Denying the possible: Why children judge the improbable impossible

Judgments of whether events are possible or impossible matter when people choose goals and decide what to believe, yet preschoolers and even school-aged children make surprising errors when judging whether events are possible. In contrast with the popular view of children entertaining the possibility of the marvelous and fantastic, children often deny that unusual events and impermissible actions can happen in real life. They even sometimes deny these events can happen in stories and dreams. In this chapter, we review experimental work on these surprising possibility denials, including studies that have attempted to bring children to recognize these events as possible. We also review work examining other aspects of how young children judge whether events are possible, including their judgments that some impossible events are more impossible than others. We review theories that may account for young children's possibility denials and outline remaining questions for future research.