page_title: Make believe
section_title: Theory of mind
hierarchical_section_title: Make believe / Social and cognitive development / Theory of mind
caption_attribution_description: English: Children playing at lightsaber combat.
context_page_description: Make believe, also known as pretend play, is a loosely structured form of play that generally includes role-play, object substitution and nonliteral behavior. What separates play from other daily activities is its fun and creative aspect rather than being an action performed for the sake of survival or necessity. Children engage in make believe for a number of reasons. It provides the child with a safe setting to express fears and desires. When children participate in pretend play, they are integrating and strengthening previously acquired knowledge. Children who have better pretense and fantasy abilities also show better social competence, cognitive capabilities, and an ability to take the perspective of others. In order for the activity to be referred to as pretend play, the individual must be intentionally diverting from reality. The individual must be aware of the contrast between the real situation and the make believe situation. If the child believes that the make believe situation is reality, then he/she is misinterpreting the situation rather than pretending.
context_section_description: Pretend play encompasses several abilities that coincide with theory of mind. The first two abilities relate to object representation. The child has the ability to mentally represent one object as another. The child also has the ability to understand the paradox, in which the object can represent another, but in essence remains the same object. This means that the child is required to hold two contradicting mental representations of the same object. In 3 year olds, this cognitive ability is evident in pretend play but not in other activities. For example, the child can pretend that a pen is a toothbrush, but when shown an apple shaped soap bar, the child is unable to comprehend the real and apparent features of the object. This inability is referred to as mutual exclusivity bias. However, development of pretend play has been found to correlate with performances in the previous example along with performances in the false-belief task, which also tests a child's understanding of mental representations. Children begin to pass the false belief task at around the age of 4.
  The third ability is related to social representation, in which the child is able to represent another individual's mental representations, such as desires, thoughts, and feelings. This ability appears when a child is about 5 years old. It enables the child to take the perspective of others and strengthens their understanding of others' thoughts and beliefs. By this age, children are aware of the subjectivity of pretense. The ability of perspective taking is also central in an individual's ability to cooperate and work with others. This is a complex representation skill because it requires the child to have a representation of a representation. The child also needs to keep in mind that the representation they are holding is not their own. When a child engages in role play, they are engaging in simulation in which they are putting themselves in the character's mental state.
  Another ability, joint attention, is related to social referencing. Both theory of mind and pretense require a certain degree of interacting and communicating with others. Joint attention includes the ability to follow another individual's referential pointing, eye gaze, or view point. When children participate in pretend play with other individuals they are required to share the same pretend presuppositions of the object and situation as the other individual. For example, when pretending to take a road trip, both children are expected to know that the chairs they sit on represent car seats. Children show more instances of joint attention in pretend play than they do in other non-symbolic play activities.
caption: Children pretend to play a lightsaber combat.
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