“Let’s pretend to be…” is commonly heard from young children as they play and interact at school, daycare, or at home. Many adults encourage imagination and creativity but others are afraid that ...

From developing social skills to fostering creativity, pretend play in young children is likened to being a "metaphoric multivitamin" in an editorial published in the journal Neuroscience and ...

Doll play, on the other hand, can be viewed as having little educational benefit. Our findings challenge that assumption. More than make-believe When playing with dolls, children often play out scenes ...

The latest peer-reviewed findings from the third year of the study from Cardiff University suggest that doll play could be a beneficial playtime experience for children with varying social ...

Children who demonstrate pretend play ability as toddlers have significantly fewer emotional and behavioral difficulties at primary school, according to a new interdisciplinary University of Sydney ...

Many people often think of play in the form of images of young children at recess engaging in games of tag, ball, using slides, swings, and physically exploring their environments. But physical play ...

A child sitting with a tablet may look calm, even “well-behaved.” But what is happening inside the brain tells a very different story. A growing body of research now suggests that simple toy choices, ...

When a child turns a cardboard box into a spaceship, or a stick into a magic wand, it may look like simple fun. But beneath the giggles and dramatic voices, something far more powerful may be ...

Research by Cardiff University has found that playing with Barbie dolls can help reach key milestones in developing empathy and social understanding during childhood. Doll play was found to be ...