Doll play prompts children to talk about others’ thoughts and emotions - new study

Dr Sarah Gerson - Playing with dolls can prompt children to talk about others' thoughts and emotions, according to the latest findings of a multi-year study from neuroscientists at Cardiff University. The data expands on research exploring the impact of doll play on children, conducted by experts from the School of Psychology's Centre for Human Developmental Science and commissioned by Mattel. In the study's second year, researchers from Cardiff and King's College London investigated the importance of what children say while they play. They found that children talked more about others' thoughts and emotions, a concept known as internal state language (ISL), when playing alone with dolls than while playing tablet games. The researchers say speaking about others' internal states allows children to practice social skills they can use when interacting with people in the real world and can potentially be beneficial to children's overall emotional development. Watch Dr Gerson speak about the findings Lead researcher Dr Sarah Gerson said: "When children create imaginary worlds and role play with dolls, they communicate at first out loud and then internalise the message about others' thoughts, emotions and feelings. "This can have positive long-lasting effects on children, such as driving higher rates of social and emotional processing and building social skills like empathy that can become internalised to build and form lifelong habits." During observation of 33 children aged four to eight, researchers saw increased brain activity in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) region when they spoke as though their dolls had thoughts and feelings.