The phenomenon of imaginary companions (ICs) has received little attention in developmental psychology, even though it can be observed in approximately 25% of preschool-aged children. Only a few studies have investigated the effect of ICs on children's theory of mind and emotion understanding, and the results are partial or inconsistent. This…

Children are able to distinguish between regular events that can occur in everyday reality and magical events that are ordinarily impossible. How do children respond to a person who brings about magical as compared with ordinary outcomes? In two studies, we tested children's acceptance of informants' claims when the informants had produced either…

The practice of make-believe has traditionally been viewed as valuable by psychologists and philosophers more or less exclusively as a mechanism for social initiation, a tool for everyday problem solving, or a method for children to learn about adult responsibilities. This instrumentalist approach has influenced the development of a wide variety…

Stories are a place where magical things happen, where ideas are challenged, where the imagination runs free and questions are asked. They are a safe place, where the reader can walk about with new identities, try new ideas, process life's ups and downs and make new meanings. This makes stories the perfect place for creative learning. In this…

Boredom has traditionally been associated with a range of negative outcomes, both within the workplace and outside it. More recently, however, it has been suggested that boredom can have positive outcomes, one of which might be increased creativity. This study addressed this proposition by examining the relationship between boredom and creative…

How can we explain children's understanding of the unseen world? Young children are generally able to distinguish between real unobservable entities and fantastical ones, but they attribute different characteristics to and show less confidence in their decisions about fantastical entities generally endorsed by adults, such as Santa Claus. One…

Mind wandering--mentation unrelated to one's current activity and surroundings--is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but seemingly competing ideas have been proposed regarding its relation to executive cognitive processes. The control-failure hypothesis postulates that executive processes prevent mind wandering, whereas the global availability hypothesis…

Overexcitability is a component in Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration. This cross-sectional study investigated the psychological profile, including the five overexcitability dimensions (psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual, emotional), of three talented groups of dancers (n = 84), opera singers (n = 62), and athletes…

Drawing on the theory of dialogism and the literature on children's culture and cultural resistance, this article investigates the contextual and textual features of the cultural making of a group of children in sociodramatic play in a Hong Kong kindergarten. Different from other, similar studies, this study reports that under the gaze of the…

This study explored unique constructs of fantasy orientation and whether there are developmental benefits for fantasy-oriented children. By age 3, children begin developing executive functions, with some children exhibiting high fantasy orientation in their cognitions and behaviors. Preschoolers ("n" = 106) completed fantasy orientation…

Educational television for young children often combines factual content with fantasy. In 2 experiments, we examined 3- to 5-year-olds' reality judgments and the implications for their learning. In the 1st study, 145 children watched 3 clips featuring (respectively) a Hispanic, a Chinese American, and an Anglo character. Responses indicated…

Little research has explored valence and autonomy in children's imaginary relationships. In the present study, a new interview (modeled after an existing measure for real relationships) was designed to elicit descriptions of both positive and negative interactions with imaginary companions and to provide a measure of relationship valence and…

This article argues for the idea of different moments in Vygotsky's work while highlighting combinations of ideas and concepts that were particularly emphasized in distinct moments of his work. After Vygotsky's death, these moments were not considered a theoretical system in development, either in former Soviet psychology or in Western…

When he painted a portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1552-1612), Giuseppe Arcimboldo used his imagination, and portrayed him as "Vertumnus," the Roman god of vegetation and the seasons. It's fun to find the different fruits, vegetables and flowers he used: pea-pod eyelids, a gourd for the forehead. Court painters of the time usually…

Four-year-olds, 6-year-olds, and adults were asked to make judgments about the reality status of four different types of machines: real machines that children and adults interact with on a daily basis, real machines that children and adults interact with rarely (if at all), and impossible machines that violated a real-world physical or biological…