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BACKGROUND: Among the current avenues of research into the origins and development of the autism spectrum, those concerning atypical levels of sensory responsiveness are gaining increasing relevance. Researchers note the relationship of sensory responsiveness in children on the autism spectrum to their motor, cognitive and social development. Current research reports combines the responsiveness to sensory stimuli also with the development of pretend play. Aim of this study was to verify the relationship between the level of development of pretend play and the level of sensory responsiveness in children on the autism spectrum.
METHODS: A study was conducted in a group of 63 children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum aged from 3 years and 7 months to 9 years and 3 months using: Pretend Play subscale from the Theory of Mind Mechanism Scale and Sensory Experiences Questionnaire version 2.1.
RESULTS: The results revealed that elevated sensory hyporesponsiveness predicted low pretend play skills in the group of participating children.
CONCLUSIONS: The study verified the contribution of the level of sensory hyporesponsiveness to explaining the atypical development of pretend play in children on the autism spectrum.

The current study examines the efficacy of an 8-week pretend play intervention targeting social-cognitive abilities in children with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), ages 6-9. PWS is a rare disorder associated with various social, emotional, and cognitive challenges linked to pretend play impairments, and for which interventions are sparse. Nineteen children were quasi-randomized to receive the intervention or be part of a waitlist control group. Participants who received the intervention (n = 10) demonstrated significant improvements in various components of pretend play, most notably in organization of play, which may generalize to broader social-cognitive gains. These findings provide evidence of the intervention\'s efficacy in enhancing pretend play skills and related social-cognitive abilities during this critical period of development for children with PWS.

Although previous studies revealed the characteristics of children with imaginary companions, the characteristics of children alone could not explain why some children create and interact with imaginary companions. The current cross-sectional study examined the impact of the situational factors, decreased opportunities to meet and play with real playmate due to the COVID-19 pandemic, on the prevalence of imaginary companions. Five hundred sixty caregivers of children aged 2-9 years (half of them were girls) were asked whether their children currently had imaginary companions (personified objects and invisible friends) before (September 2019) and during the pandemic (April 2020). The logistic regression model showed that only the prevalence of personified objects increased during the pandemic, OR = 2.01, 95%CI [1.34, 3.00], even when potential variables were controlled. The results suggest that children more frequently played with their personified objects during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic.

A growing body of research demonstrates that children\'s pretend play is largely influenced by their understanding of reality. The current work took a novel approach to testing children\'s understanding of pretense by investigating whether children apply and uphold their knowledge of conventional norms in pretend play. In this study, 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 200) were introduced to a series of pretend play scenarios (e.g., pretending to eat breakfast) in which a puppet pretended to follow a norm (e.g., pretended to eat cereal for breakfast) or violate a norm (e.g., pretended to eat a hamburger for breakfast). These pretend play scenarios were presented as either fantastical or realistic in nature. Consistent with our hypotheses, children evaluated pretend norm violation more negatively than pretend norm adherence and reported liking norm violators less than norm followers. Contrary to our hypothesis, the manipulation of play context (fantastical vs. realistic) did not affect children\'s evaluations. That is, children were just as negative about pretend norm violations (relative to pretend norm adherence) in fantastical pretend play scenarios as they were in realistic pretend play scenarios. Furthermore, individual differences in children\'s fantasy orientation did not predict their evaluations. This study is the first to establish that children maintain their real-world understanding of conventional norms in pretend play, providing further evidence that children\'s pretense is largely realistic in nature.

Self-regulated behavior is a prerequisite for learning and success in life. Considerable research confirms that mature forms of play support the development of self-regulation in the early years. This study explores the relationship between (3-6-year-olds) children\'s pretend play and self-regulation skills. Teachers filled out a child\'s play and self-regulation checklist evaluating the level of children\'s play and self-regulation skills. The findings revealed that the levels of children\'s play and self-regulation skills are statistically significantly linked: the better the child performs an assumed role in play activity, the higher the level of their self-regulation. The results also suggest that a child\'s playing skills, gender, and age predict children\'s self-regulation skills manifested in play activity.

Objects permeate human culture and saturate the imagination. This duality offers both opportunity and challenge. Here we ask how young human children learn to exploit the immense potential afforded by objects that can exist simultaneously in both physical and imaginary realms. To this end, we advance a new framework that integrates the presently siloed literatures on manual skill and play development. We argue that developments in children\'s real and imagined use of objects are embodied, reciprocal and intertwined. Advances in one plane of action influence and scaffold advances in the other. Consistent with this unified framework, we show how real and imagined interactions with objects are characterized by developmental parallels in how children a) gradually move beyond objects\' designed functions, b) extend beyond the self, and c) transcend the present to encompass future points in time and space. As well, we highlight how children\'s real and imagined interactions with objects are intertwined and reciprocally influence each other throughout development: Play engenders practice and skill in using objects, but just the same, practice using objects engenders advances in play. We close by highlighting the theoretical, empirical and translational implications of this embodied and integrated account of manual skill and play development.

During early childhood, play develops through levels of sensory exploration and manipulation, to functional activities and during the second year of life to the level of pretend and symbolic play. However, little is known about the factors contributing to individual variations in the development of play. The present study investigated associations between maternal sensitivity and play conditions with different ways of engaging and participating and children\'s development of pretend play. Participants were 64 primiparous mothers and their 30-months-old children. Sensitivity was assessed using the Coding Interactive Behavior (CIB) coding system, and children\'s play was coded using the 12 Step Play Scale. Analyses showed no significant associations between sensitivity and children\'s play development but a play condition introducing a story stem was associated with a higher developmental play level and longer duration of pretend play compared to free interactive play. The findings suggest that the use of a story stem may promote pretend play in interactive settings with the mother.

Pretend play has been extensively studied in developmental science, nevertheless important questions remain about how children engage in and navigate between pretend episodes. In this proposal, we scrutinize childhood pretense from a social cognitive developmental point of view. First, we review previous theories of pretend play structured around important questions that pinpoint some attributes of pretend episodes, such as their transient and socially defined nature. In these sections, evidence is also reviewed about children\'s understanding of these attributes. Following this, we describe a novel proposal of pretend play which extends recent accounts of (pretend) play (Wyman & Rakoczy, 2011; Chu & Schulz, 2020a) by exploiting the importance of social interactions in pretense. We contend that engaging in shared pretending can be considered a manifestation of and support for children\'s ability to participate in and set up arbitrary contextual boundaries with others. These claims are discussed with regards to how pretend play may figure into social development, its potential implications for intra- as well as intercultural variation, as well as future research.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of a pretend play-based training in 5-6-year-old children in a large scale school context on emotion comprehension, emotion regulation, prosocial behaviour and on their pretend play competences. The analysis of implementation variables was carried out in order to ensure program implementation quality in the experimental group. Results show an improvement in emotion comprehension and a decrease in aggressive behavioural responses in children in the experimental group (n = 101) compared to those in the control group (n = 79). Findings are discussed in regard to implementation outcomes and the influence of this form of play on the improvement of these variables.