Psyc2002 Lab Report: The Field Of Developmental Psychology

PSYCHOLOGY LAB REPORT
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Abstract
In the field of Developmental Psychology, it has been noted that the importance of “pretence”, conducted in the act of playing, relates to an individual’s development of his/her emotional, cognitive, physical, and social skills, as well as his/her well-being. This is due to the fact that he/she could relate himself in terms of what others feel, think, or perceived. This framework is dominant in the field of ToM, which believes that this ability of human beings developed through time gradually, but starts in the age of four and above. In this study, forty children from the ages of four above were employed in order to understand this relationship. The main methods employed include an interview and a quantitative analysis using the independent t-tests to determine whether there is a “statistically significant difference” between the two variables. In conclusion, the researchers found out that despite the lack of statistically significant difference, the data gathered pointed out that children with high level of pretence in their play scores higher than those who have lower ones. In conclusion, this means that the higher level of pretence, which means impersonating a role, function, or a status, also relates to one’s ability to understand others and the possibility that his/her beliefs could possibly be wrong.
Introduction
In developmental psychology, the importance of play is deemed as one of the most important experiences that shapes a child’s behavior and perspective as he grows. It is widely believed that play is indeed important in terms of cognitive, emotional, physical, and social development CITATION Gin07 \l 1033 (Ginsburg, 2007). In the field of Social Cognition (Theory of Mind), play is seen as an important aspect for a child to develop a sense of what others think and feel, in relation to our own perspectives. As according to Astington and Edward (2010), this importance is about our understanding of people as mental beings, each with his or her own mental states. However, it must be noted that not every individual has this kind of perception for a number of factors, and one of it being age and development. One of the requirements in order to relate one’s thoughts with others is that the individual must be able to differentiate what is appearnce from what is real. In the case of children, studies have shown that this difference is acqured by children by the age of 4-5 years by acquiring “a host of related insights about the mind, including an understanding of the distinction between appearance and reality” CITATION Tay971 \l 1033 (Taylor & Carlson, 1997). Following from this, it is apparent that an individual must be able to realize that there is the possibility of having his beliefs regarded as false. In the study done by Wellman and Estes (1986), it was also found out that this type of realization comes within the same age bracket as described above, which are the ages of four and above. One of the main beliefs that relates to these processes stated above, is that the role of “pretence” (or pretend play) plays a crucial role in that i...