The Study On Development Of 3-to 5-year-old Cognition Of Pretense

Young children's Theory of Mind (TOM) has become a hot issue in cognitivedevelopment since last two decades. The themes about TOM's research have involveda wide range. The focus on the research of children's mental understanding has turnedto pay more attention on the study of the cognitive research in recently ten years.This article has two aspects, one introduces the development of the study in thefield of children's pretence in the past several decades. It also points out the maindirection of the study in recent years. Another aspect uses three experiments toinvestigate the cognition of children's pretence. The cognition of children's pretenceincludes children's recognition of pretence and understanding of pretenders' mentalstate, especially the intentional of pretenders.The study examined the procedure and characteristics of 3-5-year-oldpreschoolers' cognition of pretence. Three conditions were designed in these ways:An experimenter wanted to be like something (e.g. she likes kangaroos) and just actedit out, the actions looked like the something;the experimenter wanted to be likesomething (e.g., a kangaroo) and didn't act it out vividly;the experimenter had theintention to do something (e.g., look for keys), but whose actions were similar tothose of a pretend entity (e.g., a bear). Children were tested about the pretence and theintention of the experimenter.The results showed that: (1) almost 3-5-year-old preschoolers can recognizepretence, but the ability of inference of a pretender's mind is gradually developed at 5years old. (2) There is significant difference between recognition of pretence andunderstanding of pretenders' intention in different experimental conditions. (3)preschoolers' understanding of pretence mainly inclined to external features. (4) It hasnot found the gender differences during the development of children's pretence.