Elaborated role play and creativity in preschool age children.

Abstract

Elaborated role play (i.e., pretending in which children imagine and act out the part of another individual on a regular basis) is often considered an early indicator of creativity, but there is not strong research evidence of a relation between this type of pretend play and performance on creativity tasks during the preschool years. One possible reason is that the measures of creativity that are commonly used are not appropriate for young children. To address this, we developed 2 new measures of creativity based on a storytelling task, in which children were asked to complete a story, and a drawing task, in which children were asked to draw an imaginary person. Of the 75 4-and 5-year-old children who participated, those who engaged in elaborated role play had higher creativity scores on both measures (controlling for age and language ability). In contrast, children's performance on a measure of pretend play development that did not involve imaginary others (i.e., the action pantomime task) was not related to either measure of creativity. These results suggest that the storytelling and drawing measures were effective in assessing children's creativity, and that they were specifically associated with elaborated role play, rather than the developmental level of children's ability to pretend.

Prevalence of Imaginary Companions in Children: A Meta-analysis

“…Studies in the field of developmental psychology have shown that ICs may play an important role in children's social, emotional, and cognitive development (Bouldin & Pratt, 2002;Giménez-Dasí, Pons, & Bender, 2014;Gleason, 2004a;Gleason & Kalpidou, 2014;Hoff, 2005;Mottweiler & Taylor, 2014;Taylor, 1999;Taylor & Carlson, 1997). For example, research has shown that children with ICs may have more developed socio-cognitive skills (Roby & Kidd, 2008;Taylor & Carlson, 1997) or narrative skills (Trionfi & Reese, 2009) compared to those without ICs.…”

Prevalence of imaginary companions in Japanese children

“…In terms of sex, there might be sex differences in types of pretend play. That is, girls are more likely to have ICs than are boys, whereas boys tend to impersonate a character, such as Spiderman (Carlson & Taylor, ; Mottweiler & Taylor, ). Girls may achieve such a feeling by caring about the IC.…”

“Ele Me Deixava Especial”: Amigos Imaginários, Suas Funções E Atitudes Parentais

“…No rico universo do jogo de papéis, os amigos imaginários (AI) se referem a uma forma especialmente elaborada, vívida e duradoura de fantasia, ou seja, identidades estáveis que participam do cotidiano de seus criadores a ponto de se tornarem uma forma de companhia. Há dois tipos de AI: o invisível, que não depende de suporte físico, e o projetado, que se baseia em objetos, como brinquedos especiais (Harris, 2000;Mottweiler & Taylor, 2014;Taylor, 1999).…”