| The overall aim of this study is to understand how changes in intersubjectivity, children’s use of internal state words and justifications, and familiarity between play partners contribute to the success and complexity of social pretend play negotiations between three and five years of age. The findings of this study have implications not only for the development of interpersonal understanding but, more broadly, for the study of social cognition.;Fifty children (age 3, 6 to 5, 11) paired into same age dyads were recruited from two preschools in New York and Indiana to participate in a 15-minute unstructured play session with a classmate. Children’s turn by turn negotiations during pretend play were transcribed and coded from video and audio tapes. Results indicated that between the ages of three and five there is a shift from the use of less to more socially engaging discourse, from less to more internal state referencing during negotiations, and from lower to higher levels of intersubjectivity achieved during pretend play negotiations. Younger children had more unresolved pretend play negotiations than older children, and older children had more successful negotiations than younger children. More familiar dyads engaged in more social pretend play, used more elaborations and justifications in their dialogue, had more expansive types of negotiations, and were overall more successful negotiators.;The results of this study extend our current understanding of the socio-cognitive processes involved in the co-construction of knowledge that occurs between children during pretend play—the basis of social cognition (Rogoff, 1990). The findings reveal the unique contribution of the pretend play context to collaborative cognition. In particular, the representational nature of pretend play requires that at a minimum children share the meaning of that which is unknown (e.g., their roles, play rules, use of toys) and at a more advanced level, maintain a mutual understanding regarding a play scenario through perspective taking and coordination. |
