Abstract
In pretense, children perform actions not to achieve everyday objectives but to create alternative social and physical realities. This ability to operate in the subjunctive mode is acquired surprisingly early in development. True, 1-year-olds are limited to pretending that they are asleep or are drinking juice when, in reality, they are not. But soon children can playfully assume family or occupational roles that they do not have to perform in everyday life until adulthood, and later still they can create impossible worlds through enactments in which physical and social causality as well as natural laws are suspended or turned upside down.
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Bretherton, I., Beeghly, M. (1989). Pretense. In: Lockman, J.J., Hazen, N.L. (eds) Action in Social Context. Perspectives in Developmental Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9000-9_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9000-9_8
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