Additionally pretend play presents opportunities to practice and consolidate new found symbolic representational skills such as gestures, signs and spoken words. Early speech often starts from self-directed monologues and progresses around the age of three to become more socially orientated and increasingly interactive moving from independent speech to shared content (Hamo & Blum-Kulka 2007; M. Hoffnung et al., 2016). Literature highlights the importance of language development for its role in significantly enhancing the speed and efficiency of thought during the pre-operational stage (M. Hoffnung et al., 2016). Further opportunities to engage in communication with others is shown to allow for better understanding of social roles, and opportunities to re-think and make sense of past experiences (Youngblade & Dunn, 1995). Magical thinking allows freedom to create elaborate plots and characters, this not
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For example a child may believe that the stone they throw in a lake one day as they walk past results in the flowering of a water lily in the lake the next day thereby using magical thinking to explain cause and effect by offering what seems like an illogical explanations of how the natural world works. Whilst children’s thinking may not be totally correct it is based on some prior experience or observation. So although children may not be arriving at the correct answer, they are however using important rational skills to explain what they see (Church 2006). Phelps and Woolley (1994) study of 16 children aged 4, 6 & 8 also suggests that children use magical thinking to explain events and changes they find to be unusual and for which they cannot produce a satisfactory physical or biological logic. This demonstrates the importance of magical thinking and its many components in the stage based progression of children’s cognitive
For example a child may believe that the stone they throw in a lake one day as they walk past results in the flowering of a water lily in the lake the next day thereby using magical thinking to explain cause and effect by offering what seems like an illogical explanations of how the natural world works. Whilst children’s thinking may not be totally correct it is based on some prior experience or observation. So although children may not be arriving at the correct answer, they are however using important rational skills to explain what they see (Church 2006). Phelps and Woolley (1994) study of 16 children aged 4, 6 & 8 also suggests that children use magical thinking to explain events and changes they find to be unusual and for which they cannot produce a satisfactory physical or biological logic. This demonstrates the importance of magical thinking and its many components in the stage based progression of children’s cognitive