Toward Creativity - Do Theatrical Experiences Improve Pretend Play and Cooperation among Preschoolers?

Oct 15, 2026

Early-childhood theater productions are studied for their effects on preschoolers’ pretend play and cooperation. The authors analyze children’s engagement, cooperative behavior, imaginative pretense, and misbehavior by comparing play sessions immediately before and after interactive early-childhood performances. Findings show enhanced cooperation and increased pretense in children who participated, linking arts experiences to early creativity and social-competence development.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages15

Reading Time38 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Creativity decline and early-childhood play

Arts, play, and social competence

Pretend Play, Creativity, and Cooperation

Functions of social pretense

Pretend play and creative thinking

Toward Creativity Do Theatrical Experiences Improve Pretend Play and Cooperation among Preschoolers?• Meredith L. Rowe, Virginia C. Salo, and Kenneth Rubin The authors ask if participating in an early-childhood theater production improves pretend play and cooperation among preschoolers. They examined play sessions immediately before and after productions of interactive earlychildhood performances at Imagination Stage, Inc. and measured children’s engagement, cooperation, pretense, and misbehavior. They found that participating in the performances enhanced the cooperation and pretense of preschoolers. The authors discuss their results in relation to the role of the arts and of play in early creativity and social-competence development. Keywords: cooperation; creativity; early-childhood development and the arts; make-believe; pretense; social competence Introduction Researchers note a steep recent decline in creativity among American children, a “creativity crisis” (Bronson and Merryman 2010) . An analysis of scores on a standardized test of creative thinking for school-aged children from 1966 to 2008 revealed a significant decrease in scores since 1990, particularly for students in kindergarten through third grade (Kim 2011) . The same study also highlighted that much of the drop in creativity occurs before the end of the early-childhood period. Creativity may be on the decline because children do not have the opportunities to play as often as they did in the past (Howes 2011) . As a result of the No Child Left Behind Act, which went into effect in 2001, there has been a shift in early-childhood curricula to focus more on school readiness skills such as literacy and numeracy and, therefore, a reduction in 193 American Journal of Play, volume 10, number 2 © The Strong [Contact Meredith L. Rowe at meredith](Contact Meredith L. Rowe at meredith_rowe@gse.harvard.edu)[_rowe@gse.harvard.edu](Contact Meredith L. Rowe at meredith_rowe@gse.harvard.edu) opportunities for free play. However, researchers argue that play and learning do go hand-in-hand (Zigler 2009) and that depriving children of play denies them vital opportunities to practice important cognitive and social skills to develop their imagination and creativity (Hirsh-Pasek et al. 2008; Pellegrini 2011; Roskosand Christie 2013) . Gopnik and Walker (2013) provide evidence that engaging in pretend play facilitates causal reasoning and hypothesis generation by allowing children to exercise the ability to consider different scenarios. Several studies show a similar link between engaging in pretend play and divergent thinking (the ability to generate a variety of solutions to a problem), a skill considered foundational to creativity (see Russ and Wallace 2013 for a review) . Participation in the arts also facilitates creativity and social and cognitive development, yet the links between arts experiences and developmental growth are not especially clear (see Winner, Goldstein, and Vincent-Lancrin 2013 for a review) and many researchers have noted that we still have much work to do in this area (e.g., Reed, Hirsh-Pasek, and Golinkoff 2012) . Here we examine the role ofthe arts in children’s play and development by asking whether participating in an early-childhood theater production improves preschoolers’ pretend play, creativity, and social competence (cooperation) . Pretend Play, Creativity, and Cooperation Scholars have studied the role of play in children’s development for more than fifty years. Theoretical work outlined the developmental trajectory of particular types of play (Piaget 1962) and the role of play in children’s cognition (Vygotsky 1967) . Educational thinkers have posited that play promotes creativity and flexible thinking (Bruner 1972; Pepler and Ross 1981) . Further, more recent theoretical accounts have emphasized the specific role of social pretense, or sociodramatic play, in the development of children’s perspective-taking skills (Be

FAQs

What question does the study focus on?

The study asks whether participating in an early-childhood theater production improves preschoolers’ pretend play and cooperation.

How did the authors measure children’s outcomes?

They examined play sessions immediately before and after interactive early-childhood performances and measured engagement, cooperation, pretense, and misbehavior.

What were the main findings?

Participation enhanced cooperation and pretense of preschoolers, supporting connections between arts experiences, creativity, and social competence development.

Oct 15, 2026

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