The Impact of Social Pretend Play

Playing with their peers helps children develop their social and cognitive skills, but should adults get involved? And if so then how? We spoke to Professor Sonja Perren and AnnKathrin Jaggy about their work in evaluating the impact of specific interventions on the quality of play, and whether these interventions could be more widely adopted in future.

steps take place between the ages of 3-4, as children start to spend more time with peers and experience longer separations from their parents. A lot of this time is spent playing with peers and developing imaginary scenarios, yet there are big differences in the quality of children’s pretend play, a topic at the core of Professor Sonja Perren and Ann-Kathrin Jaggy’s research. “We recently published a paper about how to assess social pretend play competence in young children. We identified five important features of pretend play,” says Jaggy, a researcher at Thurgau University of Teacher Education. These five features are decentration, decontextualization, roletaking, planning and sequencing.

“Children typically start playing on their own, then progress to engaging in pretend play with others, which characterises the decentration of the play. Decontextualization describes the point when children start pretending with real objects, then bring in more fantasy and use their imaginations.” explains Jaggy.

The role-taking feature relates to children’s ability to project themselves into a particular role that might be involved in an imaginary scenario, like a firefighter for example. Children may start with simple actions, then Jaggy says they often move on to do more complex planning. “They negotiate about the roles, who will be the firefighter, who will be the doctor and so on - it’s a higher level of pretend play. The last feature is the sequencing. High levels of sequencing mean that the children know that when there is a fire there is an alarm, they have to start at the fire station, then they have to drive to the fire, and so on,” she outlines.

One aim in the study is to investigate the impact of providing play material and adult support on the quality of social pretend play, with researchers evaluating the effectiveness of different interventions. “We have three different groups, and one group has an intervention where a research assistant goes into the group, plays with them and tutors them,” says Professor Perren, who is based at the University of Konstanz.

In the first group a research assistant provides role-play material, models the play and suggests ideas, so provides a fairly high level of support to the children. In the second group, children were given the roleplay material, but were not supported by the involvement of an external research assistant, while there was no intervention at all with the third group. “They participated in their normal pre-school activities, which mostly involved play,” outlines Professor Perren. These different approaches to promoting children’s quality of social pretend play will then be evaluated regarding their impact on children’s social competence. “We test how well they can play, their pretend-play competence,” continues Professor Perren. “We also test them regarding their social-cognitive skills, so their emotional understanding, perspectivetaking ability, and also their language. Then we also ask the educators and the parents about children’s social skills.”

A large part of the project’s research centres around testing causal mechanisms, and looking at whether it is possible to promote the quality of pretend play. While an outside

observer might think that children’s play activities are extremely chaotic, Professor Perren says that high-quality pretend play is actually very structured, where everybody knows their role and there is a plan. “The question is; who is structuring it?” she asks. While some people in education take the view that adults should not intervene at all in children’s play, Professor Perren believes that they actually have an important role to play. “We believe that play should be initiated by children, as it’s highly motivating. But that does not mean that adults cannot support them,” she says. “It’s more of a supporting role that we envisage. One of our aims is to influence pre-school education and help improve practice.”

Play tutoring

Evidence on the impact of adult tutoring in social play, and the importance of play to the development of social and socialcognitive skills, is central to this wider aim. A lot of data has been gathered over the course of the study, which will help researchers build a more detailed evidence base. “We aim to generate scientific results about the relationship between pretend play and the social development of children,” outlines Professor Perren. Researchers are particularly interested in children’s social skills in peer relationships. “We define social competence as having two dimensions. One is about being cooperative and sharing, these are the other-oriented competences,” says Professor Perren. “The second part is about the self-oriented social competences, so that you are able to initiate social interactions for example and have a certain kind of assertiveness.”

A child who is socially competent has high levels of both, and social play is thought to be important to helping children develop these skills. The project’s research could contribute to a deeper understanding of whether adults can play a role in this respect, and Professor Perren is in the process of writing a number of papers on different questions around play tutoring. “Can we find differences between children? Does this play tutoring have any effect on children? Also, what is the role of the material in children’s play? We want to generate very strong scientific papers on

We believe that play should be initiated by children, as it’s highly motivating. But that does not mean that adults cannot support them. One of our aims is to influence pre-school education and help improve practice.

that,” she says. A second major goal of the study is to influence practice among teachers and educational professionals. “We are holding workshops for the educators who participated in the study, where we teach them about this active play support. If people are interested in play support then we provide a course and we are also working on an online module,” continues Professor Perren.

This will be ready within a few months, while Professor Perren and Jaggy plan to continue their research in this area and build a deeper understanding of how adults can effectively support children in play. The emphasis here is on providing support rather than guidance, allowing children to take the initiative and develop their skills while at the same time enhancing the quality of play. “High-quality education is about being supportive,” stresses Professor Perren.

Researcher Isabelle Kalkusch acting as play tutor.

Social pretend play is an activity through which children may train social, emotional and social-cognitive skills. Using an intervention design we specifically investigate whether play support (play tutoring or the provision of play materials) can effectively promote children’s social pretend play quality and subsequently their social competence. The current study adds knowledge on the causal role of play in children’s social development.

This project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Isabelle Kalkusch, Ann-Kathrin Jaggy, Barbara Weiss, Carine Burkhardt Bossi, and Fabio Sticca.

Project Coordinator, Prof. Dr. Sonja Perren Lehrstuhl Entwicklung und Bildung in der frühen Kindheit Fachgruppe Empirische Bildungsforschung Universität Konstanz Pädagogische Hochschule Thurgau T: +41 71 678 57 44 E: sonja.perren@uni-konstanz.de W: https://www.bildungsforschung.unikonstanz.de/fach/personen/arbeitsgruppeentwicklung-und-bildung-in-der-fruehenkindheit-perren/prof-dr-sonja-perren/

Professor Sonja Perren

Sonja Perren is Professor for Development and Education in Early Childhood at the University of Konstanz and Thurgau University of Teacher Education since 2012. She has a Phd in Developmental Psychology from the University of Berne. Her research and teaching focus on the quality of early childhood education (caregiver-child interactions) and children’s social-emotional development.