| Summary: | This study explored and demonstrated the effects of storytelling and pretend play on short-term and long-term narrative recall. Specifically, this study examined and identified the cognitive changes which underlay children's actions during pretense enactment and narration. Educators and researchers propose that play and storytelling emerge at the same time in a "stream of symbolization" as preschool and kindergarten children learn basic skills relevant to the narrative as a cognitive model of an event. Pretend play has long been considered an important area in the development of the child's growing cognitive and social competence. This study focused on the developmental differences between storytelling and pretend play, short-term and long-term memory, encoding and inferences and their interrelationships. According to the data, there were significant differences between storytelling and pretend play in facilitating narrative recall. The data also indicated that the ability to encode exceeded the ability to make inferences. The children were able to engage in storytelling and pretend play while at the same time they did not improve in their abilities to make inferences. This indicates that inferences required more complex cognitive skills, and was not related to the improvement of storytelling and pretend play. There was not a significant difference overall between the short- and long-term conditions. However, this study supports the hypothesis that storytelling and pretend play are affected by cognitive variables.
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