MAKE-BELIEVE AND REALITY - EXPLORATIONS OF THE IMAGINARY REALM

Preschool children's ability to distinguish between pretense and reali ty was examined in 2 studies that adopted a modified version of the de sign used by P.L. Harris, E. Brown, M. Marriott, S. Whittall, and S. H armer (1991) in which a pretend creature is assumed to hide inside a b ox. In Study 1, 19 4-year-olds participated in test conditions that cl osely followed Harris et al.'s procedures. In Study 2, 75 3- and 4-yea r-olds were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 emotionally colored pretense p lay scenarios that included 4 test conditions: an imaginary creature, invented by the adult or the child, whose affective value was either p ositive or negative. The results of both studies do not support Harris et al.'s interpretation of their data in terms of a breakdown of the distinction between pretense and reality.