The Developmental Study on "Transformational" Acts in Preschool Children

In this paper we try to clalify the mechanism of the development of "transformational" act in child\u27s pretending play. Until now, many experiments have been performed under two different theories and supported one or the other theory. Depending on the one theory, as children develop they increase their skills at transforming things that are not similar to the referents. Depending on the other theory, they become to use things to transform similar to the referents. Only from the viewpoints of the similarity between symbolic objects and their referents, it is difficult to solve the question of the incompatibility of the two theories. We think it necessary to understand child\u27s transformation as his act when he treats objects. We examine child\u27s transformation (=transformational acts) from the viewpoint of the respondance of his act to the "real" conditions and the "fictional" conditions. In our experiment 80 nursery school children aged from 3y to 6y are instructed to act by using one of three toys in the two conditions. One toy is similar to the referent on shape, another on function, the other on operation. The result shows that children differenciate their acts respondant to "real-fictional" conditions with age and sellect toys fitting for acts. We suppose that as children develop they become to know the differences between objects and referents, but simultaneously they become to know on the fictiousness of their acts based on "reality-fiction" differenciation. So they can use the things disimilar from the referents. In the complementary experiment we try to examine the constructurization of acts by play thema which is supposed to lead to the knowledge of fictiousness of acts, but it\u27s necessary to explore the frame which relates the development of knowing on the fictiousness of one\u27s act to the constructurization of acts by play thema