pp. 162–183). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.Rognli, E. (2008). We are the great pretenders: Larp is adult pretend play. In M. Montola & J. Stenros (Eds.), Playground

worlds: Creating and evaluating experiences of role-playing games. Retrieved from http://www.solmukohta.org/pub/Playground_Worlds_2008.pdf#page=200

Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Creating conversations: Improvisation in everyday discourse. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.Sawyer, R. K. (2003). Improvised dialogues: Emergence and creativity in conversation. Westport, CT: Ablex.Seham, A. E. (2001). Whose improv is it anyway? Beyond Second City. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi.Singer, D. G., & Singer, J. L. (1990). The house of make-believe: Children’s play and the developing imagination.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014

http://www.solmukohta.org/pub/Playground_Worlds_2008.pdf#page=200

http://www.solmukohta.org/pub/Playground_Worlds_2008.pdf#page=200


Smith, E. D., & Lillard, A. S. (2012). Play on: Retrospective reports of the persistence of pretend play into middlechildhood. Journal of Cognition and Development, 13, 524–549.

Smith, P. K., & Vollstedt, R. (1985). On defining play: An empirical study of the relationship between play and variousplay criteria. Child Development, 56, 1042–1050.

Spolin, V. (1963). Improvisation for the theater. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory, procedures, and techniques. Newbury

Park, CA: Sage.Sweet, J. (1978). Something wonderful right away: An oral history of The Second City and The Compass Players. New

York, NY: Limelight Editions.Taylor, M., & Mannering, A.M. (2007). The imaginary companions created by children and adults. In A. Göncü &

S. Gaskins (Eds.), Play and development: Evolutionary, sociocultural, and functional perspectives (pp. 227–245).Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Terr, L. (1999). Beyond love and work: Why adults need to play. New York, NY: Scribner.Thorndike, R. M. (2005). Measurement and evaluation in psychology and education (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Pearson Education.Vasta, R., Haith, M. M., & Miller, S. M. (1999). Child psychology: The modern science. New York, NY: Wiley.Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner,

S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds. & Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Imagination and creativity in the adolescent (M. J. Hall, Trans.). In R. W. Rieber (Series Ed. &

Vol. Ed.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky: Vol. 5. Child psychology (pp. 151–166). New York, NY: Plenum.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

24.1

36.8

.253

] at

09:

09 0

1 Ju

ly 2

014

Life-span pretend play in two communities

Documents

Transcript of Life-span pretend play in two communities