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It highlights a distinctive cognitive process termed “reflective imagination,” argues that broader phylogenetic roots enable play across many species, and concludes pretend play appears characteristically human.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & Report",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/cognitive-processes-underlying-play-and-pretend-play-a-comparative-cross-species-study/591704/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/cognitive-processes-underlying-play-and-pretend-play-a-comparative-cross-species-study/591704.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"Dipper","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":55},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",8,{"@type":57,"mainEntity":58},"FAQPage",[59,65,69],{"name":60,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":62},"What does the study compare across species?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"It compares the cognitive processes underlying play and pretend play—especially the degrees of memory, perception, imagination, and consciousness—across humans and nonhuman animals.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"How does the study characterize cognitive capacities in evolution?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"It emphasizes that cognitive capacities are not all-or-nothing phenomena; 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Considering cognitive capacities not all-or-nothing phenomena, she argues they are present in varying degrees in a wide range of species. Recognizing the risks involved in comparative studies, she identifies the unique features of cognition underlying pretend play while describing the broader phylogenetic sources from which they come. In the end, she finds, although play based on particular degrees of memory, perception, and consciousness can be found in many species, pretend play depends on distinctive degrees of memory, imagination, and metacognition—a cognitive process she calls “reflective imagination”—and appears characteristically human. Keywords: consciousness; imagination; memory; metacognition; perception; play; pretend play;  \nreflective imagination  \nIntroduction  \nIn other works, I have argued that distinctive degrees of imagination and consciousness—a cognitive process I refer to as “reflective imagination”—underlies the artistic experience. I take artistic experience to be the universal and characteristically human capacity to experience oneself or others in a narrative by means of music, dance, song, pantomime, drawing, pretend play, or verbal language (Wah 2017, 2019) .  \nTo analyze this human narrative capacity I have drawn on a theory proposed by Francesco Ferretti and colleagues (2017). They postulate that the cognitive mechanisms underlying the human narrative ability are global coherence (the capacity to relate events causally) and a triadic system consisting of mental  \n156  \nAmerican Journal of Play, volume 12, number 2 © The Strong [Contact Alejandra Wah at a.wah.laborde@rug.nl](Contact Alejandra Wah at a.wah.laborde@rug.nl)  \nspace travel (the capacity to imagine different spatial locations); mental time travel (the capacity to imagine oneself or others at different times, distinguishing between past, present, and future); and mental mind travel (the capacity to attribute mental states to oneself or others, also referred to as mind reading or theory of mind) . The fact that the triadic system of mental space travel, mental time travel, and mental mind travel exists, to some extent, in nonhuman animals suggests that it precedes verbal language.  \nBuilding on evolutionary theory, I here focus on pretend play and on oneof the three imaginative capacities—mental time travel. For our purposes, play includes locomotor-rotational play (jumping, leaping, twisting, swinging, swirling, running, climbing), social play (hiding, chasing, fleeing, and rough-andtumble play, such as wrestling, grappling, fighting), and object play (carrying, dropping, biting, mouthing, manipulating, building), whereas pretend play includes role playing and sociodramatic play, both of which involve rehearsal of skill, mime, and nonlinguistic gesture and may or may not involve verbal language (Burghardt 2010; Donald 2013) .  \nSo far, research has proven that play is common among many nonhuman animals, both vertebrates and invertebrates. Play is not ubiquitous in placental mammals, but is certainly widespread. To at least some degree, it has been found in almost every order. Most groups of eutherian mammals exhibit play in the three categories I mentioned (locomotor-rotational play, social play, and object play). If only two play types are present, they are usually locomotor-rotational and social, which suggests that object play may have a different set offacilitating factors (Burghardt 2005). I will come back to these factors when discussing reflective play.  \nIt has been stated that most species play in a stereotyped manner and do not generate truly novel pat","cbCairhElz07NUxZ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCairhElz07NUxZ","pdf",146730,22,"English","# Introduction\n## Cognitive Capacities Are Not All-or-Nothing Phenomena","[{\"question\":\"What does the study compare across species?\",\"answer\":\"It compares the cognitive processes underlying play and pretend play—especially the degrees of memory, perception, imagination, and consciousness—across humans and nonhuman animals.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the study characterize cognitive capacities in evolution?\",\"answer\":\"It emphasizes that cognitive capacities are not all-or-nothing phenomena; differences between humans and nonhuman animals are differences in degree, not kind.\"},{\"question\":\"What cognitive process does the study name as key for pretend play?\",\"answer\":\"Pretend play depends on distinctive degrees of memory, imagination, and metacognition, summarized as a cognitive process called “reflective imagination.”\"}]","Cognitive Processes Underlying Play and Pretend Play - A Comparative Cross-Species Study | PDF",1792073028,55]