CHILDRENS ABILITY TO DISTINGUISH FANTASY EVENTS FROM REAL-LIFE EVENTS

Children's ability to discriminate events that could happen in real li fe from fantasy events was examined by asking 62 preschool children if events depicted in illustrations from storybooks could happen in real life. For half the children, the pictures showed emotionally neutral events and for the other half, the pictures showed emotionally charged events. The older children (mean age = 5 : 0), but not the younger ch ildren (mean age = 3 : 10), were able to distinguish fantasy events fr om real events. Children in the emotion condition tended to report tha t the events (both fantasy and real) could not happen in real life. Th e younger children were as likely to report that a fantasy event could happen in real life as to report that it could happen in a dream.