Developmental Science 8:1 (2005), pp 57–73 © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. PAPER On tools and toys: how children learn to act on and pretend with ‘virgin objects’ Hannes Rakoczy, Michael Tomasello and Tricia Striano Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Abstract The focus of the present study was the role of cultural learning in infants’ acquisition of pretense actions with objects. In three studies, 18- and 24-month-olds (n = 64) were presented with novel objects, and either pretense or instrumental actions were demonstrated with these. When children were then allowed to act upon the objects themselves, qualitatively similar patterns of cultural (imitative) learning both of pretend and of instrumental actions were observed, suggesting that both types of actions can be acquired in similar ways through processes of cultural learning involving one or another form of collective intentionality. However, both absolute imitation rates and creativity were lower in pretense compared to instrumental actions, suggesting that the collective intentionality that constitutes pretense is especially difficult for children to comprehend. An additional analysis of children’s gazes to the experimenter during their actions revealed that 24-month-olds looked more often to the experimenter during pretense actions than during instrumental actions – suggesting that pretense is culturally learned in a similar fashion as practical actions, but that young children understand pretense as a more inherently social, intersubjective activity. Piaget (1962) claimed that the onset of pretend play with objects in the second year is best seen as an expression of early egocentrism: the individual child by herself assimilates objects – the world – to non-appropriate action schemata – the ego. Some recent researchers, though more concerned with the contemporary question about the relation of pretense comprehension and pro- duction to theory of mind development, seem to follow Piaget in this focus on the individual mind as the cradle of pretend play. Most radically, Nichols and Stich (2000) claim that the ability and motivation to pretend is a uni- versal human feature explained by a ‘possible world box’ in the individual’s head. Consequently, the individual child acquires pretense actions on objects by herself before she can understand pretense in others. Researchers inspired by Vygotsky (1966), in contrast, have stressed the social and cultural context, above all adult scaffolding, as crucial in the development of pre- tend play. For example, many studies have found that adult modeling of pretend actions enhances children’s pretense behavior (Bretherton, O’Connell, Shore & Bates, 1984; Jackowitz & Watson, 1980; Ungerer, Zelazo, Kearsley & O’Leary, 1981; Watson & Fischer, 1977). Recently, fine- grained analyses of pretense modeling behavior by mothers and its potential role in pretense development have become a new area of research (Lillard & Witherington, 2001). It has also been claimed, more radically, not only that pretense development is strongly influenced by adult support, but that pretend play is both acquired and constituted in the same basic way as other cultural practices, including language. It is acquired by cultural (imitative) learning, and, as an inherently social activity, it is constituted by collective intentionality (Tomasello, 1999a, 1999b; Tomasello & Rakoczy, 2003). Support for this more radical claim comes from a study by Striano, Tomasello and Rochat (2001), who found that before 2 years of age, young children’s pretense with objects derived almost exclusively from imitation of adults or from adult verbal instructions – or, in some cases, from their acting on toys with established pretense functions (i.e. they acted on objects as they had seen adults previ- ously acting on similar objects, such as dolls). The claim is that if 2-year-old children were not exposed to other persons pretending, they would not invent pretense for themselves as a solitary activity at this young age (although perhaps they might some years later). The present work follows up on these findings, look- ing at possible mechanisms of acquisition of pretense Address for correspondence: Hannes Rakoczy, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany; e-mail: rakoczy@eva.mpg.de