Piaget (1962) asserted that children stop engaging in pretend play when they enter the concrete operational stage because they become able to accommodate reality and no longer need to assimilate it to their wishes. Consistent also with the views of Vygotsky, discussion of pretend play in developmental psychology is typically confined to early…

Three studies examined whether mathematics can propel the development of physical understanding. In Experiment 1, 10-year-olds solved balance scale problems that used easy-to-count discrete quantities or hard-to-count continuous quantities. Discrete quantities led to age typical performances. Continuous quantities caused performances like those of…