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Early Constraints on the Imagination: The Realism of Young Children
Author(s) -
Harris Paul L.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.13487
Subject(s) - counterfactual thinking , psychology , perspective (graphical) , scope (computer science) , variety (cybernetics) , literal and figurative language , realism , imagination , epistemology , aesthetics , cognitive psychology , social psychology , art , visual arts , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , artificial intelligence , programming language
The imagination of young children has notable constraints. The outcomes and possibilities that they imagine rarely deviate from the everyday regularities they have observed and remembered. Their reality‐based imagination is evident in a variety of contexts: early pretend play, envisioning the future, judgments about what is possible, the instructive role of thought experiments, tool making, and figurative drawing. Overall, the evidence shows that children’s imagination helps them to anticipate reality and its close alternatives. This perspective invites future research on the scope of children's thinking about counterfactual possibilities, their ability to make discoveries about reality on the basis of thought experiments, and the ways in which cultural input can expand the scope of the possibilities that they entertain.