Kognitiv utveckling och låtsaslekens mysterier.

The study focuses on the cognitive skills a child must possess to be able to play. The overarching research issue of this study concerns children aged two to five years and the connection between their cognitive skills and how they participate in a game.

Playing a game is a very complicated domain where everyday-rules can be broken. Navigating the game is complicated, but children navigate according to different playing signals in the form of sounds, smiles and laughter, play objects, the number of players etc. A comparison of the groups of children aged three and five shows that the five-year-old children have reached a cognitive level where they can both carry out and be familiar with games with many repititions and thus take part in the game with a higher degree of cognitive understanding compared to younger children. Moreover, the study shows that four-year-old children understand the rules for playing better than three-year-olds.

The study is designed as an ethnographic action research study. The data have been collected in four kindergartens and include experimental test data and observations and video footage made with groups of a total of 45 children aged two to five years of whom two-thirds are boys and one-third are girls. The groups are composed to vary in terms of the ages of the children and the variables that seem important to playing.

Jensen, M. (2008). Kognitiv utveckling och låtsaslekens mysterier. Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitet.