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This paper presents the result of an empirical study of 32 adult dyads (i.e. groups of two people) engaged in pretend play. Our analysis indicates that participatory sense-making plays a key role in the success of pretend play sessions. We use the cognitive science theory of enaction as a theoretical lens to analyze the empirical data given its robust conceptual framework for describing participatory sense-making. We present here five enactive characteristics of pretend play that appear to be necessary and sufficient for the emergence and maintenance of successful pretend play -- mental preparation, meaning building, narrative enaction, narrative deepening, and flow maintenance. This enactive formalization is used to propose a computational model of pretend play that can be used to design an agent capable of playing in real time with human users.
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Davis et al. (2015) studied this question.