\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Psychologists at Cardiff University and King\u2019s College London found that children given dolls gained a richer appreciation of other people\u2019s beliefs and feelings, in contrast to those given a tablet loaded with video games.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Dr Sarah Gerson, the lead author and a reader in psychology at Cardiff, said: \u201cWe believe that doll play may encourage children to engage in social interactions more and give children more opportunities to rehearse or reflect on others\u2019 beliefs, emotions, or intentions, compared to other types of play.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen playing with dolls, children have the opportunity to role-play characters, create narratives, and act out scenarios \u2013 doing so relies on and fosters the ability to imagine others\u2019 thoughts, feelings, and intentions. These pretend play scenarios allow children to practise social skills, emotion processing, and emotion regulation within a safe environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdentifying new and innovative ways to improve social skills could have important consequences, as these social skills in childhood provide the foundations for developing relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Ken and Barbie dolls.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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\u2019t have prescribed roles\/scripts,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The researchers said they were excited by the increases in \u201cfalse-belief reasoning\u201d among those playing with dolls, showing an improvement in their ability to reason about another person\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The children were tested on their understanding of others\u2019 mental states through laboratory play sessions and standardised tests for false belief reasoning.<\/p>\n
The study also found no differences between boys and girls benefiting from doll play.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs 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,\u201d the study concluded.<\/p>\n
The researchers speculated that the improvements could result from the greater levels of social interaction and from practice using \u201cinternal state language\u201d to describe the dolls\u2019 likely thoughts or emotions.<\/p>\n
Gerson said false belief reasoning was \u201ca vital cornerstone in theory of mind and childhood social development\u201d, adding: \u201cWe saw that improvements in false belief understanding were particularly great for children who had more parent-reported peer problems.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s College London found that children given dolls gained a richer appreciation of other people\u2019s beliefs and feelings, in contrast to those<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[166,6565,23890,11876,858,5395,204,188],"class_list":{"0":"post-47075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-children","9":"tag-develop","10":"tag-dolls","11":"tag-imagination","12":"tag-playing","13":"tag-skills","14":"tag-social","15":"tag-study"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}