Chapter 3: Theories of Pretense, Mental Representation, and Humor Development: Answers and Questions

During the past 25 years, numerous studies have explored the definitions and characteristics of play in early childhood, the conditions under which it occurs, and its relationships to the development and learning of young children. The type of play that has received the most attention by early childhood researchers has been pretense, which involves the ability to transform the “real” world into the “pretend” world and to act “as if that world existed. Observational research on social pretense with parents, siblings, and peers, has been especially fruitful in pointing out underlying mental processes that appear to be required for this activity. For example, pretense has been linked to children’s development of representational competence (Pederson, Rook-Green, & Elder, 1981), problem solving skills (Smith & Dutton, 1979), and perspective-taking (Rubin & Howe, 1986). More recently, a body of experimental research focused on learning more about young children’s mental representation abilities, specifically their “theory of mind” (TOM) (Leslie, 1987) has provided insights into the development of this process. These studies have typically used language and actions related to pretense to explore whether children understand “false belief.” Because results from these studies have raised questions about the role of pretense in the development of such mental processes, there are presently a number of theories being proposed and hypotheses being investigated to attempt to answer these questions. Few studies, whether observational or experimental, have explored potential links between pretense, theory of mind, and young children’s humor development, however. This is especially surprising because the characteristics of humor are conceptually very similar to those of pretend play, which has been defined as symbolic, meaningful, pleasurable, active, reality-bending, intrinsically motivated, rule-governed, and episodic (Fromberg, 1992). Most humor also requires an expectation of response from another person, which at least implies that the humor initiator has some type of mental representation of what the humor responder believes. However, few researchers studying social pretense are including reports of the humorous language or behavior children may exhibit in those settings. Experimental theory of mind studies, while including tasks requiring pretense, do not have a humor-oriented bent, nor do observationally-based TOM studies remark on this dimension of observed behavior. It is highly possible, however, that investigation of children’s humor development may be relevant in the investigation of young children’s mental representational processes.