Playing ‘Barbie and Ken’ helps children develop vital social skills that they cannot get from tablets, a study suggests.

Cardiff University researchers found playing with dolls helped both boys and girls improve empathy and understanding of other people’s views.

It also encouraged them to role-play social situations and involve other people, such as parents or siblings, in the games.

Playing with dolls was particularly helpful for children having problems interacting with their peers, they said.

The six-week study also found children were more likely to use language expressing emotions while playing with dolls, compared with when playing with tablets.

Dr Sarah Gerson, of Cardiff’s School of Psychology, said: ‘We believe that doll play may encourage children to engage in social interactions more and give children more opportunities to rehearse or reflect on others’ beliefs, emotions, or intentions, compared to other types of play.

‘When playing with dolls, children have the opportunity to role-play characters, create narratives, and act out scenarios – doing so relies on and fosters the ability to imagine others’ thoughts, feelings, and intentions.

‘These pretend play scenarios allow children to practice social skills, emotion processing, and emotion regulation within a safe environment.’

Playing ‘Barbie and Ken’ helps children develop vital social skills that they cannot get from tablets, a study suggests (pictured: Margo Robbie and Ryan Gosling star in the 2023 Barbie movie)

The researchers assigned children aged four to eight to play with either Barbie and Ken dolls or a tablet with pre-loaded games.

They asked their parents to keep diaries about how often they played with them, how long for, and whether their child played with anyone.

The games loaded on the tablet included building a city for characters or styling characters’ hair.

At the beginning and the end of the six weeks, the children were tested on how well they understood the mental states of others through play sessions in a laboratory.

They were also given a test to see how well they understood the concept of ‘false belief’ – the idea that other people can hold views that are not true.

This is a cornerstone of the concept of ‘theory of mind’ – the ability to understand and differentiate the thoughts of others.

Dr Gerson said theory of mind ‘is a foundational skill for developing relationships with peers, teachers, and parents, and a skill that people take through their lives to develop relationships as adults’.

The paper, ‘Doll play improves false belief reasoning: Evidence from a randomized-control trial’, was published in the journal PLOS One.

It involved 80 children recruited via social media and from a local South Wales database, with 42 told to play with dolls, and 38 told to play with tablets.

Children’s understanding of ‘false belief’ was tested by asking them to consider a character who buries an object in the sand, and whether they would believe it was still in the same place if another person had secretly moved it.

The paper said: ‘We found the first causal evidence that doll play, more so than creative tablet play, improves false belief understanding in 4- to 8-year-old children.’

The authors noted other benefits, adding: ‘Children were more likely to play socially and use language expressing emotions when playing with dolls compared with tablets.

‘Parents also reported that children were more likely to play with their siblings, parents or friends with dolls.

‘This indicates that doll play can be influential in practising and improving social processing skills.’

The paper said that pending further research, giving children dolls to play with could be a ‘cost-effective’ way to ‘improve emotional comprehension’.

It said the study could potentially be ‘scaled up’ to whole schools and communities, to spread the potential benefits.

And it said the method could especially help ‘more solitary children’ to ‘engage in social interactions that encourage them to think and talk about others’ mental states’.

The findings come after Government research found around 98 per cent of children were watching screens on a daily basis by the age of two, and parents and teachers warned they were finding it harder to concentrate on learning when they started school.

The Government is expected to publish guidance on screen time for under-fives in April.