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 ...

There is an imagination gap being driven by tablets, phones and TV screens ...

“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 ...

Researchers say there is evidence infants are exploring the world of make-believe before they're even aware they are doing it. A new study exploring the origins of pretend play suggests infants ...

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 ...

In a series of tea party-like experiments, Johns Hopkins University researchers demonstrate for the first time that apes can use their imagination and play pretend, an ability thought to be uniquely ...

A young shopper at Pretend City Children’s Museum in Irvine tossed toy groceries into the toy shopping cart and pushed it toward the pretend supermarket check out. Another child typed away on a toy ...

Pretend play is associated with a host of enhanced cognitive abilities such as executive function, language and perspective taking, which are important to education, making the minimization of pretend ...

A new study exploring the origins of pretend play suggests infants perform interactional patterns with elements of pretense a lot earlier than thought. Pretend play is often considered a developmental ...