Two-Year-Olds Distinguish Pretending and Joking

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science
• Social Cognition

Background:

• Children aged 2-3 years understand intentions behind joking and pretending.
• It remains unclear if young children can differentiate these distinct intentional acts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether 2-year-old children can distinguish between the intentional nature of joking and pretending.
• To explore how toddlers react to different intentional contexts (pretend, joke, literal).

Main Methods:

• Utilized a normativity paradigm with 72 two-year-old children.
• Assessed children's protests in response to various intentional contexts and cues.

Main Results:

• Two-year-olds protested more frequently against jokes than pretend acts, suggesting differentiation.
• Toddlers showed more general protest after pretend contexts than literal or joke contexts, especially with intentional cues.
• Children objected more to joking than pretending following pretend and literal contexts, but not joke contexts.

Conclusions:

• Toddlers demonstrate an ability to distinguish the intentional nature of pretending and joking.
• Pretend contexts establish specific rules, while joke contexts allow for broader performance, highlighting distinct social rule sets.