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Updated: Aug 20, 2025

Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm
Published on: April 28, 2016
Imaginative processes in children are not particularly imaginative
Deena Skolnick Weisberg1, David M Sobel2
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Villanova University, Tolentine Hall, Villanova, PA 19085, USAdeena.weisberg@villanova.edustarlabkids.org.
Abstract:
The authors argue that children prefer fictions with imaginary worlds. But evidence from the developmental literature challenges this claim. Children's choices of stories and story events show that they often prefer realism. Further, work on the imagination's relation to counterfactual reasoning suggests that an attraction to unrealistic fiction would undermine the imagination's role in helping children understand reality.
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