The youngest readers' dilemma: A review of children's learning from fictional sources

- We review the literature on children's learning from fiction in a variety of domains.
- Children can learn words, facts, concepts, behaviors, and attitudes from fiction.
- Children sometimes learn incorrect information from fictional media.
- Many different media-level and child-level factors affect learning.
- More research is needed on the effectiveness of fiction as an educational tool.

Young children are surrounded by fictional media, including books, videos, and games. Often they are expected to learn new information from these explicitly fictional sources, while simultaneously avoiding confusion about what is true in the real world versus what is true only in fictional worlds. How do children navigate this “reader's dilemma”? The current review addresses this question by first examining whether fiction can change children's real-world knowledge or behaviors, both generally and through learning of specific pieces of information from fictional contexts. The bulk of this research suggests that children can learn new information from fiction. We then ask whether fiction teaches children more effectively than other types of activities or than nonfiction media, as well as whether there are differences in children's learning from realistic as opposed to fantastical fiction. Many open questions about these topics remain, including how selective children are when learning from fiction, which properties of the media affect their selectivity, how long children retain information learned from fictional contexts, and how child-level factors like age may affect this learning. We close the review by addressing these issues and offering some suggestions for future research in this area.