Pretend play has been claimed to be crucial to children's healthy development. Here we
examine evidence for this position versus 2 alternatives: Pretend play is 1 of many routes to …

Pretend play is a form of playful behavior that involves nonliteral action. Although on the
surface this activity appears to be merely for fun, recent research has discovered that …

Play helps children learn language, the authors claim, and they review the evidence for it.
They suggest that play benefits children's language development because it incorporates …

Pretend play appears to be an evolved behavior because it is universal and appears on a
set schedule. However, no specific functions have been determined for pretend play and …

Children spend many of their waking hours engaged in play, and this is frequently claimed
to be crucially important to children's development (Lillard et al., 2013; Wilson, 1975) …

Imagination occupies a central place in philosophy, going back to Aristotle. However,
following a period of relative neglect there has been an explosion of interest in imagination …

Imaginary worlds are extremely successful. The most popular fictions produced in the last
few decades contain such a fictional world. They can be found in all fictional media, from …

Parental attitudes shape play opportunities afforded to children in home, community, and
school settings. This study presents evaluation of an intervention designed to enrich parent's …

Linking children's pretense with creativity has a long tradition. Most authors claim that
pretending children exercise divergent thinking, so they can generate many diverse ideas …

An award-winning cognitive scientist offers a counterintuitive guide to cultivating
imagination. Imagination is commonly thought to be the special province of youth—the …