Riconoscimento di sé, competenza linguistica e gioco simbolico nel secondo anno: una ricerca esplorativa

During the second year of life, the emergence of representation influences children’s development and toddlers show a great change in different competences: among them, self-awareness, language, and pretend play behaviors. Few research studied the association among these competences (Lewis & Ramsay, 2004), and reported controversial results, referring to two different approaches: one underlying the role of language and play as means to represent the child self (Cicchetti, Rogosch, Toth & Spagnola, 1997), the other considering the representation as a prerequisite for linguistic and ludic abilities (Bates, 1990; Kagan, 1981). To deepen these reciprocal relationships, we observed 14 Caucasian toddlers (7 females and 7 males) at 15, 18, and 21 months. Ten children were first-born; their families were all living in the northern Italy (Turin and suburbs) and their socio-economic level was middle-high. To evaluate self-awareness, we performed the Rouge Task (Gallup, 1970; Amsterdam, 1972; Zazzo, 1975), and we coded spontaneous pretend play behaviors using Bornstein & O’Reilly (1993) coding. Language development (i.e.: productive vocabulary, pronouns, mental state lexicon, and functors) was evaluated through the Italian version of the McArthur questionnaire (PVB, Caselli & Casadio, 1995), filled by parents. Self awareness, pretend play and language develop positively in the second year, even if pretend play seems to develop earlier than mirror self-recognition and language. Only self recognition and language are correlated, but self-recognizers are also systematically higher in play, and toddlers using substitute objects in pretend play are higher in language development. Thus, our results support the hypothesis that these three competences grow in parallel during the second year and their associations are probably linked to a general underlying level of representational development.