The pretence–reality distinction – confusion, emotion and source monitoring

Abstract

This paper provides an update on the current status of theory and evidence relating to children's understanding of the pretencereality distinction. The paper starts by highlighting the striking paradox between children's early competence in pretence and their experiences of pretence-reality confusions as late as middle childhood. This is followed by a detailed review of various theories that have been offered to explain this phenomenon. Specifically, theories attributing the paradoxical findings to methodological differences between studies are reviewed and dismissed before considering the transmigration and availability hypotheses (Harris, Brown, Marriott, Whittall & Harmer, 1991;Johnson & Harris, 1994), the role of context and the child's emotional involvement in the pretence, and the pretence continuation account (Golomb & Galasso, 1995). It is argued that none of these theories alone can explain pretence-reality confusions and that these are best explained in terms of the combined influences of cognitive availability, empirical evidence of reality, context, affect and individual differences. Further research is necessary to fully explore the nature, cause and developmental trajectory of individual differences in this domain.

Pretend Companions (Imaginary Playmates): The Emergence of a Field

“…Over the last couple of decades, children's ability to distinguish between pretense and reality has been examined (e.g., Bouldin & Pratt, 2001;Bourchier & Davis, 2002;Davis, Woolley, & Bruell, 2002). The old notion that children have poor reality testing has been challenged, and children's relations with pretend companions are now construed as a vivid merging point between fantasy and reality.…”

“…It is relevant to a diverse number of psychological phenomena. Some phenomena that already have received attention include children's acquisition of pretend identities (Taylor, Carlson, Maring, Gerow, & Charley, 2004), childhood imagination (e.g., D. G. Singer & Singer, 1990), theory of mind (Taylor & Carlson, 1997), children's reality testing (Bourchier & Davis, 2002), creativity (Kalyan-Masih, 1978), social development (e.g., Bouldin & Pratt, 1999;Gleason, 2002Gleason, , 2004b), children's coping (Taylor, 1999), coping in the elderly (Leger, 1987;Leger, Garoux, Tessier, & Chevalier, 1986;O'Mahony, Shulman, & Silver, 1984), delusional disorders (Von Broembsen, 1986), language development (Bouldin, Bavin, & Pratt, 2002;Piaget, 1955), characteristics of gifted children (Terman, 1926), object relations (Green, 1922), dissociation and dissociative identity disorder (Allison, 1998;Pica, 1999;Sanders, 1992;Silberg, 1998;Trujillo, Lewis, Yeager, & Gidlow, 1996), and even pretense by animals (Mitchell, 2002). A potentially unique contribution of pretend companions to understanding children's (and adults') behaviors is that they are naturally emitted by children.…”

The Effect of Realistic Contexts on Ontological Judgments of Novel Entities

“…It is well-established that even young preschoolers are largely adept at distinguishing reality from non-realities (Bourchier & Davis, 2002; Woolley & Wellman, 1990). The few errors they do reliably make are often in regards to entities with widespread cultural acceptance, like fantasy figures (Woolley, 1997).…”