A team of researchers from Oxford Brookes University (UK) has used a novel method to assess the influence of fantasy games among children. The findings were presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in the Developmental Psychology Section.
The experts had the participation of 70 children between 4 and 8 years of age with the intention of evaluating their games: a) if they pretended to be a person from the real world (for example, pretend to be a teacher / professor), b) if They played at being immersed in improbable events in their reality (for example, facing a lion and succeeding or going to school by helicopter) or c) playing to star in impossible situations (for example, going to a school for wizards or playing with a elf).
“ A growing body of research is investigating the influence of children who participate in fantasy games on their development. We wanted to test if these kids are more creative. This is because, theoretically, playing in imaginary worlds requires imagination to conceive the world differently from its current reality, which is also necessary to think creatively, ”explains Louise Bunce, leader of the work.
Likewise, after completing this exam on their fantasies, the children did various creative tasks. All this was rated by two judges according to their level of creativity. As the researchers expected, the analysis revealed that children who reported a higher level of fantasy in play also received higher creativity scores in the three tasks carried out, although the results were stronger in the first two tasks. than in the drawing task.
” The results provide evidence that engaging in games that involve imagining less and less realistic scenarios is associated with more creative thinking , although at the moment we do not know the direction of this relationship,” says Bounce.
