Making sense of social pretence: The role of the dyad, sex and language ability in a large observational study of children’s behaviours in a social pretend play context

Pretend play with peers is thought to be an important driver of social development in the preschool period, however, fundamental questions regarding the features of children’s social pretend play with a peer, and importantly the role of the dyad for pretend play have been overlooked. The current study undertook detailed behavioural coding of social pretend play in 134 pairs of 5-year-old children (54% boys) in order to address three main aims: (i) describe the duration and proportion of children engaging in a number of social pretend play behaviours, namely, calls for attention, role assignment, joint proposals, and enactment of pretend play, (ii) to examine the role of the dyad in influencing the duration of different social pretend play behaviours, and (iii) assess the role of individual child characteristics (i.e., language ability and sex) that may influence social pretend play behaviours over and above the influence of the dyad. Results demonstrated the overwhelming role of the dyad in shaping children’s social pretend play behaviours, with language ability and sex contributing relatively little to the total variability in play behaviours observed. Results are discussed with respect to the contribution that this type of study can make to theories of the association between children’s social development and social pretend play.