Experimenter's Pantomimes Influence Children's Use of Body Part as Object and Imaginary Object Pantomimes: A Replication

Abstract

Young children asked to pretend to use a series of absent objects typically pantomime by using a body part as the object (BPO) rather than by acting as if using an imaginary object (IO). This replication of Lyons's work (1983, 1986) examines whether different pretend contexts when requesting pantomimes influence children's use of IO and BPO pantomimes. Forty-three children aged 3;6 to 6;6 were asked to pretend to use 8 objects in 1 of 3 contexts: request, request after participating in an experimenter-provided imaginary context, and request after seeing the adult model the requested pretend action. The experimenter used IO pantomimes in the last 2 contexts. Children produced, on average, the most IO pantomimes in the modeling context, fewer in the imaginary context, and the fewest in the request context. Older children overall produced more IO pantomimes than did younger children; however, when pretend contexts were examined separately, ontogenetic differences in IO pantomimes were present for the request condition only. Externally directed actions resulted in more IO pantomiming than self-directed actions for only the youngest children.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We appreciate the assistance of children, parents, teachers, and administrators at the Model School and Burrier Day Care and the thoughtful comments from three anonymous reviewers, as well as from the editor, Angeline Lillard.

Notes

¹The disparity in frequency of BPO and IO pantomimes is one of production, not comprehension: 3- to 4-year-olds comprehended BPO and IO pantomimes equally well, as did 5- to 8-year-olds, who comprehended about one more instance of each gesture than the younger children (Bigham & Bourchier-Sutton, 2007); normal adults, like these children, can find it difficult to name what pantomimes are simulating (Osiurak, Jarry, Baltenneck, Boudin, & Le Gall, 2012).

²Overton and Jackson (1973) derived their ideas from the theory of Werner and Kaplan (1963). In this theory, more developed forms of gesture and imitation show increased distancing (or “differentiation”) than less developed forms (p. 87). Distancing can be an increase between the similarity of the child and the thing imitated, or an increase in the time taken to imitate, in the temporal relationship of gestures and the most recent use of an object, and in the need for similarity between a real activity and its enactment in pretense. Werner and Kaplan viewed any of these forms of increased distancing as indicating a growing development toward symbolic representation. They explicitly described both BPO and IO pantomime as showing the “distancing” they required as evidence of symbolization. Some subsequent researchers also assume both types of pantomime show comparable levels of symbolism (Crum et al., 1983; Elder & Pederson, 1978; Fenson et al., 1976; Zinober & Martlew, 1985).

³One might view children's actions in the request condition—the most ambiguous context in relation to what the experimenter thought of as pretending with an object—as providing children's “spontaneous” reactions. Such an interpretation naturalizes the request condition as the normal or unmarked condition, but there is nothing distinctive about this condition that requires that children's responses are “spontaneous” in any of its various senses. Instead, spontaneous gestures are those that occur when children are not requested to produce them (see, e.g., spontaneous IO and BPO pantomimes by 2- to 3-year-olds in Fenson, 1984, pp. 254, 258; Lyytinen, 1989; Pettenati, Stefanini, & Volterra, 2010). Children's pantomimic responses were, thus, not spontaneous in any pretend contexts in the current study.