Although philosophers have long claimed that reading fiction has the potential to improve imaginative capacities, empirical evidence on this topic is limited. We report an experiment that aims to conceptually replicate and extend previous work by Djikic and colleagues by testing whether reading literary fiction reduces the need for closure, and by…

There is very little research on imagination in the context of leadership in general, and even less in relation to educational leadership. Drawing on available research on imagination in leadership and scholarship in the field of imagination, this qualitative content analysis seeks to add to foundational understanding of imagination's role in…

Although recognising multiple creativities as an interdisciplinary and contemporary approach to creativity represents the basic opportunity for future change, the assessment of children's musical creativity is a problematic and insufficiently explored area. The paper discusses the problem of encouraging and assessing the creative musical potential…

This research investigates how children located in separate homes use the psychological function of imagination to engage in sociodramatic play using networked digital technologies. Specifically, it examines how 7- to 8-year-old children create imaginary play situations in the same "Minecraft: Education Edition" digitally-mediated…

Knowing how children become oriented to imaginary play can help educators in centres better support development. But how this begins in the first years of life is not well understood. How toddlers transform through their imagination concrete objects (such as play accessories, figurines, and books) to become props in play (placeholders and pivots)…

A variety of studies have attempted to explain the dispositions of imagination; notably, imagination engages and develops an individual's creativity. In the present study, we propose that three types of imagination dispositions (i.e., epistemic, sensory, and future imagination) serve as cognitive mechanisms for the ability to efficiently generate…

Pretend play provides enriched environments for multiple cognitive and social purposes. The quality of children's pretend play depends on the process, including children's back and forth proposals and responses about the play frames. Proposing and responding to play ideas with metacommunication use, leadership-followership interactions are…

Readers assume that commonplace properties of the real world also hold in realistic fiction. They believe, for example, that the usual physical laws continue to apply. But controversy exists in theories of fiction about whether real "individuals" exist in the story's world. Does Queen Victoria exist in the world of "Jane Eyre,"…

The use of natural and non-natural play materials in early childhood education is a critical facilitator to children's learning and development. Different materials vary in their affordances for sophisticated play, imagination, and creativity, which contribute to children's complex thinking; with the current focus on technology, it has been…

Background: Children with Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) display impaired pretend play abilities, reflective of broader social-cognitive challenges. Pretend play interventions for children with PWS demonstrate preliminary efficacy for improving cognitive and affective processes in play. It is unknown which specific intervention strategies, such as…

Recent evidence suggests that constraints can facilitate creative thinking rather than hinder it. This research tested how individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) affect the creativity of ideas generated under conditions of low and high constraint. Participants generated short sentences with either low or high constraints placed on…

The purpose of this study is to explore a theoretical idea in relation to a body of empirical material from a reading activity involving a picturebook on shadow. The theoretical idea, sprung from variation theory, entails children's discernment through synchronic simultaneity as a key to their ability to imagine. To explore this idea, an analysis…

This study explores how youth engage with literacy practices in the age of AI through the use of counter-cartographies within the Nayah-Irú curriculum. By critically examining digital platforms and the underlying algorithms, students embarked on a journey to understand and challenge the pervasive influence of artificial intelligence in their…

In order to create and foster learning spaces that build upon children's knowledge and experiences, we must respect and value their ways of knowing and being, including their play. Accordingly, this study highlights the ways that young children (re)imagined spaces, materials, and identities through their digital play in an analog (containing no…

Despite an established body of research characterizing how creative individuals explore their "external" world, relatively little is known about how such individuals navigate their "inner mental life", especially in unstructured contexts such as periods of awake rest. Across two studies, the present manuscript tested the…