What is it about?
In previous research, we've found that playing with dolls activates social processing brain regions and elicits mental state language (that is, speech about other peoples' thoughts, feelings, and beliefs). What we wanted to find out in this study was whether doll play actually alters how children understand other people. Here, we randomly assigned children to either play with dolls or creative tablet games over a 6-week period and measured their understanding of others' minds before and after this intervention. We found that children (4-8-year-olds, both boys and girls) who played with dolls at home showed greater improvements in understanding other people.
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Why is it important?
Understanding others' minds, and that other peoples' thoughts, feelings, and beliefs may differ from our own, is an essential foundational skill both for relationship building and for academic learning. This research showed that free play with dolls is one way that these skills can be improved.
Perspectives
I think this is really interesting as both a researcher and a parent. I love watching my daughter embrace pretend play and it's fascinating to see examples of her working out social challenges she's encountered recently in her play. This research bolsters these anecdotes with scientific evidence showing that doll play can have a causal effect on social understanding.
Sarah Gerson
Cardiff University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Doll play improves false belief reasoning: Evidence from a randomized-control trial, PLOS One, March 2026, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0343698.
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