Motivation and emotion/Book/2025/Imaginative play and emotion regulation

Imaginative play and emotion regulation:
How does pretend play help children develop emotion regulation?

Overview

Figure 1. parents engaging with their children Imagine you become friends with two different families: the Smiths and the Adams, they both have a child that is 3 years of age, Sam is the Adams family's child and Scott is the Smiths family's child. Scott loves to play make believe and does little skits for the family while Sam doesn't do any pretend play or other sorts of imaginative play. You watched both these children grow over time, the children are now young adults. Sam is moody, does not handle stressful situations well and does not like listening to people while Scott takes feedback and criticism well, uses multiple different coping mechanisms and has a creative mind. What do you think the reason is that the children have such different emotional maturity?

Every child has engaged in imaginative play or pretend play despite their culture or ethnicity, it is one of the most vital steps to a child's cognitive growth. Pretend play will look different for each child, this depends on the age, materials and development level they are at. To some people pretend play looks like a child having fun and playing with toys but it actually helps with a child’s development in social, cognitive and emotional skills.

Focus questions What is pretend play and emotional regulation? Does pretend play affect a child's development? Is pretend play and emotional regulation linked? Does pretend play as a child affect an adult's emotional regulation skills?

What is pretend play and emotional regulation?

Emotion regulation is based on what people can comprehend in terms of emotions and their ability to cope in response to stressful or emotional situations. An adult should be able to comprehend their emotions to some extent and know coping mechanisms or outlets that help them through emotional or stressful situations. Though emotional regulation, coping mechanisms and the expression of emotions are very different for children and adults. This is why understanding what emotional regulation is, how it is presented in children and the tools and strategies that will help them later in life is so important. Pretend play has many steps that are each unique to them, they all benefit children differently and though there is an order to when they should develop in children there is not an age that they will stop doing that certain step. There are many benefits for children to do pretend play such as language and communication developmnet, social skills and creativity development.

Emotional regulation

Emotional regulation was introduced by a psychologist named James Gross in 1998. He stated that emotional regulation is a person's comprehension of one's emotions and their ability to manage and respond to an emotional situation. Many people use emotional regulation strategies or tools throughout each day in many different situations, for some people these tools are healthy and for other people these tools are not. Some healthy strategies are talking to friends, exercising, therapy and many more, some unhealthy strategies are the abuse of alcohol, substances, self-injury and many more . It is stated in a study by Ramona Thummler, Eva-Maria Engel and Janieta Bartz that emotional regulation should be fully developed when a person reaches adulthood as it is not socially acceptable for an adult to have emotional outburst such as anger and crying, they should be able to regulate said emotions through certain outlets or other strategies.

Emotional regulation looks different in adulthood and childhood but it is very important for a child to learn these tools and strategies to help them later on in life. In early childhood emotional regulation is developed by interactions with parents, teachers and friends. Teachers are some of the main people a child interacts with so their behaviour towards a child influences how well they develop their social and regulation skills. It is important for teachers and parents to be sensitive to a child’s emotions, reflect on them and offer help with explaining and expressing said emotions.

Pretend play

Pretend play is complex and is connected to many types of child development such as social, language, cognitive and motor skills. It is stated that a child should start pretend play at 18-24 months. This pretend play could look like a child putting a block to their ear to mimic a phone they have seen adults using, this is called replication play. There are many different types or stages of imaginative play which are:

Figure 2. Child development of pretend play

• Symbolic play (18-24 months)
• Dramatic play (2.5- 3 years)
• Role play ( around 3 years)
• Imaginary objects (3-4 years)
• Pretend play with others (3-4 years)
• Fantasy play (around 4 years)
• Imaginary friends (4-5 years)

Symbolic play is when a child symbolically uses an object to represent another thing, some examples of this is using a banana or block as a phone or using a stick as a spoon. It will start off simply focusing on one play object and will most likely act out experiences they have seen in real life such as brushing their dolls hair the way their parent would brush their hair. These examples show that a child at this stage can use objects the proper way while pretending to complete a task.

Dramatic play is when a child plays out different scenarios. In the beginning of this pretend play a child will play out events they have experienced or seen in their own lives much like the stage before, this can be acted out with toys, figures and blocks. It will further develop to their own imagination to create more complex scenarios/ ituations to play.

Role play is taking on roles that they are familiar with such as mum, dad and other family members or characters from a show they watch. In this stage they will create scenarios that let them experience their feelings and emotions, such as playing a teacher or firefighter where they can experience being in charge or in a situation that would be stressful. They later develop giving dolls or objects personalities such as voices.

Imaginary objects this is the non-involvement of actual objects and the implementation of imaginary scenarios or objects. An example of this is drinking from an imaginary cup or stirring an imaginary soup.

Pretend play with others is when a child starts to include others to their play, this may not start out verySmall text cohesive and nice but as they develop and practice this stage they will understand concepts such as rules, roles and how to communicate when challenges arise so they can continue their play.

Fantasy play is when pretend play becomes a little more complex, this is acting out not only experienced scenarios but also acting out scenarios that may be completely created inside a child's imagination. Some examples of this could be playing mermaids in a pool or aliens on a distant planet, this is the understanding or development of abstract ideas from things they have seen or read.

Imaginary friends are said to develop in two-thirds of children at some point in their childhood. There is no one time frame for how long a child will have an imaginary friend, some will have one for only a few months, some children will have them for years. Imaginary friends is the development of active and elaborate pretend play.

Quiz

1

Is it normal for children to do pretend play or imaginitive play?

	Yes
	No

2

What percentage of children have imaginary friends?

	2/3
	1/2
	3/4

3

What order does pretend play go in?

	Imaginary friends, Fantasy play, Pretend play with others, Imaginary objects, Role play, Dramatic play and Symbolic play
	Symbolic play, Dramatic play, Role play, Imaginary objects, Pretend play with others, Fantasy play and Imaginary friends
	Imaginary objects, Symbolic play, Role play, Pretend play with others, Dramatic play, Fantasy play and Imaginary friends

Does pretend play affect a child's development?

Pretend play can help children express their creative side and can also develop their social and emotional abilities, pretend play can evolve as a child grows older.

There are many benefits that were found for a child when they pretend play these benefits are:

• Creativity- there is no limit to the stories a child can create (worlds, planets, creatures, etc). Pretend play can support skill development in creative thinking and problem solving.
• Emotional skills- children get a chance to explore emotions in new and unique ways. It can help with coping mechanisms such as soothing techniques or how to handle situations that make them angry. Kids who engage with this play are said to have more emotional knowledge, emotional regulation and control.
• Social skills- as one of the stages of pretend play is playing with others it is a great way to be social and learn communication skills from others, this could be from siblings, parents and other children. It helps them by letting them pick roles, create shared worlds, storylines and scenarios. This type of play can help with the development of theory-of-mind.
• Executive functioning- children use executive functioning to understand and maintain the boundary between fake and real. Children who do pretend play have stronger skills in short-term memory and flexible thinking.
• Language and communication- it can help with the development of a child’s language. This is due to make believe stories and the development of story retelling skills.

There is a lot of evidence that pretend play is linked to levels of cognition these cognitions would be social and linguistics abilities along with emotional regulation but there is little research that supports that pretend play can help with problem solving as this needs to be taught or observed . There needs to be more research done on if pretend play has an effect on a child's academic development.

Case study

Pretend play, creativity and emotional regulation in children. Hoffman, J. & Russ, S. (2012)

The aim for this research was to examine the relationship of pretend play, creativity, emotional regulation and execution functioning in children. It was assessed using the affect in play scale, which measures children’s cognitive and affective processes, the effect in play scale is a standardized measure of affective expression. The participants for this research were 61 female students between the ages 5-10 in grades between kindergarten to fourth grade from a private school predominantly caucasian from middle to upper class .

Table 1. Descriptive sample table for hour sessions for selected girls group

The children were measured on:

• Ability to play pretend
• Divergent thinking tasks (alternative uses test)
• Their storytelling ability
• Measure of executive functioning using Wisconsin card sorting task (WCST-64)
• Parent report on emotion regulation checklist (ERC)

These measurements are all seen in table 1 along with their measures.

Hoffman and Russ used correlation analyses, they said that divergent thinking, storytelling and emotion regulation were related to play pretend. But there was no significant correlation between pretend play and executive thinking, they do agree with pretend play being linked to creativity and emotion regulation.

The method for this research was to get each girl individually for approximately 2 and a half hours in 2 sessions. The first session they use the affect in play scale and the second session they do three more tasks which where:

1. The Wisconsin card sorting task- measure executive functioning
2. Storytelling task using Mayer’s
3. Wallah and Kogan's adaption to Guildford’s alternative uses task- measures divergent thinking

The data for the effect in play scale was done with interrater reliability (IRR) with 20 randomly chosen participants, where a two-way random effect model was used.

There are a few limitations with their research which were the generalisability and sample size. The sample size was quite small as they were limited to only the private school. The generalisability is that it is a private school which has admissions where information is filled out about the children and they are all from upper class families minimal to no lower class families can send their children to a private school. This case study can not be generalised to male children cause no research was done with them, this means that if there was a mixture of male and female students there could be a different pattern, this is because male children have different play styles and ways to emotionally regulate than female students.

Is pretend play and emotional regulation linked?

In an article by pauline louise slot and three other authors, they state that pretend play should be a part of early childhood curriculum. They showed that there is a correlation with pretend play and cognitive self-regulation and a lesser correlation of emotional self-regulation.

Alaina Wilson hypothesised that there is a relationship between pretend play and skills related to emotions. She debunked this hypothesis in her article and found that their was a negative relationship between social pretend play and emotional regulation.

Pretend play is important in a hospital setting and is a good intervention for child inpatients and outpatients. It was seen to reduce or in some cases prevent anxiety and distress in children, it is also seen to have an effect on pain, behaviour and adaption to chronic illness news. This research has shown that the effects last only for a short term period. There is a large limitation which is that there is not a lot of research based around pretend play in a medical setting.

Does pretend play affect an adult's emotional regulation skills?

figure 3. Director giving orders to actors

Artin Goncu and Anthony Perone argued that pretend play/ imaginative play is an activity in adulthood and not only childhood. The arguments that were presented were that developmental psychology considers play as only a child's activity this can neglect what pretend play can look like in adulthood. There are many similarities between improvised theater and pretend play, the last argument presents was that educational implications of pretend play throughout the life-span. Wording is very important when asking adults if they belive people pretend play, because the word play has a stigma that it is childish and adults cannot/should not do it, when referring to pretend or imaginative play with adults it is better to use words such as creative or imagination. There are many jobs that can be seen as adults using their pretend play skills such as authors, directors and artists. These jobs are seen as creative they are all developed from childhood, an example of this is a director as a child could love superheroes and when they grow older they decide to make a superhero movie.

Pretend play is a fundamental part for a child's learning and development but it also is a predictor for a child's future success. This article uses Albert Bandura’s social learning theory which states that all children learn from imitation of their environment and the people in it. It also states that children should have unrestricted or limited restrictions on their access to activities and objects to play with, this is due to it being detrimental to their learning and development. It is recommended that rooms and sections have optimal toys and objects that can boost their goal orientation, problem solving skills and innovative learning as this can help children for when they grow up and have to deal with abstract and conflicting problems.

Quiz

1

How many grades were used in the case study |type="()"

	4 different grades
	5 different grades
	6 different grades

2

What can pretend play reduce in children in hospital |type="()"

	Anxiety, distress, pain and adapting to chronic illness
	All emotions and behaviours
	Make all anxiety and distress completely disappear

3

Can pretend play be done in adulthood |type="()"

	No
	Yes

Conclusion

There are many debates whether pretend play or imaginative play is important for not only a child’s cognitive development but also their emotional regulation. Pretend play for many adults is seen as just playing and does nothing for the development of skills and abilities but it does, it is very important for children to develop their creativity, social skills and emotional regulation. There are 7 stages of pretend play that are each unique and important in their own ways, they all happen at different periods of time but interlock as a child grows their understanding of the world. Emotional regulation is a modern psychological term for a person's comprehension of emotions and their ability to manage and respond to emotional situations. Emotional regulation will look different for children than adults and how they cope or soothe themselves will also look different. A child that doesn't fully learn or understand how to self regulate or emotionally regulate will struggle in adulthood when emotional or stressful situations arise. The case study by Jessica Hoffman and Sandra Russ stated that they agree with pretend play being linked to a child’s creativity and emotion regulation but they also say that there is no significant correlation between pretend play and executive thinking but throughout this chapter it has been found that pretend play has good correltation with other cognitive development such as social skills, problem solving and emotion regulation. There are many limitations to all case studies such as Hoffman and Russ, where they are all done on children from ages 1-6 while children of older ages are ignored but continue to do pretend play and even show different types of emotion regulation and coping mechanisms than younger children do not do, this is what future research should be based on.

References

Hoffmann, J., & Russ, S. (2012). Pretend play, creativity, and emotion regulation in children. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(2), 175–184. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0026299