Discuss research evidence regarding the benefits of make-believe play.
What will be an ideal response?
Many researchers today believe that play not only reflects but also contributes to children's cognitive and social skills. Preschoolers who devote more time to sociodramatic play are rated by observers as more socially competent a year later. And make-believe predicts a wide variety of cognitive capacities, including executive function, memory, logical reasoning, language and literacy skills, imagination, creativity, and the ability to reflect on one's own thinking, regulate emotions, and take another's perspective.
Critics, however, point out that the evidence just summarized is largely correlational, with studies failing to control all factors that might alternatively explain their findings. In response, play investigators note that decades of research are consistent with a positive role for make-believe play in development and that new, carefully conducted research strengthens that conclusion. Furthermore, make-believe is difficult to study experimentally, by training children to engage in it. Besides alterations of reality, true make-believe play involves other qualities, including intrinsic motivation (doing it for fun, not to please an adult), positive emotion, and children's control of the process.
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motor activities particularly sports. Fill in the blanks with correct word