People spontaneously create counterfactual alternatives to reality when they think “if only” or
“what if” and imagine how the past could have been different. The mind computes …

Counterfactuals are thoughts about alternatives to past events, that is, thoughts of what
might have been. This article provides an updated account of the functional theory of …

Abstract Thinking about what might have been—counterfactual thinking—is a common
feature of the mental landscape. Key questions about counterfactual thinking center on why …

Theory of mind, or" mindreading" as it is termed in this book, is the ability to think about
beliefs, desires, knowledge and intentions. It has been studied extensively by …

Animal brains have evolved to predict outcomes of events in the immediate environment [1–
5]. Adult humans are particularly adept at dealing with environmental uncertainty, being able …

Pretend play is a form of playful behavior that involves nonliteral action. Although on the
surface this activity appears to be merely for fun, recent research has discovered that …

There is currently much controversy about which, if any, mental states chimpanzees and
other nonhuman primates understand. In the current two studies we tested both …

Recent neurological evidence suggests that rats can mentally represent novel spatial
trajectories and then are more likely to follow these paths in the future. Consequently, it has …

Our tendency to engage in episodic counterfactual thinking—namely, imagining alternative
ways in which past personal events could have occurred but did not—is ubiquitous …

Counterfactual reasoning is a hallmark of the human imagination. Recently, researchers
have argued that children do not display genuine counterfactual reasoning until they can …