Children's Understanding of Pretense

I have also done a set of research projects on children's understanding of pretense and other mental states. Many researchers believe that young children understand pretense as involving mental representation, and use their knowledge of pretense to scaffold their understanding of other mental states like belief. With Angeline Lillard , I have investigated whether young children understand pretense as a mental state. In particular, we have looked at whether children recognize that pretense involves mental activity, and whether the language used in experimentation affects children's knowledge. More recently, I have investigated children's knowledge of a defining feature of pretense: that characters engaging in pretense must be aware of their actions. Over a set of experiments, I have found that preschoolers rarely recognize this piece of knowledge.

I have also investigated the role of fantasy in children's understanding of pretense. I have found that young children demonstrate a better understanding of the role of the mind in pretense when the pretense is fantasy oriented. We have examined a variety of explanations for this effect; we know that the increased salience of the fantasy characters, their specific actions, and their intentional behavior does not motivate this effect. Currently, I am examining whether children recognize that fantasy characters and events often violate causal structure in the world. I believe that children recognize these causal violations, and use that knowledge to assist in their understanding of pretense.