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Pretend play and maternal scaffolding: Comparisons

of toddlers with advanced development, typical
development, and hearing impairment
a

Martha J. Morelock , P. Margaret Brown & AnneMarie Morrissey

Program manager for the Stepping Stones Adolescent Day Treatment Program , The
Guidance Center , Murfreesboro , TN E-mail:
b

Senior lecturer in the Deafness Studies Unit , University of Melbourne , E-mail:

Teaches in graduate and undergraduate programs on giftedness, early childhood education,

and early intervention , University of Melbourne , E-mail:
Published online: 20 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: Martha J. Morelock , P. Margaret Brown & AnneMarie Morrissey (2003) Pretend play and maternal
scaffolding: Comparisons of toddlers with advanced development, typical development, and hearing impairment , Roeper
Review, 26:1, 41-51, DOI: 10.1080/02783190309554238
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02783190309554238

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The Young Gifted Child

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Pretend Play and Maternal Scaffolding:

Comparisons of Toddlers With Advanced Development,
TypicalDevelopment, and Hearing Impairment
Martha J. Morelock
P. Margaret Brown
Anne-Marie Morrissey
This study used measures of pretend play and maternal scaffolding to
explore and compare the early development of deaf children, typically
developing children, and children showing advanced intellectual development. Marked differences were found among the groups in both play
development and characteristics of mother-child interactions. In particular, children who scored above 130 IQ at four years of age were found,
as toddlers, to have demonstrated significantly advanced pretend play.
In addition, the mothers of the high IQ children engaged in scaffolding
behaviors involving higher stages of pretend transformations, verbal
analogies and world links. The findings are discussed in relation to children's learning in Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, as well as
possible implications for future research on early gifted development.

Martha J. Morelock is program manager for the

Stepping Stones Adolescent Day Treatment
Program, The Guidance Center, Murfreesboro,
TN. A contributing editor for Roeper Review for
10 years, she is known for her research and
published work on developmental aspects of
extreme giftedness and talent. E-mail: mmorelock@coMcast.net

P. Margaret Brown is a senior lecturer in the

Deafness Studies Unit at the University of Melbourne. Her lecturing and research work focuses on early language, communication, pretend
play, and social development of children with
hearing loss, and in providing guidance to parents of young children with hearing loss.
E-mail: p.m.brown@unimelb.edu.au

Anne-Marie Morrissey is currently undertaking

her doctoral research into early gifted development and potential links to symbolic play, language, and mother-child interactions. She also
teaches in graduate and undergraduate programs on giftedness, early childhood education,
and early intervention at the University of Melbourne. E-mail: a.morrissey@unimelb.edu.au

istorically, the study of early gifted development has

relied largely on case studies or retrospective and anecdotal reports. Generally, these have described gifted children as
showing advanced intellectual functioning in their first years
(Fowler, 1981; Lewis & Michalson, 1985; Robinson, 1993; Tannenbaum, 1992). One major empirical project, the Fullerton
Longitudinal Study (Gottfried, Gottfried, Bathurst, & Guerin,
1994), gave support to the anecdotal evidence of early precocity,
finding that from one year of age gifted children show advanced
development in both cognition and language. In addition to providing important data on early gifted development, this study
also provided insight into the challenges and extensive demands
of empirical research in this area, including the recruitment of
sufficient gifted participants, the selection of appropriate measures, and the necessity of longitudinal documentation of development. The study of giftedness in the early years is still very
much at the frontier, requiring a flexible and open-minded
research approach and a capacity to utilize relevant theory and
research from the broader study of typical and atypical development as well as perspectives more specific to the field.
This small, exploratory study arose from the authors' joint
interest in pretend play and early development. It is based on
data gleaned from two larger projects. One of these projects
compared pretend play and language development in children
with a hearing loss with that of children showing development
that was typical for their age in all areas. It also explored relationships between the children's development and their interactions with their hearing mothers. The other project is an ongoing study into potential links between early play and language
development, mother-child interactions, and children's later
performance on a standardized IQ measure. Based on combined data from these two larger projects, the current
exploratory study compares the early development and motherchild interactions in three groups of children: children with
profound hearing impairment, children with typical development, and children showing advanced development. While we
recognize the methodological shortcomings of combining data
from two separate studies, the subsequent results were intriguing and highlighted important issues for future investigation.
T h e research literature on pretend play has been
inspired by the Swiss researcher Jean Piaget, with his
influential stage theory on cognitive development, and the
Russian researcher Lev Vygotsky, who focused on development in its social and cultural context. The theoretical framework for the current study incorporates perspectives from both
of these theorists. The following sections briefly review what
has been documented in the literature about the emergence and
evolution of pretend play in children with typical and with
atypical development.

Manuscript submitted December 2, 2002.

Revision accepted January 27, 2003.
Roeper Review
Fall 2003, Vol. 26, No. 1,41-51.

Fall, 2003, Roeper Review/41

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Research Informed by Piagetian Theory

Piaget's painstaking documentation of how children's
thinking evolves from the concrete to the abstract provides a
means for understanding the evolution of pretend play. This
progression to higher levels of thought is mirrored in the child's
increasing ability to represent reality through pretend play
activity. Both cognition and imaginative play are catapulted to a
new level of abstractness when the child begins to encode experience as words. Central to this developmental progression is
the child's emerging ability to symbolize (Piaget, 1962).
i esearch has consistently shown relations between pretend play and cognitive development as well as
between pretend play and language development in the second
and third years of life (Fein, 1981; Nicolich, 1977; Ogura,
1991). In children with typical development, pretend play
emerges early in the second year of life. Researchers have documented and provided detailed descriptions of the evolution of
pretend play in children to about 30 months of age (Nicolich;
Ogura; Westby, 1995). Studies have identified a typical order
of progression of pretend play, while tracking parallel developments in the domains of language and cognition. This orderly
evolution is reflected in a consistent pattern of change across
four underlying processes (Fein; Nicolich; Westby). These are
decontextualization (the ability to mentally transform objects
or substitute one object for another using increasingly abstract
forms), decentration (moving from actions on the self to
actions on, then for, another), sequencing (the ability to combine behaviors, in an increasingly ordered manner), and planning (the developing ability to organize materials and actions
for the self and others).
These four underlying developmental processes are related
to other higher order mental activity in that they take the child
beyond the constraints of the real to the freedom of abstract
thought (Piaget, 1962). For instance, in play, decontextualization reflects the child's growing ability to recognize physical,
perceptual or functional links between objects that can be substituted for each other. They can then become symbols for the
signified. For example, a popsicle stick and a small basket may
represent a bowl and spoon, allowing the child to act out the
familiar routine of eating. With the acquisition of language, the
distance between the symbol and the signified increases, and
cognition becomes more abstract as children begin to use
words to encode and manipulate thought. Thus, with further
development, children may simply announce that they are "eating dinner," and/or mime this activity with an imaginary bowl
and spoon. As children begin to make these links between the
symbol and the signified in their world, they are, in actuality,
creating analogs. It may well be that it is through this process
in early childhood that the foundation for mature analogical
reasoning begins to take shape.
Increasingly decentered behavior reflects the child's growing ability to move outside of the self and to re-create the experiences of others (Wolf, Rygh, & Altschuler, 1984). Children
begin by focusing on others in play, such as by pretending to
give a play partner or teddy bear a drink. Later they are able to
role-play. Sequencing in pretense appears to be a forerunner of
the ability to think and reason in a coherent and cohesive manner. Children start with single actions, such as drinking from a
cup, then are able to act out multiple steps in a process, such as
pouring and drinking a cup of tea or making dinner. Evidence
of planning in pretend play demonstrates children's growing
ability to use existing knowledge in organizing their thoughts as
the driving force for action. It involves thought before action,
42/Roeper Review, Vol. 26, No. 1

and is demonstrated by such actions as looking for an object

that is then used in pretense or announcing their play intentions.
This conceptualization of the importance of these processes is
consistent with Piaget's (1962) view that children construct
their own knowledge through their action in, and on, the world.
tudies of children exhibiting delays in cognitive and language development show that pretend play and its
underlying processes are also delayed. For instance, pretend play
develops at a slower rate in children with intellectual disabilities
(Beeghly & Cicchetti, 1987; Cicchetti, Beeghly & Weiss-Perry,
1994; Gowen, Johnson-Martin, Goldman, & Hussey, 1992;
Kennedy, Sheridan, Radlinski & Beeghly, 1991), hearing loss
(Blum, Fields, Scharfman, & Silber, 1994; Brown, Rickards &
Bortoli, 2001; Casby & McCormack, 1985; Schirmer, 1989),
autism (Jarrold, Boucher, & Smith, 1994), and in children with
specific language disorders (Rescorla & Goosens, 1992;
Skarakis-Doyle & Pruning, 1988). Little is known, however,
about how pretend play development might be affected in children exhibiting advanced intellectual development.

Research Informed by Vygotskian Theory

More recent studies of pretend play (Fiese, 1990; Haight
& Miller, 1993; McCune, Dipane, Fireoved, & Fleck, 1994)
have been influenced by the work of Lev S. Vygotsky
(1934/1986), who emphasized the primary importance of the
social context to cognitive and language development. Vygotsky proposed that higher mental processes are first introduced
to the child within a social context through interaction with an
adult (interpsychologically) and then are internalized (intrapsychologically) and used to structure and channel the child's flow
of thought. As a consequence, instructional interactions taking
place between child and adult became central to his theory of
cognitive development. This perspective has prompted
research investigating the developmental significance of interaction between child and caregiver.
Maiming that effective teaching and learning precedes
'development, Vygotsky proposed a Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD), which he defined as the distance between
what the child can do independently and what the child can do
with the assistance of an adult or more capable peer. According
to Vygotsky, effective instruction targets that zone lying just
beyond the skills already mastered by the child. Collectively,
behaviors supporting the child's learning within the ZPD have
been termed scaffolding (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976).
Observations of mothers playing with their typically developing children show that the mothers scaffold interactions in
play by modeling or prompting play behaviors that the child is
currently mastering or which are just beyond the child's level of
competence (Fiese, 1990). In addition to this, these mothers
respond to cues about their children's developing competence
by providing hints for extending play (Haight & Miller, 1992;
O'Connell & Bretherton, 1984; Sachs, 1980), as well as incorporating increasingly abstract commentary including analogs
(Kavanaugh, Whittington & Cerbone, 1983). Mills and Funnell
(1983) studied maternal use of verbal "world links" that make
connections between the child's previous and current experience and knowledge. These authors found that when mothers
used world links with their two-year-old children, the dyads
engaged in more extensive bouts of pretend play. Also, the children tended to exhibit advanced reasoning abilities.
To date, studies of the pretend play of atypically developing children have focused on children with cognitive or sensory impairments. These studies suggest that child characteristics

C1

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are a major influence on maternal scaffolding behavior. For

instance, such children have been described as less attentive to
the task and their behaviors less easy to interpret. In addition,
they are less responsive and less likely to initiate interactions
(Fiese, 1990). As a result, the parents appear to adapt their
scaffolding strategies by actively demonstrating the play
behaviors they want their children to learn (Brown, 1997).
They may also modify their language in the play situation,
making it simpler and more concrete, so that it matches the
child's level of processing ability (Brown; Schlesinger &
Meadow, 1972). The overall result is that their interactions
appear less playful (Brown; Nienhuys, Horsborough, & Cross,
1985) and more directive and vigorous. These differences
appear to be adaptive, serving a tutoring purpose (Power,
Wood, Wood, & MacDougall, 1990).
o date, no empirical studies of pretend play and mother-child interactions in dyads with very young children
exhibiting advanced cognitive development have appeared in
the literature. Nevertheless, sprinkled through the literature,
there are suggestions that mother-child interaction in such
dyads is also adaptive. In studies of gifted development, a picture emerges from case studies and anecdotal reports from parents that in the gifted child's early years, parents provide a
highly intellectually stimulating family environment (Fowler,
1981; Gottfried, Gottfried, Bathhurst, & Guerin, 1994). In one
case study of a profoundly gifted girl, Morelock (2000)
observed maternal behaviors that appeared specifically targeted towards the support and extension of advanced cognitive
development. In this case, the mother reported that a high level
of stimulation was required to satisfy her child's intellectual
demands. Similarly, Klein (1992) observed that mothers of
gifted children, in extending their children's experiences, tended to generate high levels of excitement within the interaction.

In a study comparing the metacognitive development and

interactions of gifted and typically developing preschoolers,
Moss (1992) observed that the mothers of gifted children were
more likely to initiate high level metacognitive strategies, such
as predicting consequences and monitoring and evaluating
one's own activity, while supporting their children in problemsolving tasks. Moss also found that gifted children and their
mothers exchanged more metacognitive information. She speculated that the mothers of gifted children were responding to
cues derived from their children's advanced verbal skills and
self-regulatory abilities. In addition, the research of Gottfried,
Gottfried, Bathhurst, and Guerin (1994), suggests that, from
the age of one year, gifted children elicit more stimulation
from their environment than do their nongifted counterparts,
and that their parents accommodate them by providing this
stimulation. More detailed descriptions of maternal scaffolding
in this population are needed. Do these mothers, for example,
scaffold their children's pretend play at more advanced and
challenging levels? Does their language while engaged in collaborative play with their children reflect their children's
advanced capabilities and desire for intellectual stimulation?
The current study explores pretend play development and
maternal scaffolding across three groups. One group (the A
group) consisted of mother-child dyads recruited into a longitudinal study on gifted development on the basis of showing
signs of developmental advancement and/or being the sibling
of a gifted child. The children in this group later scored at or
near gifted IQ level at four years of age. A second group was
composed of dyads involving children with impaired hearing
but normal intelligence as reflected through a standardized
measure (the D group). Dyads in the third group involved chil-

dren showing typical development across all areas (the T

group). Three major questions were addressed. First, were
there differences between the groups of children in pretend
play development? Second, if such differences were evident,
could they be linked to differences in status of cognitive functioning or language development? Third, would mothers
engage in interactive behaviors that somehow reflected their
children's individual stages of development in pretend play
and/or differences in cognitive functioning or language?

Method
Participants
Nine mother-child dyads comprised three groups of participants in the study. Each group was defined by child characteristics. There were three children with impaired hearing and
normal intelligence (D), three children with normal hearing
manifesting typical development in all areas (T), and a normally hearing group showing intellectual advancement (A). The
participants were drawn from two larger longitudinal studies
that shared common data collection procedures and measures
developed by Brown (1997).
The children in the D and T groups were participating in a
longitudinal comparative study of pretend play and motherchild interaction. Children entered this study at 16 or 17 months
of age. The children in the A group were part of a pilot study
for a longitudinal project focusing on the early development of
giftedness. These participants were selected on the basis of having a greater than normal likelihood of eventually exhibiting
gifted IQ, based on criteria drawn from the literature. The criteria included having a sibling assessed as intellectually gifted
(Silverman, 1988), showing early passage through developmental milestones (Gottfried Gottfried, Bathhurst, & Guerin, 1994;
Morelock & Morrison, 1996; Silverman, 1986; Silverman,
1993), and high levels of alertness and responsiveness to the
environment (Lewis & Michalson, 1985; Morelock & Morrison, 1996; Silverman, 1986; Silverman, 1993). Children entered
the pilot study at a variety of ages between 6 and 21 months.
"Hie D group consisted of 1 male (Dl) and 2 females
(D2 and D3) whose profound hearing loss (Pure Tone
Average of greater than 95dBHL in the better ear) had been
diagnosed in their first year of life. Psychological testing, using
the Merrill-Palmer, indicated child Dl to be of high average
intelligence and participants D2 and D3 to be in the average
range. The communication approach used by the three D dyads
was oral. None of the mothers used native sign or Signed English. The children used voice to communicate and were using
between three and 15 words.
The one male (Tl) and two females (T2 and T3) who
composed the typical development group had been developmentally screened by their Maternal and Child Health Nurse,
as is routine in Victoria, Australia. Areas assessed included
hearing, vision, and motor coordination. Any aspects of development that might be cause for future concern were ruled out.
All three children were found to be manifesting typical development in all areas.
Group A consisted of two males (Al and A2) and one
female (A3). Al entered the gifted study at 11 months, A2 at
10 months, and A3 at 8 months of age. Two of the children
(A2 and A3) were tested on the Stanford-Binet IV at four years
of age. At that time, A2 attained a score of 140, and A3 a borderline gifted score of 131. The third child (Al) was tested on
the Stanford-Binet LM and achieved an IQ score of 150.
Fall, 2003, Roeper Review/43

The families were of middle class socioeconomic status.

Except for the mothers of Dl and D2, all mothers had tertiary
qualifications. In the United States, this is equivalent to a minimum of a bachelor's degree. The mothers of Dl and D2 had
completed post-secondary training. This consists of a certificate earned at a college of technical and further education, following acquisition of what would be considered a high school
diploma in the United States. T2's mother was a medical specialist and the mother of A3 had a master's degree. Two of the
children in the T group were first-borns, while all other child
participants were later-bom. The mothers of Al and A2 both
had first-born daughters who had been formally assessed as
being exceptionally gifted.

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Procedure
There were three parts to the study. First, a group comparison of pretend play was conducted when the children were 1617 months of age. For the second part of the study, comparisons
were made across groups of the emergence of child object substitutions or transformations. Maternal verbal and object substitutions were also documented and used as a measure of maternal scaffolding. In addition to this, a qualitative analysis of
maternal use of analogies and world links was conducted.
Comparison of Pretend Play Interactions
. For the larger studies from which these data were obtained,
videotaping took place once a month. All dyads were videotaped in a play interaction with one of three prescribed sets of
materials designed to elicit pretend play: a tea party, farm animals, or dolls. These were used in a rotating sequence, one set
per videotaping session. Each set included a combination of
realistic toys and more abstract objects designed to encourage
pretend play (Brown, Rickards & Bortoli, 2001). Mother and
child were alone in the room and mothers were asked to play
with their children as they normally would do at home. The T
and A dyads were videotaped in a small playroom located at a
university. Two of the hearing impaired dyads (Dl and D2)
were videotaped in a small room at their early intervention center while the remaining child (D3) was videotaped at home. For
purposes of the current study, one videotaped session was analyzed for each dyad, as is discussed in the following section.
Analysis of Child Pretend Play at 16 and 17 Months
For the child pretend play analysis, one interaction per
dyad was used. For reasons of data availability, comparisons of
child pretend play were conducted on the play session at 17
months of age for all the children in the D and T groups, and at
the 16 months session for the children in the A group. As a
result, the D and T group children played with the tea party set,
and the A group children used the farm animals set. Videotaping continued for a maximum of 20 minutes or until the child
lost interest. The play interactions ranged in duration from five
minutes for some of the D dyads in which interaction was
sometimes difficult to maintain, to 20 minutes for the A dyads
who tended to become deeply engaged in the play activity.
Five-minute samples from each session that included the
child's highest stage of play were selected for analysis. Pretend
play was coded using the scale outlined in Table 1. These codings
included the overall stage plus the stages of the four structures of
decontextualization, decentration, sequencing, and planning.
44/Roeper Review, Vol. 26, No. 1

These data were subjected to a series of Chi square analyses.

Emergence of child and mother object substitutions. For
this analysis each videotaped session from the larger data set
was reviewed and the age noted of the first example of a spontaneous object substitution transformation by the child. The
same procedure was used to determine the session in which the
mothers first demonstrated this stage of behavior.
Maternal verbal and nonverbal transformations. This
analysis calculated the frequency of transformations produced
by the T and D group mothers at the 17 month session, and by
the A group mothers at 16 months. Verbal transformations
involved the mother using words to transform or substitute an
object, such as by indicating a square of material and saying
"This is my blanket." Nonverbal transformations were play
actions coded at Stage 7 of the scale shown in Table 1. An
example of this would be if the mother said a doll was sleepy,
carefully wrapped it in the material as if it were a blanket, and
then indicated to the child not to wake the doll.
Maternal analogies and world links. Finally, a qualitative
analysis of the mother's use of analogies and world links was
conducted. Transcripts of the mothers' verbal behaviors were
made and searched for examples of these forms. Analogies
were defined as utterances such as: "This could be a..."; "This
is like a..."; "What could we use as...?", or other types of statements, suggestions or questions that functioned explicitly or
implicitly to make an analogical connection. World links were
defined as a form of analogical utterance that specifically
referred to familiar people or past experiences in the child's
life, for example "It's just like your/our...", "It's like when...",
"Do you remember/does this remind you of...?".
Intercoder Agreement
Pretend play data. The pretend play data reported in the
current study were part of a larger set of data investigating pretend play in children with typical development, children with
advanced intellectual development, and children with a hearing
impairment. The intercoder agreement reported was performed
on this larger data set. Two postgraduate students were trained
as coders on nonexperimental videotapes. Coder 1 was trained
to code overall stages of pretend play. Coder 2 was trained to
code overall stages of pretend play plus each of the pretend
play structure categories. Intercoder agreement was defined as
each coder allocating the same stage to a pretend play behavior
at the onset of the behavior within a time window of +/- one
second. Percentage agreement was calculated for occurrence
and nonoccurrence and expressed as agreements divided by
agreements plus nonagreements multiplied by 100. Where the
incidence of a coding category was low (i.e., less than 10), categories were collapsed and combined with the category above.
The kappa statistic was used to calculate intercoder agreement
for all categories as it corrects for chance agreement.

br the overall pretend play stage variable, both Coder 1

and Coder 2 were trained to achieve a criterion agreement with the second author (Coder 3) of 85% or greater across
all categories (actual agreement for Coder 1 = 96% and Coder 2
= 90%). Coder 1 and Coder 3 then independently coded play
stages for 35% of the videotaped data taken across participants.
For the combination of Stages 1,2, and 3 there was agreement of
94% (k = .87); for Stages 4 and 5 combined 95% (k = .89); for
Stages 6 and 7 combined 96% (k = .87); 99% (k = .942) for Stage
8; and 100% (k = 1.0) for the combination of Stages 9 and 10.
For the pretend play structure variables, Coder 2 was

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(adapted from Belsky & Most, 1981; Fenson, 1984; Fenson & Ramsay, 1980;
:Largd&Howardi 1979; Lezine, 1973; Lowe, 1975; Nicolich, 1977; Ogura, 1991; Westby, 1995)
: Note. From "Structures underpinning pretend play and word production in young hearing children and children with hearing loss" by P. M. Brown, F. W.
Rickards & A. Bortoli, 2001 /Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 6(1), p. 22. Copyright 2001 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted with permission.
Stage

Age

Descriptor and example

Decontextualization

Decentration

Sequencing

Planning

12?

Presymbolic
(closes eyes and
pretends to sleep)

Action without object

or object used
without action

Actions are
on the self

Actions are
isolated events

Actions are
spontaneous

12-15

Autosymbolic
(feeds self with
empty spoon)

Real life objects

are used with action

13-18

Decentered
(feeds doll/partner
with empty spoon)

16-19

Linear sequence
(feeds self and doll
in any order)

Same action is
repeated on more
than one recipient

18-24

Combinatorial sequence
with single recipient
(feeds and bathes
doll in any order)
(combines materials,
e.g., cup & spoon,
stacks blocks)

Different actions are

used on the
same recipient or
objects are combined

18-26

Planned action
(searches for, requests,
offers materials
incorporated into play)

20>

Object transformation
(uses aerosol lid as cup)

21-30

Agency attribution
(adopts vocal or
physical attributes
of another,
e.g., cat, driver)

30>

Ordered sequences
(mixes cake,
bakes it,
eats it
retaining logical order)

10

30>

Imaginary transformation
(places imaginary
cake on plate,
interacts with
imaginary character)

Actions are
on another

Actions are
intentional/ planned

One object is
substituted for another
Adopts characteristics
of another

Sequences follow
logical order

Imaginary objects
are used

Logical order
cannot be violated

Imaginary characters
are used

Table 1

trained to achieve a criterion agreement level of 85% or greater

with Coder 3 across all codes (actual agreement = 91%). Both
Coders 2 and 3 then coded 20% of the videotapes to assess the
level of intercoder agreement. For Decontextualization, agreement for Stages 1 and 2 combined was 92% (k = .84) and for
Stages 3 and 4 was 93% (k = .85). Agreement for Decentration
was 98% (k = .92) for the combination of Stages 1 and 2 and
98% (k = .92) for Stages 3 and 4. For Sequencing, agreement
was 85% (k = .70) for Stages 1 and 2 and 88% (k = .74) for
Stages 3 and 4. Finally, for the Planning variable, agreement of
86% (k = .65) was obtained for Stage 1, and 85% (k = .60) for
Stages 2 and 3. Overall, the levels of agreement for each variable are considered to be adequate to high (Bakeman &
Gottman, 1997).
Maternal analogies and world links. Transcripts of all the
mothers' pretend play-related utterances were made from the .
videotaped samples. These were then coded for maternal use of
analogies and world links using a consensus approach between
the three investigators.

Results
Children's Pretend Play Behaviors
The first analysis compared the stages of pretend play
behaviors for the three groups of children at 16 or 17 months of
age, as measured by the Pretend Play Observation Scale (Brown,
1997). Figure 1 shows the percentage distribution of the stages
of pretend play produced by the three groups. As this figure
shows, the distribution of play behaviors for the D group is
skewed towards the lower end of the scale. Essentially, these
children produced pretend play that was unplanned, but were
beginning to show signs of decentration. The majority of thenplay behaviors were comprised of single actions and these were
carried out using real or toy objects. Although the play behaviors
of the children in the T group were also unplanned, they produced more sequences of actions, or they combined objects in
one action. The play behaviors of the children in the T group
appear in the middle range on this figure. In contrast, the distribution of the play behaviors of the A group is skewed towards the

Fall, 2003, Roeper Review/45

The Percentage Distribution of Pretend Play Behaviors for

Children with a Hearing Impairment (D), Children with Typical Development (T),
and Children with Advanced Development (A) at 16/17 months
60-r

Q D group
T group
El A group

5040Percentage of
play behaviors

3fl

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20H

10
0
3

10

Stage of play behaviors

Figure 1

higher end of the scale. Not only did these children produce the
only examples of transformations of objects (Stage 7), but these
were also die most frequent play behaviors in their repertoires.
The next analysis compared the stages of the four underlying
processes, namely, decontextualization, decentration, sequencing,
and planning across the three groups of children. The Chi square
statistic was used to compare the distributions of stages between
the three groups across these four variables. Table 2 gives the Chi
square values and their associated probability values where a significant association was found. As this table shows, for decontextualization and planning, no significant differences emerged
between the D and T groups. However, both groups differed significantly from the A group on these two measures. For decentration, no significant differences were found between the A and the
T, while both groups showed a significant difference from the D
group on this measure. No significant differences were found in
stages of sequencing between the three groups.

verbal transformations. In the T group, the mother of Tl produced

one verbal transformation. This transformation introduced a new
concept, but the child did not respond to it and the mother did not
follow up on it. In this same group, the mother of T2 produced six
verbal transformations that were all suggestions of new ideas, two
of which were responded to by the child. For the remaining four
transformations, there were no responses from the child. For T3,
no maternal transformations were recorded. The picture was
somewhat different for the A group. Overall, there was a larger
number of both verbal and nonverbal transformations from each
mother. Frequently, these were suggestions introducing novel
ideas, and about half were contingent on what the child was
doing. For example, A3 put a popsicle stick to a cow's mouth and
her mother commented, "Oh, you're giving him some food."
While the children responded to only a few of the mothers' transformations, the mothers themselves followed up on many of these,
producing the transformations themselves and often accompanying these with verbal commentary and description.

Maternal Verbal and Nonverbal Transformations

Table 3 shows the analysis of the mothers' verbal and nonverbal transformations when the children were 16 months of age
(A group) and 17 months of age (T and D groups). As Table 3
shows, the mothers from the D group produced no verbal or non-

Emergence of Transformations in Children and Their

Mothers
For this stage of the analysis, videotapes taken from the
commencement of involvement in the study were viewed to

Group Comparisons of Distributions of Scores for Decontextualization,

Decentration, Sequencing and Planning Using the Chi Square Statistic
Process

D-T Comparison

D-A Comparison

T-A Comparison

Decontextualization

ns

* (1,N = 81) = 32.5,p<.001

(1,N = 113) = 48.3, p<.001

Decentration

I {1,N = 116) = 21.2, p<.001

* (1,N = 81) = 13.4,p<.001

ns

Sequencing

ns

ns

ns

Planning

ns

;r!(1,N = 81) = 19.0, p<.001

(1,N = 113) = 32.1, p<.001

Table 2
46/Roeper Review, Vol. 26, No. 1

Maternal Transformations

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Mother Participants
D1

02

D3

T1

T2

T3

A1

A2

A3

Total number of transformations

18

10

21

Novel transformations

10

12

Child responses

Child contingent transformations

Mother responses

10

Table 3
establish the age at which the child and mother participants
exhibited their first pretend play transformation. These data are
given in Table 4. As this table shows, the earliest emergence of
a child transformation in the D group was between 23 months
and 26 months and for the T participants at 23 or 24 months. In
the A group, transformations emerged at 12-13 months of age.
Across groups, seven of the first transformations were in sessions involving the tea party set, two in sessions using the
dolls, and none in sessions using the farm animals set. This
suggests that the higher rate of transformations in the A group
children at 16 months was not due to any advantage conferred
by the play materials that made up the farm animals set. When
identifying whether transformations were present in the mother's behavior prior to their emergence in the child, the data in
Table 4 show that this was so for all groups. For the mothers in
the A group, transformations were performed in the child's
first year of life. Since this behavior was present at the first
videotaped session for all of the children in this group, we cannot be sure at what point in the child's life these mothers began
to introduce this stage of pretend behavior. For the mothers in
the T group, object substitutions were first observed when the
child was 18 months and for the mothers in the D group somewhat later (21 to 26 months).

Qualitative Data Analysis

Maternal use of analogy and world links. Of interest in
the current study was when the three groups of mothers began
to use verbal analogies and world links, and the frequency
and quality of these. In the D group, only the mother of Dl
produced analogies and world links. These consisted of simple object matching, where the object was associated with
something removed in space or time. For example, in drawing attention to a toy cat, this mother said "Just like your
pussy," and, in offering the child a scrap of material, said

"Make this the sponge. You know, how we did it this morning." For this mother, the first analogy was observed in the
first session when the child was 16 months of age. During the
period from 16 to 30 months of age, the mother produced 6
analogies. In the T group, all mothers produced analogies and
world links when the child was between the ages of 16 and 30
months, and averaged about three or four per dyad during this
period. They emerged at different times. For Tl, the first
analogy appeared at 21 months, for T2 at 19 months (with the
next analogical reference not appearing until 26 months), and
for T3 at 16 months. Again, almost all analogies were simple
object matching, such as: "This could be a farm" (Tl at 22
months); "That's the dog. Just like Jack." (T3 at 16 months);
and "What do we find in our garden that looks like that?" (T2
at 26 months).
A gain, differences were observed in the behaviors of
I\.the mothers in the A group. From their first videotaping sessions, mothers of Al and A2 used numerous analogies
and world links, with frequent references to familiar people,
things, and events in the child's life. The analogies, with
implied or explicit resemblances to absent things, involved not
only simple matching, but were often quite complex and subtlefor example, mother shaking sticks in a box while commenting "It's a rattle"; a square of checked material transformed into wrapping paper for a birthday present; a small
cushion in a plastic bucket becoming a lily pad in a pond on
which a duck could sit; popsicle sticks becoming fence posts
and wool becoming wire for the fence, while a cardboard cone
became a lighthouse or factory chimney. The mother of A3,
while not explicitly referring to external events in the child's
life, made verbal and nonverbal suggestions that were clearly
associated with the child's prior experiences and knowledge
(e.g., "Put on some vegemite") as she spread imaginary vegemite on imaginary bread. She also used apparently familiar
bedtime routines to put the doll to "bed" in a box.

at Production of Child Transformations and Maternal Transformations

Participants
D1

D2

D3

T1

T2

T3

A1

A2

A3

Child transformations

26

26

23

24

23

23

12

12

13

Maternal transformations

21

26

22

18

18

18

11

10

Table 4
Fall, 2003, Roeper Review/47

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r[

ntriguingly, the analogical transformations of these

mothers became more complex as the months of videotaping passed. For instance, in the first sessions, it was as
though they were thinking aloud: "Let's pretend they're
blocks"; "Does this remind you of anything? Gramps' tin kettle?" (Al at 11 months); "Look at this box. If I put these in here
- a rattle!" (A2 at 10 months); "We could turn this into water"
(A3 at 10 months). As time went on, the mothers began commenting on their child's play, interpreting it analogically, such
as: "Is that what Gramps was doing the other day? Cutting the
wood for the laundry floor?" as Al at 16 months was rubbing a
stick on a block and making a humming noise; "Are you brushing the bath? Yes, I use a brush thing to clean the bath, don't
I?" (A2 at 18 months using a hairbrush on doll's house bath).
Increasingly, the mothers invited the children to participate in
finding object substitutions, appearing to expect a degree of
analogical thinking from their child: "Can you make me a pretend drink?" (A2 at 17 months); "What about a bottle? Give her
some milk?" (pointing to a stick to indicate that this could be
the "bottle" (A3 at 15 months); "Teddy's spilt his [imaginary]
tea! Think we'd better mop it up? What shall we mop up with?
We might have to have a pretendy [sic] something. What do we
usually mop the floor with?" (Al at 23 months).
The analogies emerging from the mothers in the advanced
development group thus began as references to single objects
or events and increasingly became integrated into complex
sequences, taking on the logic of those sequences and incorporating a multiplicity of substitutional objects. They sometimes
involved quite detailed re-creation of a child's prior experience. For example, during sessions using the farm animals play
set, the mother of Al would frequently re-create his grandparents' farm, complete with details such as paddocks (i.e.,
fields), wire fences, silos, and a river. Similarly, when A2 was
19 months old, his mother built a replica of a beach that the
family had recently visited, including sand, sea, rocks, and a
lighthouse on a cliff, each carefully placed in correct spatial
relation to each other.
Mothers in the A group often used analogies and world links
to expand on their child's transformations. Two vignettes of Al
and A2 at 16 months illustrate how their mothers responded to
their child's object transformation, verbally drawing out the analogical similarities between the object and what it represented.
Both mothers also made world links to support and extend the
transformation, discussing past events and people not present.
Al is holding a curved, tapered wooden block at one
end, and rubbing it over a row of popsicle sticks laid
out on the floor, while making a machine-like noise.

Al rubs block on the carpet, making a machine noise.

He reaches over, takes mother's block, rubs the
tapered ends of the two blocks together, making
machine noises.
Mother: Are you going to have two vacuums? Are
they vacuuming each other? What would happen if we
put two vacuums nose-to nose? And they would vacuum each other...
Al looks in box, pulls out another tapered block.
Al: Ah!
Mother: Three!
Al puts tapered end of his block to the same end of
mother's block. Both make machine noises. Mother
laughs.
In the following episode the mother of A2 refers to a session three months earlier, when she had modeled using wool as
hair. She also makes a world link in a reference to A2's sister,
Heather.
A2 reaches over, picks up wool, and puts it on his head.
Mother: Oh! You remember last time we played and
it was like hair. That was a long time ago wasn't it? It
is like hair isn't it. Like Heather's hair. Golden hair,
(wool slides off, and mother rearranges it on child's
head) You remember all that time ago. It would be
three months wouldn't it?
In contrast, mothers in the D and T groups were focused
on supporting their children's decentered or sequenced play,
and centered their comments on the immediate context and
concrete objects. The following interaction involving T3 is typical of the T group interactions at 17 months.
T3 watches her mother propping up a teddy and holding a plastic cup to its mouth.
Mother: Oh look, he's got his cup. (puts cup to
teddy's mouth, tips it up) Oh, look, he's having a
drink. Can Teddy have a drink of your tea? (props
teddy beside child)
T3 pours from the teapot into a plastic cup and puts it
to the teddy's mouth.
Mother: Oh! Thank you Emma, (the teddy falls down
and mother props it up again)

Mother: What are you doing to them? Are you planing them smooth? Did Gramps do that on your bedroom door? Did he plane it smooth when he replaced
the...(Al looks in toy box, pulls out an identical
block, puts it in front of mother). Oh, there's another
interesting bit! Bit thicker than a stick, but not quite as
thick as a block.

T3 again puts the cup to the teddy's mouth, and the

mother makes drinking noises.

Al repeats his actions.

T3 puts the cup to the teddy's mouth.

Mother: You want me to do it too? Or are we vacuuming? You know this looks a bit like Grandma's
buzzy vacuum. We go (makes machine noise). You
know the little hand-held vacuum Grandma has? The
little buzzy vacuum. (Al vocalises and holds up his
block). Does that look like one too? It does. It sort of
has that smooth curved end (points to end of block).

Mother: Teddy's turn!

48/Roeper Review, Vol. 26, No. 1

Mother: Oh, thank you Emma. He's having a drink.

T3 pretends to drink from the cup.
Mother: Oh! Emma's turn!

Interactions at 17 months were different again in the D

group. In the following interaction involving Dl, we can see
how communication difficulties arising from the child's hearing loss led the mother to simplify her verbal scaffolding, supporting this with gestures indicating concrete objects.

Dl sits in front of his mother, with his back to her,

and the toys on the floor in front of them. He manipulates a teapot lid, putting it on and off the teapot. His
mother leans forward so that her face is next to Dl's,
facing the same way.
Mother: (sets out two cups, putting a spoon in one)
How about.... Can I have a cup of tea? (looks at child)
Dl reaches over and takes the spoon from the cup.
Mother: Can I have a cup of tea please? (puts loose
lid firmly back on teapot, and uses handle to turn
teapot towards child) Mummy have a cup of tea?

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Dl reaches for the teapot and continues taking the lid

on and off.
Mother: In there, (points to cup) Some for Mummy?
(bends head to look directly into Dl's face)
Dl continues actions with teapot lid.
Mother: Some for Mummy.please. (points to cup)
Dl briefly looks at indicated cup then continues
manipulating teapot lid.

Discussion
This study investigated the development of pretend play
and maternal scaffolding of pretend play in children with typical development, children with a hearing impairment, and children with advanced intellectual development. Results indicated
that stages of pretend play reflected group characteristics.
Specifically, the results of the analysis of the underlying
processes showed that the children with advanced intellectual
development were producing higher stages of decontextualized
behavior and planning. The higher order abstract ability
appears to correspond with the heightened abstract reasoning
abilities that characterize intellectual giftedness. The advanced
planning competence suggests a heightened propensity for
metacognition, another characteristic of intellectual giftedness.
Lower stages of decentered pretend play characterized the children with hearing impairments, possibly caused by difficulties
in communication and interactions arising from their deafness.
The lack of group differences in terms of sequencing was
unexpected because the children with advanced intellectual
development were producing play behaviors beyond the first
two stages of sequencing. However, the next stage of sequencing development usually occurs at about the age of 30 months.
To achieve this stage would require that these children exhibit
even more extreme stages of advancement.
The analysis of maternal scaffolding focused on the mothers' use of transformations, both verbally and as modeled play
behaviors. The difference between the three groups of mothers
was quite marked. There were no instances of maternal transformations by mothers in the D group at the 17-month data
point. Maternal scaffolding of these behaviors in the T group
matched the typical pattern described in the research literature,
where mothers model or prompt behaviors at, or just ahead of
their child's demonstrated stage. This next step formulation of
the ZPD (Griffin & Cole, 1984) does not, however, explain the
quality of the interactions observed in the A group, where
mothers, through both language and action, introduced com-

plex transformations and analogical connections that frequently appeared to be well in advance of their child's current independent functioning. This suggests that the A group dyads
were working within more extended zones of proximal development than those described as typical in the literature, and
this view is supported by the children's rapid development of
advanced play skills.
The qualitative analysis of the maternal analogies and
world links indicated that this measure was sensitive to differences between the three groups. These behaviors were infrequent in the D and T groups. The mothers of the gifted children,
in contrast, frequently introduced world links and analogies into
the play. How might such maternal behaviors support and
extend intellectual development? Mills and Funnell (1983)
found a relationship between maternal world links and children's spontaneous deductive reasoning. Although the children
in the current study were not yet two years old, it may well be
that their mothers' world links, made in the context of play,
relate to a later capacity for advanced deductive reasoning.
The world links merged smoothly into the analogical correspondences that these mothers made. Meadows (1993) has
pointed out that research into the nature of analogical reasoning has, to date, centered on understanding, or even simply recognizing, analogical relations set up by a tester. It has had little
to do with the capacity for creating new analogical connections
or evaluating them. She notes that:
To elucidate the development of this wider range of
analogical reasoning it may be necessary to search the
literature on language development for instances of
child-generated analogies, and for the ways in which
adults present analogies to help children structure
information, as in the "links" and "world links" which
mothers present to their 2-year olds, (p.74)
'he frequency and complexity of the transformations in
the play of the A group dyads may be forerunners of
enhanced analogical thought. This would imply much for the
nature of gifted development, since several researchers have
suggested that the use of analogy is the core of intelligent cognition as well as one of the most important mechanisms of cognitive development (Bryant, 1974; Crisafi & Brown, 1986;
Siegler, 1989; Sternberg, 1985; Vosniadou & Ortony, 1989).
The use of analogy is also seen as central to learning and
the transfer of existing knowledge and skills to new situations.
Additionally it is regarded as critical for the construction of
mental models. In the research literature, gifted children have
been documented as exhibiting an enhanced capacity for connecting new learning to prior knowledge and for creating elaborate relationships among key concepts (Donald, 1983; Rabinowitz & Glaser, 1985). This type of cognitive processing was
clearly being modeled and shaped by the mothers in this study.
Many educators in the field believe that gifted children learn
optimally with curricula founded on abstract, complex content
delivered at an accelerated pace, matching the abstract, complex, and accelerated processing of information that characterizes these children (Hollingworth, 1926; Maker, 1982; Van
Tassel-Baska, 1992). These qualities characterized motherchild interactions in the A group from the first year of life.
Mothers in this group used play materials and actions both to
support and challenge their children's memory and reasoning
skills. These early experiences may be fundamental to the way
that even young gifted children "...use concrete objects and
events as springboards into abstract thought" (Morelock &
Morrison, 1996, p. 111).

Fall, 2003, Roeper Review/49

Taking a Vygotskian stance, we could say that caregivers

model "gifted processing" so that it appears first at the
interpsychological level, in the interactions between mother
and child, and then becomes internalized by the child.
Research shows that children have a marked effect on the
interactions between themselves and their caregivers (Bell,
1979; Bell & Harper, 1977). This suggests that the children
themselves provide cues that help to shape mother-child interaction, creating a context for mutual influence in play
(McCune, Dipane, Fireoved, & Fleck, 1994). The clear differences in the interactional styles of the three groups of dyads
support this view.
hile the results appear to support the proposition that
play and interactions are reflective of differences in
children's developmental status, some methodological weaknesses necessitate consideration of alternative explanations for
the findings. One of these is the differential research histories
of the three groups. Children in the D and T groups entered the
study at 16 months of age and thus had only one month's participation before measures were taken, compared to the 5-8
months range of experience for the children in A group. Were
the advanced play behaviors of the A group due to these dyads
having more time to become accustomed to the research setting
or to practice play and interaction skills?
These questions can be partly addressed by closer examination of the longitudinal data. The gifted group had certainly
spent more time in the study prior to the 16-17 month measures. However, they actually had far less research experience
before demonstrating their first decontextualized behaviors
A3 had five months, A2 two months, and Al one month. Children in the D and T groups showed transformations seven to
ten months after joining the study, and six to eight months after
their mother's first modeling of the behavior. The research history hypothesis also fails to explain why the mothers in the
gifted group modeled transformations in their child's first year,
while mothers in the T group did not do so until their child was
18 months, and mothers in the D group when their child was
between 21 and 26 months.
A further methodological limitation of this study was the
absence of a uniform IQ measure across all groups. Only children from the A group were assessed at four years of age using
a form of the Stanford-Binet. We therefore cannot rule out the
possibility that there may be children from the T and D groups
who might also have scored in the gifted range at four, but as
toddlers did not display advanced development of pretend play
nor engage in highly stimulating interactions with their mothers. One explanation for this hypothetical but possible scenario
is that giftedness is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition
for the development of advanced pretend play. In the absence
of sufficient stimulation or suitable "scaffolding" conditions, a
gifted child may not show precocity in this area. It may be that
mothers in the T and D groups did not perceive their children
as being unusually advanced (even if they were) and so failed
to engage in the sort of interactions characteristic of the dyads
in the A group.
One of the aims of this study was to identify possible continuities in children's intellectual functioning, such as relationships between early pretend play and interactions and later
measures of intellectual development. Consequently, the question of instability of intelligence test scores in early childhood
(National Association for the Education of Young Children
[NAEYC], 1987) is one that must be addressed. The correspondence between early stages of pretend play and later measures of intellectual development at age four is central in our

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50/Roeper Review, Vol. 26, No. 1

findings. How confident can we be of the validity of these

measures of general cognitive ability as well as their predicted
stability over time?
In conducting our assessments, we considered the importance of having the proper environment, reliability and validity
of the testing instruments, adequate training and background of
the tester, and sensitivity to the child so that the possibility of
inaccurate results could be minimizedone source of instability in scores over time (NAEYC, 1987). Another source of
instability in the scores of very young children is that they are
expected to become more capable of engagement with cognitively demanding tasks as they grow older. However, even
very young children who later test in the gifted range demonstrate a greater capacity for attending to and engaging in cognitively demanding tasks than their more average counterparts
(Gottfried, Gottfried, Bathurst, & Guerin, 1994). For children
to reach the scores attained by the children in the A group, they
must be well-engaged participants in the testing procedure. The
likelihood is that, if these children's development continues to
be adequately supported, they will continue to perform
throughout childhood at least at the stage of their four-year-old
measures (Gottfried, Gottfried, Bathurst, & Guerin).
A further consideration along this line is the possibility
z \ . o f sudden increases in indices of general cognitive
ability. The literature on extraordinarily gifted children documents that children scoring in the gifted range at an early age
may exhibit cognitive leaps over time. Consequently, by middle childhood, their scores of general cognitive ability can
reach significantly higher levels than the ones attained in earlier assessments (Morelock, 2000). This is a source of instability
that cannot be predicted in any given case. However, should
such changes occur with the children in this study, it would
make no difference for our findings, because the criterion we
used is simply an IQ level within or near the gifted range.
In summary, this research gives valuable insight into the
complex relationship between pretend play and intellectual
development. It suggests that the precocious development of
pretend play is a hallmark of intellectual advancement, and that
the quality of mother-child pretend play interactions both
reflect and support the child's development. As is usual in
research of this kind, we have been left with questions that are
grist for future study. What cues do these infants provide that
initiate atypical mother-child interaction? How early does the
atypical dyadic relationship begin? Is the development of pretend play in the children with advanced development qualitatively different from more typical pretend play in terms of
stages and the way these children pass through them? Might
there be children who have gifted potential but fail to give cues
that elicit supportive scaffolding from the environment, and if
so, why? Finally, how generalizable are these findings? Certainly, we are constrained in formulating conclusions by the
fact that each group contained only three mother-child dyads.
It is clear that future studies must include larger groups of children entering the research at earlier points in development.
In reflecting upon the research reported here, we can see
the limitations of research to date on pretend play and motherchild interaction with respect to its contribution to our understanding of children with advanced development. Our findings
here indicate that, by simply assimilating these children to our
notions of "typical development" rather than looking at them
as atypical and worthy of specific study (Morelock, 1992;
2000), we risk forfeiting an in-depth understanding of the
whole range of possibility in child development. It is a risk that
serious researchers and theorists cannot afford to take.

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Authors' Note
This research has been supported by the Deafness Foundation of Victoria,
Australia. We would like to thank the mothers and children who gave of their
time to participate in this research, and Romana Morda who carried out
some of the child testing.

Fall, 2003, Roeper Review/51