Signs of Pretense Across Age and Scenario.

Participation in imagined worlds is a hallmark of the human species, and yet we know little about the context of its early emergence. The experiments reported here replicated and extended in 2 directions Lillard and Witherington's (2004) study of how mothers pretend to have snacks, across different ages of children (15- to 24-month-olds, Experiment 1) and to a different scenario (personal grooming, Experiment 2). Mothers' pretend behaviors changed little as infants aged, but there were some scenario differences. Most striking in this research was the consistency with which particular maternal pretend behaviors were associated with children engaging in pretense behaviors and smiling. The findings are discussed with reference to the child's emerging skills in joint attention and social referencing.

[1]  A. Lillard,et al.  The informative value of emotional expressions: 'social referencing' in mother-child pretense. , 2007, Developmental science.

[2]  P. Ekman,et al.  What the face reveals : basic and applied studies of spontaneous expression using the facial action coding system (FACS) , 2005 .

[3]  Roger Bakeman,et al.  The development of symbol-infused joint engagement. , 2004, Child development.

[4]  Rebekah A. Richert,et al.  Observers' proficiency at identifying pretense acts based on behavioral cues. , 2004, Cognitive development.

[5]  Sung-Bae Cho,et al.  Estimating the efficiency of recognizing gender and affect from biological motion , 2002, Vision Research.

[6]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  From mirror neurons to imitation: Facts and speculations , 2002 .

[7]  Dare A. Baldwin,et al.  Evidence for ‘motionese’: modifications in mothers’ infant-directed action , 2002 .

[8]  Armin Bruderlin,et al.  Perceiving affect from arm movement , 2001, Cognition.

[9]  Michael Tomasello,et al.  Social and object support for early symbolic play , 2001 .

[10]  L. Gogate,et al.  A study of multimodal motherese: the role of temporal synchrony between verbal labels and gestures. , 2000, Child development.

[11]  M. Jeannerod,et al.  Is the organisation of goal-directed action modality specific? A common temporal structure , 2000, Neuropsychologia.

[12]  A. Woodward.  Infants selectively encode the goal object of an actor's reach , 1998, Cognition.

[13]  J. Cunningham,et al.  Children's decoding of emotion in expressive body movement: the development of cue attunement. , 1998, Developmental psychology.

[14]  Brian Knutson,et al.  Anticipation of play elicits high-frequency ultrasonic vocalizations in young rats. , 1998, Journal of comparative psychology.

[15]  D. L. Mumme,et al.  Infants' responses to facial and vocal emotional signals in a social referencing paradigm. , 1996, Child development.

[16]  D. Snow,et al.  Maternal pitch height in ordinary and play situations , 1996, Journal of Child Language.

[17]  Roger Bakeman,et al.  Analyzing Interaction: Sequential Analysis with SDIS and GSEQ , 1995 .

[18]  L. McCune,et al.  A normative study of representational play in the transition to language. , 1995 .

[19]  T. Charman.  Social referencing and the social construction of reality in infancy , 1993 .

[20]  M. Boulton.  Children's abilities to distinguish between playful and aggressive fighting: A developmental perspective , 1993 .

[21]  Noël Carroll,et al.  Mimesis as Make-Beleive@@@Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. , 1990 .

[22]  Carol Barner-Barry,et al.  Human Ethology 1. Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt,New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1989 , 1990, Politics and the Life Sciences.

[23]  C. Garvey,et al.  The language of social pretend play , 1989 .

[24]  A. Fernald,et al.  A cross-language study of prosodic modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants , 1989, Journal of Child Language.

[25]  Judy S. DeLoache,et al.  Joint picturebook interactions of mothers and 1‐year‐old children , 1987 .

[26]  J. Deloache,et al.  Tea for Two: Joint Mother-Child Symbolic Play. , 1985 .

[27]  L. Adamson,et al.  Coordinating attention to people and objects in mother-infant and peer-infant interaction. , 1984, Child development.

[28]  D. Stern,et al.  The prosody of maternal speech: infant age and context related changes , 1983, Journal of Child Language.

[29]  A. Bridges,et al.  Directing two-year-old's attention; some clues to understanding , 1979, Journal of Child Language.

[30]  C. Snow.  The development of conversation between mothers and babies , 1977, Journal of Child Language.

[31]  Jacob Cohen.  A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales , 1960 .

[32]  L. Frank.  The Society for Research in Child Development , 1935 .

[33]  K. Fernow.  New York , 1896, American Potato Journal.

[34]  D. Witherington,et al.  Mothers' behavior modifications during pretense and their possible signal value for toddlers. , 2004, Developmental psychology.

[35]  M. Bornstein,et al.  Specificity in Mother-Toddler Language-Play Relations Across the Second Year , 2004 .

[36]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age. , 1998, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[37]  Olivia N. Saracho,et al.  Multiple Perspectives on Play in Early Childhood Education. SUNY Series, Early Childhood Education. , 1998 .

[38]  H. Wellman,et al.  Understanding Pretense as Pretense. , 1993 .

[39]  R. Exline,et al.  Social visual interaction: A conceptual and literature review. , 1987 .

[40]  K. Deaux,et al.  Nonverbal Behavior and Communication (2nd ed.). , 1987 .

[41]  R. Bakeman,et al.  Observing Interaction: An Introduction to Sequential Analysis , 1986 .

[42]  H. Wass,et al.  A Developmental Perspective , 1985 .

[43]  A. Fernald,et al.  Expanded Intonation Contours in Mothers' Speech to Newborns. , 1984 .

[44]  Holly Giffin.  The Coordination of Meaning in the Creation of a Shared Make-believe Reality , 1984 .

[45]  V. Hooff.  A comparative approach to the phylogeny of laughter and smiling. , 1972 .

[46]  G. Bateson.  A theory of play and fantasy. , 1955 .

[47]  J. Piaget.  Play, dreams and imitation in childhood , 1951 .

[48]  C. Rovee-Collier,et al.  UNDERLYING PROCESS IN THE SOCIALIZATION OF EMOTION * , 2022 .