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Annual Review of Developmental Psychology

Volume 6, 2024

Somewhere, Somehow: Young Children Imagine Possibilities and Ask About Them

  • Paul L. Harris1
  • Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; email: [email protected]
  • Vol. 6:185-201 (Volume publication date December 2024)
  • Copyright © 2024 by the author(s).
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information.

Abstract

Studies of young children's communication with adults and of their engagement in make-believe play have typically been conducted in parallel, with little dialogue between the two research programs. This review seeks to underline close connections between children's communication with adults and the emergence of the imagination, especially among 2- and 3-year-olds. Young children's ability to imagine currently uncertain possibilities shapes the information-seeking questions that they put to other people. Their ability to imagine as-yet unrealized but desirable possibilities shapes the requests that they make of other people. In each case, children appraise the responses that they receive. In the absence of answers that resolve their information-seeking questions, they repeat their questions. In the absence of compliance with their requests, they repeat their requests. By implication, from an early age, children seek information and help from other people with as-yet unknown or unrealized possibilities in mind.

Keyword(s): ignorance, imagination, pretense, questions, requests, testimony
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2024-12-09
2025-06-15
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