Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
Dev Sci. 2018 May;21(3):e12582. doi: 10.1111/desc.12582. Epub 2017 Jun 20.
Pretend play is a quintessential activity of early childhood, and adults supply children with many toys to encourage it. Do young children actually prefer to pretend, or do they do it because they are unable to engage in some activities for real? Here we examined, for nine different activities, American middle-class preschoolers' preferences for pretend and real activities. The 100 children we tested (M = 58.5 months, range 36 to 82 months) overwhelmingly preferred real activities to pretend ones, and this preference increased from age 3 to age 4, then remained steady through age 6. Children provided cogent justifications for their preferences. The results are discussed with reference to other domains in which children show reality preferences and with respect to the content of preschool curricula.
假装游戏是幼儿期的典型活动，成年人会提供许多玩具来鼓励孩子进行假装游戏。那么，幼儿实际上是更喜欢假装游戏，还是因为他们无法真正参与某些活动而不得不进行假装游戏呢？在这里，我们研究了美国中产阶级学龄前儿童对假装和真实活动的偏好，针对九种不同的活动进行了测试。我们测试了 100 名儿童（M=58.5 个月，范围 36 至 82 个月），他们压倒性地更喜欢真实活动而不是假装活动，这种偏好从 3 岁增加到 4 岁，然后在 6 岁时保持稳定。孩子们为自己的偏好提供了合理的理由。这些结果将参照儿童在其他领域表现出的现实偏好以及学前课程的内容进行讨论。
