As children get older, they become better able to discriminate between impossible and improbable statements and they realize that improbable events can occur in reality while impossible ones cannot. However, when children hear about extraordinary events from fictional entities (e.g., popular characters from children's media), they may be more…

Children aged 3 to 8 years old and adults were tested on a reality–fantasy distinction task. They had to judge whether particular entities were real or fantastical, and response times were collected. We further manipulated whether the entity is a specific character or a generic fantastical entity. The results indicate that children, unlike adults,…

In this study, the authors assessed children's ability to use information overheard in other people's conversations to judge the reality status of a novel entity. Three- to 9-year-old children (N = 101) watched video clips in which two adults conversed casually about a novel being. Videos contained statements that explicitly denied, explicitly…