Abstract
Children of about 2 years of age occasionally make scale errors, e.g., they may attempt to fit their body into extremely small objects. Although previous studies have suggested that immature cognitive abilities may be responsible for these errors, the mechanism of scale error production is unclear. Because we assumed that obtaining characteristics of scale error behavior in the context of play would give us more useful indications concerning individual differences in producing scale errors, we examined how children engage in scale error behavior in relation to other types of play behavior, such as pretending, during the scale error task. The results indicate that children who produced scale errors exhibited less pretend play with miniature toys and tended to refuse to play with miniature toys more often than those who did not produce any scale errors during the task. Moreover, among the children who produced scale errors, the children who produced more scale errors were less likely to touch the miniature objects and less likely to perform pretending actions than those who produced fewer scale errors. These results suggest that pretense play is deeply related to a lower production, or no production, of scale errors. Some immature cognitive abilities underlining pretense play can be assumed to be related to the production of scale error. In conclusion, this study is one of the first to demonstrate empirically significant relationships between children’s scale error production and pretend behaviors, although further studies are necessary to understand the mechanisms.
Highlights
Young children occasionally attempt to fit their body into extremely small objects
Because we assumed that obtaining characteristics of scale error behavior in the context of play would give us more useful indications concerning individual differences in producing scale errors, we examined how children engage in scale error behavior in relation to other types of play behavior, such as pretending, during the scale error task
A two-tailed independent t-test revealed no significant difference in age between the two groups [scale error (SE) group: M = 21.44, standard deviation (SD) = 4.55; no-scale error (NSE) group: M = 22.02, SD = 5.21; t(74) = 0.51, p = 0.61, d = 0.21, 95% confidence interval (CI; −1.68, 2.85)]
Summary
Young children occasionally attempt to fit their body into extremely small objects. For example, they may attempt to wear very small shoes, as if they were putting on normal-sized shoes. “Scale error” is defined as children’s object-inappropriate behavior by misidentifying a miniature-sized object as normal in size without considering their own body-size (DeLoache et al, 2004; Brownell et al, 2007; Casler et al, 2011) This may appear to be pretense, this has recently come to be distinguished from pretending, i.e., children producing “scale error” seriously attempt to carry out that action, as evidenced by not expressing a “knowing smile” (DeLoache et al, 2013). Children’s scale errors are observed in situations, where children first freely interact with normal-sized toys and are exposed to miniature-sized toys (DeLoache et al, 2004) This situational setting has recently come to be called the “scale error task.”
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