Playing along with dolls can help boys and girls develop more sophisticated imaginations and better social skills, compared with children who play on electronic devices, according to research.
Psychologists at Cardiff University and King’s College London found that children given dolls gained a richer appreciation of other people’s beliefs and feelings, in contrast to those given a tablet loaded with video games.
Parents also reported that the children, aged between four and eight, were more likely to play alone when using the tablet, while those with dolls were more likely to play with friends or family.
Dr Sarah Gerson, the lead author and a reader in psychology at Cardiff, said: “We believe that doll play may encourage children to engage in social interactions more and give children more opportunities to rehearse or reflect on others’ beliefs, emotions, or intentions, compared to other types of play.
“When playing with dolls, children have the opportunity to role-play characters, create narratives, and act out scenarios – doing so relies on and fosters the ability to imagine others’ thoughts, feelings, and intentions. These pretend play scenarios allow children to practise social skills, emotion processing, and emotion regulation within a safe environment.
“Identifying new and innovative ways to improve social skills could have important consequences, as these social skills in childhood provide the foundations for developing relationships.”
The research is published in Plos One, a peer-reviewed journal. A spokesperson for Cardiff said the US toymaker Mattel funded the research and provided the materials, including the company’s Ken and Barbie dolls.
“The study maintained scientific integrity through independence of the data collection and analysis. The funding and materials also allowed [researchers] to provide a broad range of dolls with various races, body types, and career/life accessories that could be embraced in free play and didn’t have prescribed roles/scripts,” the spokesperson said.
The study comes as controversy develops over the damaging effects of allowing children access to digital devices. Recent research found that nine-month-old babies in England now average 41 minutes a day using screens.
The Cardiff study looked at 73 children in a randomised-control trial, with half given tablets and half given a selection of dolls. Their behaviour was observed over a six-week trial, with parents keeping a record of their time spent playing at home.
The researchers said they were excited by the increases in “false-belief reasoning” among those playing with dolls, showing an improvement in their ability to reason about another person’s ideas or beliefs, and to understand that those ideas may differ from reality, such as the location of an object that has been surreptitiously moved.
The children were tested on their understanding of others’ mental states through laboratory play sessions and standardised tests for false belief reasoning.
The study also found no differences between boys and girls benefiting from doll play.
“As the only factor that consistently varied between groups was the type of toy each child was given and encouraged to play with at home, we can be reasonably confident that the unique improvement in false belief reasoning is due to the type of assigned toy, suggesting causal evidence that doll play improves false belief reasoning,” the study concluded.
The researchers speculated that the improvements could result from the greater levels of social interaction and from practice using “internal state language” to describe the dolls’ likely thoughts or emotions.
Gerson said false belief reasoning was “a vital cornerstone in theory of mind and childhood social development”, adding: “We saw that improvements in false belief understanding were particularly great for children who had more parent-reported peer problems.”
