Engaged in play: Seven-year-olds’ engagement with the play frame when playing with toy figures and their engagement with the fictional world of a video game

Children’s engagement in fictional worlds created when playing with toys and video games has received little research attention. We explored whether children’s engagement with the play frame when playing with toy figures was associated with their engagement with the virtual world in a video game in a community sample of 251 seven-year-olds (M = 6.95 years, SD = 0.38, 44 % girls). Using observational coding, we found that children’s engagement with the play frame by enacting roles ‘within’ the fictional world was positively associated with engaging with the virtual world in the video game. We also found that child characteristics, particularly children’s sex and their propensity to talk during play, were associated with their engagement in the two forms of play, and explained the associations in engagement between play contexts. These findings are discussed in terms of the features of the two contexts of play and how they promote children’s engagement with the fictional worlds.