Based on the testimony of others, children learn about a variety of figures that they never meet. We ask when and how they are able to differentiate between the historical figures that they learn about (e.g., Abraham Lincoln) and fantasy characters (e.g., Harry Potter). Experiment 1 showed that both younger (3- and 4-year-olds) and older children…

Presents a theory of pretense in which pretense representations are contained in a separate mental workspace, a Possible World Box, part of the basic architecture of the human mind with several similarities to beliefs. Maintains that pretend play is motivated from a desire to act in a way that fits the description being constructed in the Possible…

Tested whether 2- to 4-year olds could reason with incongruent syllogisms when encouraged to use their imagination. Randomly assigned 2-, 3-, and 4-year olds to one of four conditions (no cue, word cue, fantasy planet, or imagery) and presented syllogistic reasoning problems with incongruent information. Found that in imagination conditions, 2-…