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The Importance of Pretend Play in Child Development: An Occupational Therapy Perspective

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Play is a complex behaviour and is defined as being more internally than externally motivated, transcending reality as well as reflecting reality, controlled by the player, involving more attention to process than product, safe, usually fun, unpredictable, pleasurable and spontaneous and involving non-obligatory active engagement (Bundy 1997, Stewart et al 1991). Pretend play, which occurs between the ages of 18 months and 6 years, reflects these qualities of play. Using the World Health Organisation's classification of body functions and structures, activities and participation (ICIDH-2, WHO 1999), this paper outlines the skills that are essential for pretend play ability and asserts that if there are any impairments in these skills the child experiences a reduced ability to pretend play. This leads to possible participation restrictions in the child's life, such as difficulties in fulfilling usual social roles. Cognitive, social and emotional skills are presented as having the biggest impact on pretend play development, while the motor and sensorimotor skills that enable the child to manipulate objects in the environment are presented as being of secondary importance. Two models are offered which illustrate the importance of pretend play to child development and the sequence of play development. The paper concludes by recommending that occupational therapists address and reduce the participation restrictions that some children experience in learning and social situations by enabling a child to increase activity in pretend play.
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... Na história antiga há relatos de brincadeiras desenvolvidas por toda a família como forma de aprender determinados ofícios, sendo assim um instrumento de caráter educativo natural para o desenvolvimento do indivíduo (Sant'Anna & Nascimento, 2011). Para as crianças, o brincar representa a mais importante atividade infantil para aquisição de novas competências (Stagnitti & Unsworth, 2000;Stagnitti, 2004;AOTA, 2002). Sendo também um processo de apropriação, reprodução e transformação da cultura em que estão inseridas, fundindo os saberes culturais a partir de significações próprias do olhar infantil (Brougère, 2008). ...
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... Gesturing in the context of joint engagement not only facilitates young children's grasp of people's intentions and other mental states (e.g., attention, desire), but also supports their learning of words and how to combine them in multi-word utterances (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). Pretend (symbolic) play provides another critical context where gross and fine motor skills develop in tandem with language and theory of mind (ToM; Quinn et al., 2018;Stagnitti & Unsworth, 2000). While engaged in make-believe play, children enact social routines, taking on varied roles and manipulating objects purposefully in the service of their goals. ...
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... Interestingly, developmental psychology has shown that children rely on two additional features: 1) imaginative play and 2) social situatedness. On the one hand, imaginative play allows children to imagine and target goals that they did not encounter previously; by substituting an object with another for example (Lewis et al., 1992;Stagnitti & Unsworth, 2000). The IMAGINE approach attempts to leverage this feature in IMRL by using language to imagine new goals (Colas et al., 2020a). ...
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... The skills learned during playing will have an important function for that child throughout life. While playing games, they learn to deal with difficulties, mutual respect, and sharing early [2][3][4][5]. Playing, which has so many functions, is a right for children in a sense and it must be supported [6,7]. ...
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