Make-believe play promotes both cognitive and social development.

Make-believe play is something that young children will do in their life. By definition make-believe play will always implies absence of things like food, objects, and imagery friends. A child will supply whatever missing elements cognitively that they will need for their pretend play. When children supply the missing elements cognitively there are building up their cognitive skills. Like when little girls have tea parties we all know that the tea isn’t there, but cognitively the girls are supplying the tea in their minds. Parents may not understand this, but they should join in with the tea party and help to promote their children to make-believe play. 

The distinctly cognitive skills learned from make-believe play will help children to build bridges between the social world and the world of cognitive skills. Make-believe play that involves pretense is very important for cognition. Reading others’ intentions, encouragement of social referencing, and being able to distinguishing between what is real and imaginary are all effected by pretense. Researchers don’t fully understand how theses skills are evolve within children. They also don’t know how these skills are supported in children’s world.

Psychologists believe that make-believe play lies at an intersection of cognitive development and social experiences. Psychologists’ explanations for how the two connect through make-believe play is call a double consciousness. They believe this double consciousness consists of reality and its representation which are needed for make-believe play. They also believe that make-believe play have a huge cognitive impact of social-role taking. Other psychologists believe that make-believe play stimulates the emergence of Metacognition. Metacognition is an ability that develops from make-believe play, but it can also produce others non-playful cognitive activities.

The psychologists Piaget believed that make-believe play is a factor in children’s responses to their social environment. Make-believe play can involve peer interactions and Piaget saw this as social-cognitive development. Interactions with others children during play will help children understand that others children will have different perspectives than theirs. Piaget believed that children’s group make-believe play or just playing with each other will provide them with opportunities to develop social competence. This is known as Piaget’s Cognitive-developmental theory.

The psychologists Erickson came up with a theory call the Erickson’s Psychosocial theory and isn’t much different than Piaget’s theory. He believed that make-believe play will permit children to develop an understanding of their social world. He also believed that it’ll help them to try out some new social skills.

The psychologists Vygotsky also have a theory about make-believe play and social development. In his social cultural theory he said that make-believe play during the preschool years is extremely important for social and cognitive competence. He believed through make-believe play an understanding of social norms will develop and children will try to uphold these social expectations. He also believed that make-believe play will force children to control their impulses.

When children engage themselves in make-believe play there are actively experimenting with the emotional and social roles of life. Children will also build self-esteem when they realize that they can be anyone or anything by just pretending. Many children will pretend to be a doctor or a racecar driver and this will give them the experience of being somebody else like walking in someone else’s shoe. This would also help teach them empathy a moral development skill that would be important to them in life. Make-believe play will help to build so many good things in children like language, thinking, social, and emotional skills in life that will lead to a healthy cognitive and social development. Parents can also help their children to nurture their imagination by bringing objects to them that would spark their imagination.