Communicating shared meaning in social pretend play

This research examined young children's use of communicative strategies to structure and create shared meaning in social pretend play. Forty children, aged 2, 3, 4, and 5 years old (five pairs per age group) were observed and audiotape recorded in same-age and same-sex dyads while playing with a fantasy toy. Transcribed play dialogues were examined for episode length, seven communicative strategies, and social pretend play complexity. Results suggested a developmental progression in children's ability to use the seven communicative strategies to structure social pretend play and to facilitate shared meaning. Two-year-olds relied on calls for attention and repetitions to suggest play topics, attract attention, and draw their partners into simple social pretend play sequences. Three-year-olds were able to coordinate pretense using paralinguistic cues and semantic ties. Four- and 5-year-olds relied on descriptions of action, semantic ties, and tags to develop long bouts of complex pretend play. The creation of shared meaning appears to be a dynamic process. Young children construct shared meaning spontaneously during interactive play from the shared knowledge about everyday activities they bring to the play setting and by responding to, and building on, their partner's ideas and actions as the play unfolds.