Abstract
This article examines the cognitive underpinnings of spontaneous and prompted pretend play in 28 young children with autism, 24 children with other developmental disorders, and 26 typical children. The article compares theories that consider either theory of mind (ToM) or executive function (EF) to be causally important deficits in the development of pretend play in autism and important factors in pretend play. Each of these two theories posits a cognitive precursor to pretense, which would need to be present in typical development, and the absence of which could explain pretend play deficits in children with developmental disabilities such as autism. We tested which of these theories better predicts a child's production of pretend play. Children with autism were significantly delayed on pretend play scores. They also had significant deficits in our ToM measure, but not our EF measures. Regression analyses suggested a role for our measure of generativity, one of the EF measures.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Astington, J. W., Harris, P. L., & Olson, D. R. (1988). Developing theories of mind. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Astington, J.W., & Jenkins, J. M. (1995). Theory of mind development and social understanding. Cognition and Emotion, 9, 151-165.
Baron-Cohen, S. (1987). Autism and symbolic play. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5, 139-148.
Baron-Cohen, S. (1989). Joint-attention deficits in autism: Towards a cognitive Analysis. Development and Psychopathology, 1, 185-189.
Baron-Cohen, S., & Goodhart, F. (1994). The “seeing leads to knowing” deficit in autism: The Pratt and Bryant probe. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 12, 397-402.
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”? Cognition, 21, 37-46.
Beeghly, M., & Cicchetti, D. (1987). An organizational approach to symbolic development in children with Down Syndrome. In D. Cicchetti & M. Beeghly (Eds.), Symbolic development in atypical children (pp. 5-31). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bernabei, P., Camaioni, L., & Levi, G. (1999). An evaluation of early development in children with autism and pervasive developmental disorders from home movies: Preliminary findings. Autism, 2, 243-258.
Bornstein, M. H., Selmi, A. M., Haynes, O. M., Painter, K. M., & Marx, E. S. (1999). Representational abilities and the hearing status of child/mother dyads. Child Development, 70, 833-852.
Bruner, J. (1972). The nature and uses of immaturity. American Psychologist, 27, 687-708.
Charman, T., & Baron-Cohen, S. (1997). Brief report: Prompted pretend play in autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 27, 325-332.
Charman, T., Baron-Cohen, S., Swettenham, J., Baird, G., Cox, A., & Drew, A. (2001). Testing joint attention, imitation and play as infancy precursors to language and theory of mind. Cognitive Development, 15, 481-498.
Dawson, G., Munson, J., Estes, A., Osterling, J., McPartland, J., Toth, K., Carver, L., & Abbott, R. (2002). Neurocognitive function and joint attention in young children with autism. Child Development, 73, 345-358.
Dias, M. G., & Harris, P. L. (1990). The influence of the imagination on reasoning by young children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 8, 305-318.
DiLavore, P. C., Lord, C., Rutter, M. (1995). The Pre-linguistic Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (PLADOS). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 25, 355-379.
Doherty, M. B., & Rosenfeld, A. A. (1984). Play assessment in the differential diagnosis of autism and other causes of severe language disorder. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 5, 26-29.
Dunn, J. (1996). The Emmanuel Miller Memorial Lecture 1995. Children's relationships: Bridging the divide between cognitive and social development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 37, 507-518.
Erikson, E. (1951). Sex differences in play configurations of preadolescents. American Journal of Ortho Psychiatry, 21, 667-692.
Fein, G. G. (1981). Pretend play in childhood: An integrative review. Child Development, 52, 1095-1118.
Fraiberg, S. (1977). Insights from the blind: Comparative studies of blind and sighted infants. New York: New American Library.
Gould, J. (1986). The Lowe and Costello Symbolic Play Test in socially impaired children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 16, 199-213.
Griffith, E. M., Pennington, B. F., Wehner, E. A., & Rogers, S. (1999). Executive functions in young children with autism. Child Development, 70, 817-832.
Harris, P. (1991). The work of the imagination. In A. Whiten (Ed.), Natural theories of mind. (pp. 283-304). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Harris, P. (1993). Pretending and planning. In S. Baron-Cohen, H. Tager-Flusberg, & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from autism. London: Oxford University Press.
Hughes, C., & Russell, J. (1993). Autistic children's difficulty with mental disengagement from an object: Its implications for theories of autism. Developmental Psychology, 29, 498-510.
Hughes, C., Russell, J., & Robbins, T. W. (1994). Evidence for executive dysfunction in autism. Neuropsychologia, 32, 477-492.
Jarrold, C. (1993). An investigation into the pretend play shown by children with autism. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, UK.
Jarrold, C., Boucher, J., & Smith, P. K. (1993). Symbolic play in autism: A review. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 23, 281-307.
Jarrold, C., Boucher, J., & Smith, P. K. (1994). Executive function deficits and the pretend play of children with autism: A research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 35, 1473-1482.
Jarrold, C., Butler, D. W., Cottington, E. M., & Jimenez, F. (1999). Linking theory of mind and central coherence bias in autism and in the general population. Developmental Psychology, 36, 126-138.
Jarrold, C., Carruthers, P., Smith, P. K., and Boucher, J. (1994a). Pretend play: Is it metarepresentational? Mind and Language, 9, 445-468.
Jarrold, C., Smith, P., Boucher, J., & Harris, P. (1994b). Comprehension of pretense in children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24, 433-455.
Kaufman, P., Leckman, J., & Ort, S. (1989). Delayed response performance in males with Fragile X. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 12, 69.
Kavanaugh, R., & Harris, P. (1994). Imagining the outcome of pretend transformations: Assessing the competence of normal and autistic children. Developmental Psychology, 30, 847-854.
Leslie, A. M. (1987). Pretense and representation: The origin of “theory of mind.” Psychological Review, 94, 412-426.
Leslie, A. M. (1994). ToMM, ToBy, and Agency: Core architecture and domain specificity. In L. Hirschfeld & S. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in congnition and culture. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Leslie, A. M., and Frith, U. (1988). Autistic children's understanding of seeing, knowing and believing. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6, 315-324.
Lewis, V., & Boucher, J. (1988). Spontaneous, instructed and elicited play in relatively able autistic children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6, 325-339.
Lillard, A. S. (1993). Pretend play skills and the child's theory of mind. Child Development, 64, 348-371.
Lillard, A. (1994). Making sense of pretense. In C. Lewis & P. Mitchell (Eds.); Children's early understanding of mind: Origins and development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Lord, C., Rutter, M., & LeCouteur, A. (1994). Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised: A revised version of a diagnostic interview for caregivers of individuals with possible pervasive developmental disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 24, 659-685.
Lord, C., Rutter, M., & Dilavore, P. (1998). Autism Diagnostic Observations Schedule-Generic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lord, C., Risi, S., Lambrecht, L., Cook, E. H., Leventhal, B. L., DiLavore, P. C. et al. (2000). The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule–Generic: A standard measure of social and communication deficits associated with the spectrum of autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 30, 205-223.
McEvoy, R. E., Rogers, S. J., & Pennington, B. F. (1993). Executive function and social communication deficits in young, autistic children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 34, 563-578.
Mullen, E. (1989). Mullen Scales of Early Learning. Cranstong RI: T.O.T.A.L. Child.
Mundy, P., Hogan, A., & Doehring, P. (1996). A Preliminary Manual for the Abridged Early Social Communication Scales. Miami, FL: University of Florida.
Mundy, P., Sigman, M., & Kasari, C. (1990). A longitudinal study of joint attention and language development in autistic children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 20, 115-128.
Nicolich, L. M. (1977). Beyond sensorimotor intelligence: Assessment of symbolic maturity through analysis of pretend play. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 23, 89-99.
Ozonoff, S., Pennington, B. F., & Rogers, S. J. (1991). Executive function deficits in high-functioning autistic individuals: Relationship to theory of mind. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 32, 1081-1105.
Ozonoff, S., Strayer, D. L., McMahon, W. M., & Filloux, F. (1994). Executive function abilities in autism: An information processing approach. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 35, 1015-1031.
Pennington, B. F., Rogers, S. J., Bennetto, L., Griffith, E. M., Reed, D. T., & Shyu, V. (1997). Validity tests of the executive dysfunction hypothesis of autism. In Russell, (Ed.), Autism as an executive disorder. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Perner, J. (1991). Understanding the representational mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Perner, J., Frith, U., Leslie, A. M., & Leekam, S. R. (1989). Exploration of the autistic child's theory of mind: Knowledge, belief and communication. Child Development, 60, 689-700.
Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton.
Reed, T., & Peterson, C. (1990). A comparative study of autistic subjects' performance at two levels of visual and cognitive perspective taking, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 20, 555-568.
Rochat, P. (1999). Early social cognition: Understanding others in the first months of life. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Rogers, S. J., & Puchalski, C. (1984). Development of symbolic play in visually impaired infants. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 3, 57-64.
Russell, J., Mathner, N., Sharpe, S., & Tidswell, T. (1991). The “Windows task” as a measure of strategic deception in pre-schoolers and autistic subjects. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9, 331-49.
Russell, J., Jarrold, C., & Potel, D. (1994). What makes strategic deception difficult for children—The deception or the strategy? British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 12, 301-314.
Scholl, B., & Leslie, A. M. (1999). Modularity, development, and “theory of mind.” Mind and Language, 14, 131-153.
Sigman, M. (1998). Change and continuity in the development of children with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 39, 817-827.
Sigman, M., & Ruskin, E. (1999). Continuity and change in the social competence of children with autism, Down Syndrome, and developmental delays. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 64, 1-113.
Smilansky, S. (1968). The effects of sociodramatic play on disadvantaged preschool children. New York: Wiley.
Snyder, L. S. (1987). Symbolization in language impaired children. In D. Cicchetti & M. Beeghly (Eds.), Symbolic development in atypical children (pp. 87-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Taylor, M., & Carlson, S. M. (1997). The relation between individual differences in fantasy and theory of mind. Child Development, 68, 436-455.
Ungerer, J., & Sigman, M. (1981). Symbolic play and language comprehension in autistic children. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 20, 318-337
Vygotsky, L. S. (2000). Play and its role in the mental development of the child. In J. Bruner, A. Jolly, & S. Sylva (Eds.), Play: Its role in development and evolution. New York: Basic Books.
Whittaker, C. A. (1979). A note on developmental trends in the symbolic play of hospitalized profoundly retarded children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 21, 253-261.
Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition, 13, 103-128.
Wing, L., Gould, J., Yates, S. R., & Brierley, L. M. (1977). Symbolic lay in severely mentally retarded and in autistic children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 18, 167-178.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rutherford, M.D., Rogers, S.J. Cognitive Underpinnings of Pretend Play in Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 33, 289–302 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024406601334
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024406601334