The imagination of young children has notable constraints. The outcomes and possibilities
that they imagine rarely deviate from the everyday regularities they have observed and …

Ownership is at the heart of people's daily activities and has been throughout history. People
consider ownership when acting on objects, engaging in financial matters, and assessing …

Young children often deny that improbable events are possible. We examined whether
children aged 5–7 (N= 300) might have more success in recognizing that these events are …

Abstract Five‐to 11‐year‐old US children, from either a religious or secular background,
judged whether story events could really happen. There were four different types of stories …

Highlights•People are more confident of the existence of scientific than religious
entities.•They give similar justification for believing in scientific and religious entities.•Adults …

Young children tend to deny the possibility of events that violate their expectations, including
events that are merely improbable, like making onion-flavored ice cream or owning a …

Young children, unlike adults, deny that improbable events can happen. We test two
accounts explaining this developmental shift. The development= reflection account posits …

Children often say that strange and improbable events, like eating pickle‐flavored ice cream,
are impossible. Two experiments explored whether these beliefs are explained by limits in …

Recent research has shown that a religious upbringing renders children receptive to
ordinarily impossible outcomes, but the underlying mechanism for this effect remains …

Children often judge that strange and improbable events are impossible, but the
mechanisms behind their reasoning remain unclear. This article (N= 250) provides evidence …