Make believe and reality: Explorations of the imaginary realm.

Abstract

Preschool children's ability to distinguish between pretense and reality was examined in 2 studies that adopted a modified version of the design used by P. L. Harris, E. Brown, M. Marriott, S. Whittall, and S. Harmer (1991) in which a pretend creature is assumed to hide inside a box. In Study 1, 19 4-year-olds participated in test conditions that closely followed Harris et al.'s procedures. In Study 2, 75 3- and 4-year-olds were randomly assigned to 1 of4 emotionally colored pretense play scenarios that included 4 test conditions : an imaginary creature, invented by the adult or the child, whose affective value was either positive or negative. The results of both studies do not support Harris et al.'s interpretation of their data in terms of a breakdown of the distinction between pretense and reality.