Pretense is a naturally occurring, apparently universal activity for typically developing children. Yet its function and effects remain unclear. One theorized possibility is that pretense activities, ...such as dramatic pretend play games, are a possible causal path to improve children's emotional development. Social and emotional skills, particularly emotional control, are critically important for social development, as well as academic performance and later life success. However, the study of such approaches has been criticized for potential bias and lack of rigor, precluding the ability to make strong causal claims. We conducted a randomized, component control (dismantling) trial of dramatic pretend play games with a low‐SES group of 4‐year‐old children (N = 97) to test whether such practice yields generalized improvements in multiple social and emotional outcomes. We found specific effects of dramatic play games only on emotional self‐control. Results suggest that dramatic pretend play games involving physicalizing emotional states and traits, pretending to be animals and human characters, and engaging in pretend scenarios in a small group may improve children's emotional control. These findings have implications for the function of pretense and design of interventions to improve emotional control in typical and atypical populations. Further, they provide support for the unique role of dramatic pretend play games for young children, particularly those from low‐income backgrounds. A video of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/2GVNcWKRHPk
Engaging in pretend play and drama has long been linked to children’s emotional and social skills, but whether such activities causally improve these skills is questioned. In a tightly controlled RCT with low‐SES 4 year olds, we found that engaging in dramatic pretend play games uniquely improves emotional control but not other‐oriented social skills. This figure shows the post‐intervention levels of personal distress as lower in the dramatic pretend play game group, as compared to the control groups, controlling for a variety of other factors.
Reviews the book, An Uneasy Guest in the Schoolhouse by Ellen Winner (2022). Winner lays out, chronologically, how art education has progressed in the United States, beginning with 19th century art ...classes as a way to encourage “moral and social utility” in young students and moving through progressivism in the 1940s, the quick failed move into disciplined based art education in the 1960s, extreme utilitarianism of the 1980s and 1990s (where we still hear echoes strongly today), and into possible futures for the arts in schools. The reviewer recommends this book to all readers of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, who will find it a historical and philosophical reference to return to again and again. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Enhancing Empathy and Theory of Mind Goldstein, Thalia R.; Winner, Ellen
Journal of cognition and development,
20/1/1/, Letnik:
13, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Social cognitive skills such as empathy and theory of mind are crucial for everyday interactions, cooperation, and cultural learning, and deficits in these skills have been implicated in pathologies ...such as autism spectrum disorder, sociopathy, and nonverbal learning disorders. Little research has examined how these skills develop after early childhood and how they may be trained. We tested the hypothesis that experience in acting, an activity in which one must step into the shoes of others, leads to growth in both empathy and theory of mind. In two studies, we followed children (elementary school aged) and adolescents (high school freshmen) receiving 1 year of either acting or other arts training (visual arts, music) and assessed empathy and theory of mind before and after training. In both studies, those receiving acting (but not other arts) training showed significant gains in empathy scores; in Study 2, adolescents receiving acting training also showed significant gains on a naturalistic measure of theory of mind, the Empathic Accuracy Paradigm. These findings demonstrate plasticity in empathy and theory of mind long past the watershed age of 3 to 4 years and suggest that both capacities are enhanced by role-playing.
Fiction simulates the social world and invites us into the minds of characters. This has led various researchers to suggest that reading fiction improves our understanding of others' cognitive and ...emotional states. Kidd and Castano (2013) received a great deal of attention by providing support for this claim. Their article reported that reading segments of literary fiction (but not popular fiction or nonfiction) immediately and significantly improved performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), an advanced theory-of-mind test. Here we report a replication attempt by 3 independent research groups, with 792 participants randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions (literary fiction, popular fiction, nonfiction, and no reading). In contrast to Kidd and Castano (2013), we found no significant advantage in RMET scores for literary fiction compared to any of the other conditions. However, as in Kidd and Castano and previous research, the Author Recognition Test, a measure of lifetime exposure to fiction, consistently predicted RMET scores across conditions. We conclude that the most plausible link between reading fiction and theory of mind is either that individuals with strong theory of mind are drawn to fiction and/or that a lifetime of reading gradually strengthens theory of mind, but other variables, such as verbal ability, may also be at play.
The arts have long been promoted as helping people learn and care about situations and people other than themselves. However, large-scale research on this question is sparse. The current paper uses ...four national datasets to examine how arts engagement is associated with prosocial traits and behaviors. We ask the following: Are people who create or consume art more prosocial (e.g., more likely to volunteer and make charitable donations)? Does this depend upon art genre (visual arts, performing arts, or literature)? Does engaging in the arts at one time predict prosocial behavior 7 years later? And vice versa? We include sociodemographic and health controls to rule out confounds. To date, this is the most comprehensive investigation of how arts engagement is associated with prosocial behavior, and has implications for theory and practice.
Children in all cultures readily engage in artistic activities, yet the arts (dance, drama, drawing, and music) have traditionally been marginal topics in the discipline of developmental science. We ...argue that developmental psychologists cannot afford to ignore such naturalistic activities that involve so many basic phenomena— attention, engagement, motivation, emotion regulation, understanding of others, and so on. Despite historical issues with research methodologies and overdrawn conclusions, a current wave of methodologically rigorous studies shows the depth of arts learning, as well as how arts engagement can be harnessed for transfer to other skills. Here, we present 21 exemplary research case studies, covering an age range of 18 months to 17 years old and discuss how the arts are no more difficult to study than other real-world developmental phenomena and deserve a thorough examination.
Additionally, ventromedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction are implicated in self/other processing and judgments (Denny et al., 2012) and it has been suggested that overcoming ...self–other interference and ToM are deeply integrated processes (Qureshi et al., 2020). ...simulating others has been shown to influence self-knowledge, with trait and memory measures becoming similar to a simulated other after adopting their perspective (Meyer et al., 2019). The role of empathy in acting practice has long been an important point of theoretical discussion (for review see Gallagher and Gallagher, 2019). ...empirical work suggests that acting training may improve behavioral measures of empathy (Goldstein and Winner, 2012). The process of emotion regulation involves altering ongoing emotional states by employing regulatory cognitive processes; including producing changes in attention and applying cognitive control strategies (Gross, 1998, 2002; Ochsner and Gross, 2005; Kanske et al., 2011). Importantly, and depending on circumstance, there are more or less adaptive/dysfunctional ways of regulating emotions (e.g., acceptance or suppression of an emotional experience) and successful emotion regulation is linked to a range of psychological, social and physical health outcomes (Gross, 2002, 2008).
With thanks for their generous readers’ understanding for the delay, the editors are thrilled to present their Part 2 for the special issue of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. In ...Part 2, they focus on marginalized and traditionally underserved communities and topics, including people experiencing incarceration, colonialized African music traditions, Black music students, and deviant artists. They also look deeply into cross-cultural work across a variety of domains, including Confucian concepts of creativity, cosmetic consumption, and aesthetic flower preferences. Altogether, they think this is a fascinating variety of articles that show the power of looking at aesthetic, creative, and artistic practices from a wide range of lenses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Imaginative pretend play is often thought of as the domain of young children, yet adults regularly engage in elaborated, fantastical, social-mediated pretend play. We describe imaginative play in ...adults via the term "pretensive shared reality;" Shared Pretensive Reality describes the ability of a group of individuals to employ a range of higher-order cognitive functions to explicitly and implicitly share representations of a bounded fictional reality in predictable and coherent ways, such that this constructed reality may be explored and invented/embellished with shared intentionality in an
manner. Pretensive Shared Reality facilitates multiple individual and social outcomes, including generating personal and group-level enjoyment or mirth, the creation or maintenance of social groups, or the safe exploration of individual self-concepts (such as alternative expression of a players sexual or gender identity). Importantly, Pretensive Shared Reality (both within the specific context of table-top role-playing games, and other instances) are primarily co-operative and co-creative. We draw on multiple examples, and focus on Table-Top Role Playing games (TTRPG) - and specifically, the most popular and enduring table-top role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) - as a primary example of such play. Our conception of "pretensive shared reality" links the widespread existence and forms of adult imaginative play to childhood pretense, places it within a developmental and evolutionary context, and argues that pretensive shared realities - which underpin many forms of imaginative culture - are an important topic of study unto themselves, and may be utilized to provide methodological insight into a variety of psychological domains.
Editors' Introduction November 2022 Vartanian, Oshin; Goldstein, Thalia R.
Psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts,
11/2022, Letnik:
16, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In this introduction to the November 2022 issue of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, the authors note that the composition of this issue has been another wonderful opportunity for ...them to revisit the articles that they have had the pleasure of editing, with an eye toward putting together an informative and exciting reading experience for their audience. They begin with two excellent articles on the theme of literature, for which they continue to receive a steady number of strong submissions. The authors also note that many of the journal’s issues over the years have included articles focusing on affect, especially in terms of its role in aesthetic judgment and experience. This issue is no exception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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