CHILDREN'S MAGICAL BELIEFS VS PRETEND PLAY

Children's Magical Beliefs Vs Pretend Play

Children's Magical Beliefs Vs Pretend Play

Introduction

Recent accounts of cognitive development portray young children as constructing systematic and coherent theories of the world. These accounts contrast with older accounts which viewed young children as inclined toward illogical, even magical, thinking. However, the modern accounts do not completely capture the nature of children's thought. Not all of children's thinking can be described as systematic, logical, or scientific. Numerous reports of young children have shown that they enjoy a rich fantasy life, engage in pre- tend play, and may have imaginary playmates. Other research suggests that it is not uncommon for children to hold beliefs in the reality of supernatural beings have trouble differentiating fantasy from reality and label certain events as magic. At issue, however, is the extent to which children truly believe that supernatural events and magic (seen as a supernatural force or mechanism) are possible. Children may merely use "magic" to label certain events that they see as extraordinary. It remains unknown what children mean when they use the term "magic." Do they use the term to refer to "tricks," as in parlor magic, simply as a fallback mechanism when all else fails, or does its use reflect an underlying belief in the possibility of extraordinary or supernatural events? The goal of the present research was to examine the types of events children label as magic, what it means for children to label events as magic, and how children might come to use magical explanations. The term "magic" has been used by psychologists in two different ways. First, "magic" has been used to label others' (usually children's) seemingly irrational thinking). Children acting as if they could obtain a prized toy by wishing would be said to be engaging in magical reasoning. Magic has also been used to refer to a set of causal beliefs involving supernatural abilities held by particular individuals. In this second sense, magic is a causal mechanism invoked by the subjects of study them- selves to explain certain events. Few re- searchers have devoted much attention to this sense of magic, although Piaget (1929) suggested that these beliefs, which he referred to as "social magical beliefs," are more systematic and stable than other aspects of children's early causal reasoning. Chandler and Lalonde (1994) have suggested that such thoughts about magic may play an important developmental role in allowing children to bracket occurrences which might otherwise threaten their "fledgling theories." Several recent investigations have examined the extent to which children believe that magic and supernatural events are possible. These studies have shown that young children make a sharp distinction between possible and impossible events, yet leave open the possibility of certain extraordinary events. For example, Rosengren et al. (1994) found that while 4- and 5-year-old children did not accept the notion that animals could be made smaller or undergo changes in shape, they did accept the idea that a magician could bring about these ...