Developmental Change of the Pretend Play and Imitation in Infants and Toddlers
AUTHOR : 배기조, 성현란, 이지연, 곽금주, 장유경, 심희옥
INFORMATION : page. 83~99 / 2004 Vol.11 No.3
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the developmental change of pretend play and imitation according to age and gender difference. The subjects in this study were 787 infants aged 9 to 11 months and 16 to 24 months, along with 2102 mothers of infants aged 9 to 36 months. Pretend play checklist was adopted to estimate the degree to which infants demonstrated their ability in pretend play. Questionnaire was used to check the degree to which their mothers participated in various plays. And experimenters observed responding of infants to their imitation at each infant's home. In results, The score of functional and pretend
play and the symbolic level of plays improved as a function of age. Girls showed higher competence in pretend play than boys. The relation infants' between pretend play and parents' participation in play with their children also showed a significant correlation. It was also revealed that the degree of mothers' participation contributes to higher scores in pretend play. While imitation abilities improved with age, they revealed no significant effects involving gender. In addition, there were significant positive correlations between symbolic abilities and imitation abilities. showing that the infants with successful imitation abilities had more symbolic
abilities than those not.