Grounded in reality: How children make sense of the unreal

In summarizing the nine articles comprising the Special Issue, Cognizing the Unreal, the editors make two major points. The first is that several articles show that children come to learn about what is real through their perceptions (particularly apparent in the articles by Markova & Legerstee, Goldstein & Bloom, Aguiar & Taylor, Gjersoe, Hall, & Hood, and Woolley & McInnis). Second, children's beliefs about what is real appear to be helped by their accessing underlying abstract structures and comparing these across domains, an idea supported by Shultman & Yoo, Corriveau & Harris, and Van Reet, Pinkham, & Lillard's articles, and given credence by Magid, Sheskin, & Shulz. This latter article proposes that the reason children pretend might be because it is a venue in which children learn to engage in cross-domain abstraction. The authors end with reflection on the cultural proclivity to give very young children fantasy. This proclivity might not serve children well, since (the articles suggest) it is through reality (both perceptions of and abstractions about reality) that children come to understand fantasy.