The Effect of Imagination and Pretend Play on Children's Social Behaviors and Attitudes

想象力和假装游戏对儿童社会行为和态度的影响

• 批准号: 1024293
• 负责人: Angeline Lillard
• 金额: $ 33万
• 依托单位: University of Virginia Main Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-15 至 2014-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1024293&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Effect; Imagination; Pretend; Play; Children

Children are exposed to huge amounts of media -- the average child watches 32 hours of television and videos per week, in addition to playing video games and reading books. This media activity to some degree supplants the age-old childhood staple of pretend play. Yet little is known about how any of these activities impact children, and how the impacts compare among the different activities. How much and in what ways does participation in fictional worlds change children? The existing literature does offer a few suggestions. For example, children who watch violent acts on television are apt to imitate those acts, and very young children who watch more aggressive and entertainment-focused (non-educational) television are more apt to have attention problems later in life. On the positive side, children who watch more educational television have more positive outcomes in terms of language and school success. But how exactly does this work, given that children distinguish pretense and reality fairly well from an early age? Why doesn't the fictional world stay a world apart? And what are the extents of influence -- if television with aggressive content leads children to be more aggressive, does television with prosocial content lead them to be kinder? This research will examine how television, books, other media, and pretend play impact children, for better or for worse, and how the impacts differ when children encounter similar experiences in real life. It will focus particularly on three areas of potential impact: social behavior; executive function (their capacities for self-regulation, inhibitory control, and problem solving, for example); and attitudes towards people of different ethnic backgrounds. Children will be given pre-tests, then will be exposed to the fictional situation for a fixed amount of time, and finally will be given post-tests to measure the impacts of the situation.The significance of this project lies in its contribution to a better understanding of how fiction influences children, with an eye to creating and advising parents on more positive fictional experiences for children's development. For example, in a pilot study, the PI found that watching just 9 minutes of the most popular television show today for children ages 2 to 11 lowered 4-year-olds' ability to self-regulate and delay gratification considerably, as compared to drawing or watching a different television show. It is vital that parents understand the influences such experiences have both immediately and over the long term. This research will help clarify our understanding so that parents and others working with children can make wiser choices about their children's fiction-related activities.

儿童接触大量媒体 - 除了玩视频游戏和阅读书籍外，普通儿童每周要看电视和视频32小时。 在某种程度上，这种媒体活动取代了古老的童年时期的假装游戏。 然而，这些活动中的任何一个都对儿童有何影响，以及如何在不同活动之间进行比较。虚构世界的参与如何改变儿童？ 现有文献确实提供了一些建议。 例如，在电视上观看暴力行为的孩子很容易模仿这些行为，而且非常年幼的孩子观看更具侵略性和以娱乐为中心（非教育）电视的孩子更容易在以后的生活中出现注意力问题。从积极的一面来看，观看更多教育电视的孩子在语言和学校成功方面取得了更多积极的成果。但是，鉴于孩子们从小就可以区分伪装和现实，这是如何起作用的呢？ 为什么虚构的世界不隔开世界？ 而且影响力是什么？如果带有激进内容的电视会导致儿童更具侵略性，那么对亲社会内容的电视会导致他们变得友善吗？ 这项研究将研究电视，书籍，其他媒体和假装游戏影响儿童的好坏，以及当孩子在现实生活中遇到类似的经历时，影响如何有所不同。它将特别关注潜在影响的三个领域：社会行为；执行功能（例如，它们的自我调节，抑制性控制和解决问题的能力）；并对具有不同种族背景的人的态度。 将对儿童进行预测试，然后将在固定的时间内接触到虚构的情况，最后将进行后测试以衡量情况的影响。该项目的重要性在于其对小说如何影响儿童的理解的贡献，以对儿童的影响，以对父母进行更多积极的小虚拟体验对孩子的成长进行更多的虚假经验。 例如，在一项试点研究中，PI发现，与绘画或观看不同的电视节目相比，仅观看最受欢迎的电视节目中只有9分钟的2至11岁儿童自我调节和延迟满足的能力。从长远来看，父母了解这种经历的影响至关重要。 这项研究将有助于阐明我们的理解，以便父母和与孩子一起工作的其他人可以对孩子的小说相关活动做出更明智的选择。