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Parents and psychologists often encourage children to involve in pretend play. There is a common notion that the engagement in pretend plays, which involve usage of imagination and which gives freedom of choice to children is crucial for a child's development.

 Pretend play is any play a child engages in, alone, with playmates, or with adults. It could include creation of a fantasy world or situations like making a car go "vroooom" or making dolls talk, etc.  

However, according to researchers from University of Virginia, pretend play is not as crucial for the development of a child as previously thought.

For the study, the researchers reviewed more than 150 studies and checked for the contributions made by pretend plays in the development of children's mental health. There was little, or no correlation found.

According to Angeline Lillard, the new study's lead author and a U.Va. Professor of psychology in the College of Arts & Sciences, many a beliefs regarding the significance of pretend plays in the development of a child comes from flawed methodology, Medical Xpress reported.

"We found no good evidence that pretend play contributes to creativity, intelligence or problem-solving," Lillard said. "However, we did find evidence that it just might be a factor contributing to language, storytelling, social development and self-regulation."

According to her, it is mostly a difficult task for psychologists to comprehend and determine if a child who pretend plays is already creative and imaginative, or if playing contributes to their development.

"When you look at the research that has been done to test that, it comes up really short," Lillard said. "It may be that we've been testing the wrong things; and it may well be that when a future experiment is really well done we may find something that pretend play does for development, but at this point these claims are all overheated. This is our conclusion from having really carefully read the studies."

Lillard however did emphasize that certain elements of the play such as pursuing the child's own interest, negotiating with peers etc are valuable, especially when done with proper adult guidance. Apart from pretend plays, these conditions are also there in other playful school activities.

According to Lillard, pretend plays are important diagnostically for children between the age of 18 months and 2 years and an absence of such plays in between this age may indicate autism, and the child should be tested for any other sign of the disorder.

 "Playtime in school is important," Lillard said. "We found evidence that - when a school day consists mostly of sitting at desks listening to teachers - recess restores attention and that physical exercise improves learning."

"If adults enjoy doing it with children, it provides a happy context for positive adult-child interaction, a very important contributor to children's healthy development."

"The article by Lillard and colleagues is a game-changer - a paragon of carefully-reasoned evidence that will challenge the play-based domination of the early-childhood field for years to come," Stephen Hinshaw, editor of Psychological Bulletin and a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley was quoted as saying by Medical Xpress.

The study was published in a recent online edition of the journal Psychological Bulletin.