Pretend Play and Creative Processes.

The authors contend that many cognitive abilities and affective processes important in creativity also occur in pretend play and that pretend play in childhood affects the development of creativity in adulthood. They discuss a variety of theories and observations that attempt to explain the importance of pretend play to creativity. They argue that rigorous research supports the association between the two but note that experimental studies are difficult to conduct for a number of reasons. A few promising, well-done studies, they conclude, suggest that engaging in pretend play fosters the development of creativity. And they call for further research-correlational, experimental, and longitudinal-to focus on specific processes in both play and creativity. They suggest that large-scale, multisite studies planned by researchers from different perspectives would be optimal. Key words: affect in creativity; creativity: divergent thinking; pretend playPretend play is a creative act. In pretend play, we can observe the creativity as it occurs, minute by minute. Theorists and researchers in the fields of child development, child psychotherapy, creativity, personality, and evolution have reached the conclusion that pretend play and creativity are linked. We believe these researchers confirm the connection because pretend play affords children opportunities to express many different processes-cognitive, affective, and interpersonal-important for creativity.Pretend play constitutes an open-ended event and serves as a tool that a child uses for a variety of creative purposes. She can use such play, for example, to manipulate objects, mental images, and representations; to compose stories; to explore an imaginary cave (or a real one); to rehearse for a trip to the hospital; to recall a memory with many imbedded emotions; and to express positive or negative affect. This variety of possibilities offers an advantage to an individual child, but it confounds the individual researcher. This very variety is one of the reasons for the scattered nature of research in the field of play and creativity: Different children use different processes in different ways to develop their creative potential.Processes in Pretend Play and CreativityWhat is pretend play? What is creativity? Both pretend play and creativity are multidimensional, and there are many similarities between the processes that occur in both of them (Russ 1993, 2004, 2014). Creativity researchers, beginning with Guilford in 1950, have identified cognitive abilities especially important for creativity, and many of these also characterize pretend play-divergent thinking, broad associative skill, insight, cognitive flexibility, and perspective taking (Russ 2004, 2014). Divergent thinking, an important ingredient of creative production, involves the ability to generate a variety of ideas (Runco 1991). To invent a new creative product, for example, producers might first generate a number of ideas and make remote associations. The ability to produce many ideas, to search one's memory broadly, and to think flexibly increases the odds that the producers will solve a problem creatively or produce a work of art. These cognitive abilities occur in play, and they are, as Singer and Singer (1990) have suggested, practiced in the safe arena of pretend play.More recently, research has examined affective processes in creative production (Bass, DeDreu, and Nijstad 2008; Isen, Daubman, and Nowicki 1987; Russ 1993; Shaw and Runco 1994). Important affective processes that occur in both pretend play and creativity include producing affect themes in fantasy and memory, experiencing emotion (especially positive emotion), cognitive integration of affect, and experiencing joy in creative expression.The many routes to creativity involve different profiles of these cognitive abilities and affective processes, which increases the probability of an individual generating a creative product, one that is original, of good quality, and appropriate to the task (Sternberg, Kaufman, and Pretz 2002). …