YOUNG CHILDREN'S UNDERSTANDING OF IMAGINATION

拟议的研究涉及儿童的一个基本方面， 认知和社会发展--他们对心灵的理解。 对思维的理解在功能的能力中起着关键作用 作为有效的社会存在。如果没有别人的理解 精神状态，如信仰和想法，人们将无法 沟通和互动明智。拟议的工作将审查一个 这一理解重要但尚未探索的方面-儿童的 关于想象力的知识儿童对想象力的理解 学习有几个重要的原因。首先，作为伪装的一部分， 它是探索成人经验的工具， 身份其次，最近的理论赠款想象力在 对人类行为的理解的出现。最后，对于成年人来说， 想象力是创造性思维的源泉， 新发现 尽管理解想象力很重要，但这个问题 在儿童心智理解的研究中，这一问题一直被忽视。最 研究集中在儿童对认知的理解方面， 精神状态--这些精神状态，比如信念， 与物理现实的直接互动，并声称代表现实 说实话然而，从研究中得出的结论更为广泛， 包括儿童对表征心理状态的理解 一般来说。这就提出了几个关于儿童健康的重要问题。 理解虚构的心理表征--那些心理状态， 就像想象力一样，是代表性的，但并不意味着 准确反映现实。拟议的研究将审查 发展幼儿对虚构心理的理解 想象力的状态。该建议涉及三个领域的问题： 孩子们对想象力和 物理现实？(2)孩子们的能力是否存在差异， 想象关于虚构与 认知心理状态;（3）儿童对 想象力和其他心理状态的起源？这些问题的答案 将填补我们对儿童理解的空白， 想象力，并将有助于制定更全面的 关于儿童对心灵的理解的理论。

The proposed research addresses a fundamental aspect of children's cognitive and social development -- their understanding of the mind. Understanding of the mind plays a critical role in the ability to function as effective social beings. Without an understanding that others have mental states, like beliefs and ideas, people would be unable to communicate and interact sensibly. The proposed work will examine an important yet unexplored aspect of this understanding -- children's knowledge about imagination. Children's understanding of imagination is important to study for several reasons. First, as a component of pretense, it serves as a vehicle for exploration of adult experiences and identities. Second, recent theorizing grants imagination a central role in the emergence of an understanding of human behavior. Finally, for adults and children, imagination serves as a source of much creative thinking and new discoveries. Despite the importance of an understanding of imagination, this question has been neglected in research on children's understanding of mind. Most studies have focused on aspects of children's understanding of epistemic mental states -- those mental states, like beliefs, that originate in direct interaction with physical reality and purport to represent reality truthfully. The conclusions drawn from the research are broader, however, encompassing children's understanding of representational mental states generally. This raises several important questions about children's understanding of fictional mental representations--those mental states, like imagination, that are representational, but do not purport to represent reality accurately. The proposed studies will examine the development of young children's understanding of the fictional mental state of imagination. The proposal addresses questions in three areas: (l) what is children's understanding of the correspondence between imagination and physical reality? (2) are there differences in children's ability to conceive of multiple representations with regard to fictional versus epistemic mental states, and (3) what do children understand about the origin of imagination and other mental states? Answers to these questions will fill a gap in our knowledge of children's understanding of imagination specifically, and will aide in developing more comprehensive theories about children's understanding of the mind more generally.