Final answer:
Cognitive development is necessary for a child to engage in social-dramatic play, as it involves complex thinking like role-playing and understanding different perspectives.
Step-by-step explanation:
Linked with the emergence of social-dramatic play, more complexity in a child's cognition is required to engage in such play because there is a change in kind. This is associated with cognitive development. Cognitive development involves learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, creativity, and the ability to understand and engage in more complex forms of social interactions, such as social-dramatic play.
During cognitive development, children form an understanding of objects and their properties, as seen in research by developmental psychologists like Piaget and Baillargeon. As children grow, they demonstrate a variety of cognitive changes. For instance, they develop from concrete thinking to abstract thinking, becoming capable of considering multiple points of view and imagining hypothetical situations. This cognitive complexity is necessary for children to participate in and understand social-dramatic play, which involves pretending, role-playing, and understanding the perspectives of different characters.