Abstract
This chapter discusses developmental trends for action and speech in pretend play. Pretend play and language are perhaps the two most dramatic early expressions of the young child's developing symbolic competencies, and considerable research has been published since the mid-seventies, detailing developments in each domain. In a study described in the chapter, rather than an examination of developments in each domain independently, the relative roles of action and speech in pretend play were examined per se across a period of major changes in symbolic capacities—20 to 31 months. Information was sought on sequential developments in pretend action and speech and on the ways in which the relative roles of these modes of expression change between late infancy and toddlerhood. The growth of pretend action can be characterized by three trends, namely decentration, decontextualization, and integration. Decentration refers to the child's increasing tendency to incorporate players other than self into play activities. Decontextualization refers to the child's decreasing reliance on prototypicality for the identification and use of objects in play activities, and is most clearly reflected by object substitution and the creation of imaginary objects. Integration refers to the child's increasing ability to combine separate actions into coordinated behavior sequences. These trends describe the child's pretend actions. Far less information is available concerning developmental features of pretend language during play.
Published Version
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