ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what children understand about the imagination. A child who sorted correctly would point to the not real box for the thought about a cookie and the real box for the real cookie. Children’s judgements about the two scenarios involving physical objects differed in predictable ways. A similar interpretation can be placed on children’s size scaling in their drawings of nice or nasty things. Thoughts have a representational quality, meaning that they can depict some aspect of reality—they can be about reality and thus possess the quality of “aboutness”. A sceptic would be forgiven for having lingering doubts about whether the children really did regard the thought bubbles in anything like the way one might understand actual thoughts. Children aged around 3 years know a remarkable amount about mental phenomena, despite the fact that they still have a lot to learn.
