Imagination and Testimony in the Child’s Construction of Reality

Although children learn a great deal about reality from first-hand observation, they also learn from others’ testimony. For example, they learn about various invisible entities and beings, not from personal experience, but from what other people tell them. In four experiments, it is shown that children are confident of the existence of two important categories of invisible entity that they learn about via testimony: scientific entities such as germs and oxygen and special beings such as Santa Claus or God. However, children express more confidence in the existence of scientific entities than special beings. Two possible explanations for this difference are considered.