Doll play improves false belief reasoning: Evidence from a randomized-control trial

Play is often described as a child's "occupation," both because young children spend the majority of their time playing when given the option and because it is a critical mechanism through which children learn both cognitive and socio-emotional skills. In a randomized control trial (N = 73), we found the first causal evidence that doll play, more so than creative tablet play, improves false belief understanding in 4- to 8-year-old children following a six week long play intervention. Improvements in false belief were particularly strong for children who had more parent-reported peer problems. Consistent with prior research, children were more likely to play socially with dolls than socially with tablets during the intervention period and were more likely to use internal state language about others when playing with dolls than with tablets (when observed in the laboratory). Together, this shows that doll play may be an important play pattern for practicing and improving social processing skills like false belief reasoning. The mechanism underlying this improvement requires further investigation, but we speculate that dolls may encourage social interaction and further practice of these skills outside of social interactions.