The Effect of Imagination and Pretend Play on Children's Social Behaviors and Attitudes

孩子们接触到了大量的媒体--除了玩电子游戏和看书外，孩子们平均每周看32个小时的电视和视频。这种媒体活动在一定程度上取代了古老的儿时装扮游戏的主食。然而，关于这些活动如何影响儿童，以及不同活动之间的影响如何比较，人们知之甚少。对虚拟世界的参与在多大程度上、以何种方式改变了儿童？现有的文献确实提供了一些建议。例如，在电视上观看暴力行为的儿童容易模仿这些行为，观看更具攻击性和娱乐性(非教育性)电视的非常年幼的儿童在以后的生活中更容易出现注意力问题。从积极的一面来看，看更多教育电视节目的孩子在语言和学校成功方面会有更积极的结果。但是，鉴于儿童从小就很好地区分伪装和现实，这到底是如何发挥作用的呢？为什么虚构的世界不能保持一个独立的世界？影响的程度是什么--如果带有攻击性内容的电视会让孩子变得更具攻击性，那么带有亲社会内容的电视会让他们变得更善良吗？这项研究将考察电视、书籍、其他媒体和假装游戏对儿童的影响，无论是好是坏，以及当儿童在现实生活中遇到类似的经历时，这些影响有何不同。它将特别关注潜在影响的三个领域：社会行为；执行功能(例如，他们自我调节、抑制控制和解决问题的能力)；以及对不同种族背景的人的态度。儿童将接受前测，然后在一定时间内接触虚拟情景，最后进行后测，以衡量情景的影响。该项目的意义在于它有助于更好地了解小说是如何影响儿童的，着眼于创造和建议父母更积极的虚拟体验，以促进儿童的发展。例如，在一项试点研究中，PI发现，与画画或看不同的电视节目相比，只看9分钟的2至11岁儿童最受欢迎的电视节目会降低4岁儿童的自我调节能力，并显著推迟满足的时间。至关重要的是，家长们要了解这些经历对孩子的影响，无论是直接的还是长期的。这项研究将有助于澄清我们的理解，以便父母和其他从事儿童工作的人能够对他们孩子的小说相关活动做出更明智的选择。

Children are exposed to huge amounts of media -- the average child watches 32 hours of television and videos per week, in addition to playing video games and reading books. This media activity to some degree supplants the age-old childhood staple of pretend play. Yet little is known about how any of these activities impact children, and how the impacts compare among the different activities. How much and in what ways does participation in fictional worlds change children? The existing literature does offer a few suggestions. For example, children who watch violent acts on television are apt to imitate those acts, and very young children who watch more aggressive and entertainment-focused (non-educational) television are more apt to have attention problems later in life. On the positive side, children who watch more educational television have more positive outcomes in terms of language and school success. But how exactly does this work, given that children distinguish pretense and reality fairly well from an early age? Why doesn't the fictional world stay a world apart? And what are the extents of influence -- if television with aggressive content leads children to be more aggressive, does television with prosocial content lead them to be kinder? This research will examine how television, books, other media, and pretend play impact children, for better or for worse, and how the impacts differ when children encounter similar experiences in real life. It will focus particularly on three areas of potential impact: social behavior; executive function (their capacities for self-regulation, inhibitory control, and problem solving, for example); and attitudes towards people of different ethnic backgrounds. Children will be given pre-tests, then will be exposed to the fictional situation for a fixed amount of time, and finally will be given post-tests to measure the impacts of the situation.The significance of this project lies in its contribution to a better understanding of how fiction influences children, with an eye to creating and advising parents on more positive fictional experiences for children's development. For example, in a pilot study, the PI found that watching just 9 minutes of the most popular television show today for children ages 2 to 11 lowered 4-year-olds' ability to self-regulate and delay gratification considerably, as compared to drawing or watching a different television show. It is vital that parents understand the influences such experiences have both immediately and over the long term. This research will help clarify our understanding so that parents and others working with children can make wiser choices about their children's fiction-related activities.