Pretend play, coping, and subjective well-being in children: A follow-up study.

Abstract

Researchers, the authors state, link play to cognitive and affective processes important for a child's development and overall well-being. In this article, the authors examine the relationships involving pretend play, coping, and subjective well-being (the last of which they conceptualize as positive affect-positive mood-and life satisfaction) and investigate the stability and predictive power of play skills. They report on a study in which they measured the pretend play, coping skills, positive affect, and life satisfaction of thirty girls in kindergarten through fourth grade and compared these measures to the girls' pretend play eighteen months earlier.They found that affect or emotional themes in play related to positive mood in daily life and that imagination and organization in play related to coping ability. Their results, they concluded, also support the stability of imagination and organization in pretend play over time. Key words: coping skills; divergent thinking; imagination in play; make-believe; organization in play; pretend play; subjective well-beingResearch consistently demonstrates that, through play, children develop cognitive and affective processes important for overall functioning. Pretend play relates to and facilitates processes-divergent thinking, insight, imagination, and affect expression-relevant to creativity and creative problem solving (Dansky 1980; Fisher 1992; Moore and Russ 2008; Russ and Grossman-McKee 1990). As children learn to solve problems and think creatively, they cope better and improve their ability to adjust to life's situations (Christiano and Russ 1996). In addition, because play has an impact on the cognitive and affective processes important for development, it also has an effect on a child's subjective well-being. We conceptualize subjective well-being as a combination of life satisfaction and positive affect.The study we present in this article, then, investigated and assessed the relationships involving pretend play, subjective well-being (i.e. the constructs of life satisfaction and positive affect [positive mood]), and coping. In addition, we investigated the predictive power of play-specifically, how play predicted subjective well-being, coping, and, later, play ability.Pretend PlayAlthough play is, of course, a multidimensional construct with meanings that vary in different contexts (Cohen 2006), our study examined pretend play, also called imaginative play, make-believe play, fantasy play, and dramatic play. This type of play involves the use of fantasy, make-believe, and symbolism (Fein 1981). Pretend play possesses an element of "as if " -meaning that one thing represents or stands in for something else (Fein 1987). Udwin (1983) defines it as the ability to engage in play, to transform objects, and to use make-believe action (Udwin 1983).In a review of the literature, Sandra Russ (2004) identified a number of cognitive and affective processes involved in play. Through play, children develop cognitive skills such as the ability to organize thoughts into a cause-and-effect sequence, to generate ideas, to solve problems, and to use symbolism. Cognitive processes in play also include divergent thinking-the ability to generate many solutions to a single problem (Russ et al. 1999), enhanced abstract thought (Saltz, Dixon, and Johnson 1977), and perspective taking (Youngblade and Dunn 1995; Fisher 1992). Further, Russ (2004) noted two broad affective processes-access to affect-laden thoughts and openness to affect states-that occur in pretend play. She suggested that in play, children access, learn about, and experience emotional thoughts and feelings. Additionally, through play, children learn to express and control affect, regulate emotion, and find pleasure and enjoyment in play and its creativity (Singer and Singer 1990). Empirical evidence suggests a significant relationship involving play, affect, and creativity, such that children who demonstrate greater affect in play perform better on divergent-thinking tasks (Lieberman 1977; Russ and Grossman-McKee 1990; Russ and Schafer 2006). …