Experimenter's Pantomimes Influence Children's Use of Body Part as Object and Imaginary Object Pantomimes: A Replication

Abstract

Young children asked to pretend to use a series of absent objects typically pantomime by using a body part as the object (BPO) rather than by acting as if using an imaginary object (IO). This replication of Lyons's work (1983, 1986) examines whether different pretend contexts when requesting pantomimes influence children's use of IO and BPO pantomimes. Forty-three children aged 3;6 to 6;6 were asked to pretend to use 8 objects in 1 of 3 contexts: request, request after participating in an experimenter-provided imaginary context, and request after seeing the adult model the requested pretend action. The experimenter used IO pantomimes in the last 2 contexts. Children produced, on average, the most IO pantomimes in the modeling context, fewer in the imaginary context, and the fewest in the request context. Older children overall produced more IO pantomimes than did younger children; however, when pretend contexts were examined separately, ontogenetic differences in IO pantomimes were present for the request condition only. Externally directed actions resulted in more IO pantomiming than self-directed actions for only the youngest children.