Article

Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy for the Jewish Child and Parent

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Abstract

Jewish children (N = 140, aged 3 to 10 years) enrolled in Jewish Sunday schools or preschools were individually administered a structured interview about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Their parents (primarily Reform denomination) completed a self-administered questionnaire on their own attitudes toward these figures and toward Jewish tradition. Children's belief in both figures declined with age. Contrary to expectations, Jewish children believed in both figures equally regardless of parental encouragement, the child's behavioral participation in the myths, or parental commitment to Jewish tradition. Moreover, in comparison with previous studies of Christian children, Jewish children believed significantly less in not only Santa Claus but also the Tooth Fairy.

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... Also, with the exception of cross-religious studies (see e.g. Prentice & Gordon, 1986), it is difficult to obtain groups of similar children in which there is variation in participation in practices associated with these entities. Our goal is to explore the role of age and individual-difference variables on children's beliefs in a fantastical being by introducing children to a novel fantastical being. ...
... Although this research is informative regarding when children believe and how many fantasy beliefs children hold, researchers know little about factors related to belief in fantastical beings. Aside from Prentice and Gordon's (1986) investigation of Jewish children's belief in Santa Claus, researchers have not explored the role of individual differences in children's beliefs in fantastical beings. Yet research on other aspects of children's magical thinking indicates that they are important (Johnson & Harris, 1994;Subbotsky, 1993;. ...
... This finding has interesting implications for understanding the beliefs of children in families that do not support such practices. For example, Prentice and Gordon (1986) found that a sizable subset of the Jewish children they tested believed in Santa Claus. Our findings might allow us to make the prediction that the children in their sample who did believe were higher in Fantasy Orientation than were those who did not. ...
Article
Full-text available
Factors hypothesized to affect beliefs in fantastical beings were examined by introducing children to a novel fantastical entity, the Candy Witch. Results revealed that among older preschoolers, children who were visited by the Candy Witch exhibited stronger beliefs in the Candy Witch than did those who were not. Among children who were visited, older children had stronger beliefs than did younger children. Among children who were not visited, those with a high Fantasy Orientation believed more strongly than did those with a low Fantasy Orientation. Belief remained high one year later. At both time points, the number of other fantastical beings in which a child believed was significantly related to belief in the Candy Witch.
... The findings of the current study are also consistent with research investigating children's belief in fantasy and/or mythical figures (e.g., the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus) in relation to parents' encouragement of these beliefs (e.g., Clark, 1995;Prentice & Gordon, 1987). Prentice and Gordon (1987), for example, interviewed Jewish 3-to 10-year-olds regarding their beliefs in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and also administered a questionnaire to their parents assessing their tendency to encourage children to believe in these entities. ...
... The findings of the current study are also consistent with research investigating children's belief in fantasy and/or mythical figures (e.g., the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus) in relation to parents' encouragement of these beliefs (e.g., Clark, 1995;Prentice & Gordon, 1987). Prentice and Gordon (1987), for example, interviewed Jewish 3-to 10-year-olds regarding their beliefs in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and also administered a questionnaire to their parents assessing their tendency to encourage children to believe in these entities. They found no relationship between parental encouragement and children's belief in either of these fantasy figures. ...
Conference Paper
The purpose of this study was to investigate children’s and adolescents’ understanding of the concept of death and its associations with (a) parent-child conversations about death, (b) parents’ religiosity, (c) parents’ spirituality, (d) parents’ afterlife beliefs, and (e) family socioeconomic status. Participants were 180 students aged 5-16 years and their parents. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with children and adolescents. The “death concept” interview (e.g., Lazar & Torney-Purta, 1991; Panagiotaki, Hopkins, Nobes, Ward, & Griffiths, 2018) was the basis from which interview questions were drawn. In an attempt to assess biological understanding and psychological continuity, further questions adapted from the Questionnaire for Examination of Human Death (Smilansky, 1987) and the Afterlife Belief Task (Misailidi & Kornilaki, 2015) as well as open-ended questions about the meaning of the word “death” and its connotations were included. Parents completed a questionnaire about the conversations with their children about death. Questions adapted from the Religiosity Scale (Joseph & DiDuca, 2007) and the Royal Free Interview for Spiritual and Religious Beliefs (King, Speck, & Thomas, 2001) were added to evaluate their level of religiosity and/or spirituality, while the Belief in Afterlife Scale (Osarchuk & Tatz, 1973) was used to assess their afterlife beliefs. Parents also provided socio-demographic information. Our findings are consistent with existing literature regarding the developmental trajectory of the acquisition of the key aspects of death. However, there is much stronger evidence of coexistent thinking in our sample. In addition, our results indicate that parental discourse shapes children’s death understanding. Given that this is a rather neglected research issue, this study is expected to make a significant contribution and provide useful implications for developmentally appropriate practice in counseling and education.
... To further complicate matters, luck is thought to be an invisible process, and invisible processes and entities, both real and not-real, pose unique challenges to learning (Harris et al., 2006;Woolley & Brown, 2015). Whereas parents report encouragement of other supernatural concepts, like magic (Rosengren & Hickling, 1994) and Santa Claus (Prentice & Gordon, 1986), it is This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
... Unlike many natural causal explanations, supernatural explanations are not taught in school and, we reasoned, were unlikely to be tutored in the home. Yet, because many children referred to testimony as a source of their concepts, and because parents encourage other supernatural concepts like magic (Rosengren & Hickling, 1994) and Santa Claus (Prentice & Gordon, 1986), we considered it important to explore this input. ...
Article
Full-text available
In Study 1, 103 children ages 4 through 10 answered questions about their concept of and belief in luck, and completed a story task assessing their use of luck as an explanation for events. The interview captured a curvilinear trajectory of children's belief in luck from tentative belief at age 4 to full belief at age 6, weakening belief at age 8, and significant skepticism by age 10. The youngest children appeared to think of luck simply as a positive outcome; with age, children increasingly considered the unexpected nature of lucky outcomes and many came to view luck as synonymous with chance. On the story task, younger children attributed a stronger role to luck in explaining events than did older children. Studies 2 and 3 explored 2 potential sources of children's concepts. Study 2 explored adult use of the words luck and lucky, and found that most of this input consisted in using lucky to refer to positive outcomes, although the nature of use changed with the ages of the children. In Study 3, we examined children's storybooks about luck and found them to be rich potential sources of children's concepts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... The additional cultural pressure to believe in fictional characters is also strong at this age. For example, Prentice and Gordon (1987) found that even a number of Jewish children they tested believed in Santa Claus. ...
... An important area of future research would be to investigate children who are not given strong parental promotion of Santa Claus but still encounter him at the mall or in other public places-perhaps these children believe at the same rate as children whose parents strongly promote Santa, because they are experiencing directly what others take on testimony. Previous work showing existing Santa belief in Jewish children indicates the strong role that cultural testimony and experience may play (Prentice & Gordon, 1987) independent of parents or direct testimony. ...
... The findings of the current study are also consistent with research investigating children's belief in fantasy and/or mythical figures (e.g., the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus) in relation to parents' encouragement of these beliefs (e.g., Clark, 1995;Prentice & Gordon, 1987). Prentice and Gordon (1987), for example, interviewed Jewish 3-to 10-year-olds regarding their beliefs in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and also administered a questionnaire to their parents assessing their tendency to encourage children to believe in these entities. ...
... The findings of the current study are also consistent with research investigating children's belief in fantasy and/or mythical figures (e.g., the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus) in relation to parents' encouragement of these beliefs (e.g., Clark, 1995;Prentice & Gordon, 1987). Prentice and Gordon (1987), for example, interviewed Jewish 3-to 10-year-olds regarding their beliefs in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and also administered a questionnaire to their parents assessing their tendency to encourage children to believe in these entities. They found no relationship between parental encouragement and children's belief in either of these fantasy figures. ...
Article
Full-text available
This study examined the development of children's reasoning about the afterlife and its relationship with parental afterlife beliefs and testimony. A total of 123 children aged 5, 7, and 10 years were read a story describing the events that led to a person's death. After hearing the story, children were asked questions about the dead agent's biological, perceptual, epistemic-volitional, and emotional states and about the agent's capacity to engage in conscious mental activity. Parents completed a scale assessing the strength of their afterlife beliefs and a questionnaire examining aspects of parental discourse with children about death and the deceased. The results showed that, with age, children become more accurate at predicting the cessation of biological functions, perceptual states, and mental activity. However, children at all ages were reluctant to claim the cessation of epistemic-volitional and emotional states. Parents' afterlife beliefs and discourse about death and the afterlife were not related to children's afterlife responses. Our findings converge with the view that children's afterlife reasoning is grounded on cognitive mechanisms and may be less amenable to sociocultural input.
... To address these issues, 5-and 6-year-olds, all of whom participated in traditional rituals involving the Tooth Fairy myth, were interviewed about what happened when they lost their last primary tooth. This age range was used because prior research has demonstrated that belief in the Tooth Fairy is fairly common during this period (Clark, 1995;Harris et al., 1991;Prentice & Gordon, 1986), and many children loose their first primary tooth between the ages of 5 and 6 (Ash & Nelson, 2003). To assess the relation between fantasy beliefs and memory, a sorting task was used to classify the children as fully believing, uncertain, or disbelieving in the Tooth Fairy. ...
... Importantly, the Disbelievers' general exclusion of fantastic details was not due to a lack of participation in ritualized behaviors or a decreased exposure to tangible evidence in support of the myth. Consistent with the findings reported in prior work (Prentice et al., 1978;Prentice & Gordon, 1986; but see Woolley et al., 2004), parental support to believe was equivalent among belief groups. Further, the Disbelievers did not exhibit a general disbelief in fantasy figures (for similar results, see Prentice et al., 1978;Prentice, Schmechel, & Manosevitz, 1979); rather, their incredulity appeared specific to the Tooth Fairy. ...
Article
Full-text available
Whereas past research has demonstrated that children's beliefs about the real world can influence their memory for events, the role of fantasy beliefs in children's recall remains largely unexplored. We examine this topic in 5- and 6-year-olds by focusing on how belief in a familiar fantasy figure, namely the Tooth Fairy, is related to children's memory for their most recent primary tooth loss. Although children who fully believed in the reality of the Tooth Fairy provided more voluminous and complex accounts than those with less strong beliefs, they also provided the most fictitious reports, frequently characterized by claims of hearing or seeing the Tooth Fairy. Belief in the Tooth Fairy did not affect the accuracy of children's reports of the mundane elements of their tooth loss, and many fantastic claims were linked to real events. Exposure to seemingly tangible evidence of the Tooth Fairy's existence was associated with the provision of fantastic claims. This research was supported by a grant from Ursinus College.Portions of this research were presented at the meetings of the Cognitive Development Society, San Diego, CA, October 2005, and the Society for Research in Child Development, Boston, MA, April 2007.
... Blair et al. (1980), Morison and Gardner (1978, Pt. II), Prentice and Gordon (1986), and Samuels and Taylor (1994) asked children to categorize various entities as real or fantastical. This sort of procedure requires children to identify as fantastical a variety of specific entities, many of which are presented to the child through his or her immediate and broad culture as being real (e.g., Santa Claus). ...
... Of the 15 younger participants in Samuels and Taylor (1994), six consistently made fantasy-reality confusions throughout the experiment, whereas seven rarely or never made them. Prentice and Gordon (1986) report that 23% of their sample believed in Santa Claus, and 25% believed in the tooth fairy. Because most studies only report mean scores on their items, it is difficult to determine the extent of individual differences, but it is clear that they do exist. ...
Article
Young children are often viewed as being unable to differentiate fantasy from reality. This article reviews research on both children's and adults beliefs about' fantasy as well as their tendency to engage in what is thought of as “magical thinking.” It is suggested that children are not fundamentally different from adults in their ability to distinguish fantasy from reality: Both children and adults entertain fantastical beliefs and also engage in magical thinking. Suggestions are offered as to how children and adults may differ in this domain, and an agenda for future research is offered.
... Blair et al. (1980), Morison and Gardner (1978, Pt. II), Prentice and Gordon (1986), and Samuels and Taylor (1994) asked children to categorize various entities as real or fantastical. This sort of procedure requires children to identify as fantastical a variety of specific entities, many of which are presented to the child through his or her immediate and broad culture as being real (e.g., Santa Claus). ...
... Of the 15 younger participants in Samuels and Taylor (1994), six consistently made fantasy-reality confusions throughout the experiment, whereas seven rarely or never made them. Prentice and Gordon (1986) report that 23% of their sample believed in Santa Claus, and 25% believed in the tooth fairy. Because most studies only report mean scores on their items, it is difficult to determine the extent of individual differences, but it is clear that they do exist. ...
Article
Young children are often viewed as being unable to differentiate fantasy from reality. This article reviews research on both children's and adults' beliefs about fantasy as well as their tendency to engage in what is thought of as "magical thinking." It is suggested that children are not fundamentally different from adults in their ability to distinguish fantasy from reality: Both children and adults entertain fantastical beliefs and also engage in magical thinking. Suggestions are offered as to how children and adults may differ in this domain, and an agenda for future research is offered.
... In a similar survey of adults in New York and Pennsylvania, 46% admitted to a strong or partial belief that walking under a ladder would bring them bad luck, while the same percentage thought that crossing their fingers would have the opposite effect (Blum 1976). By contrast, a survey of 3 to10-year olds attending a Jewish Sunday School found that only 23% believed in Santa Claus and 25% in the tooth fairy (Prentice & Gordon, 1987). ...
Thesis
Magical thinking is a widely recognised but barely understood symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Since Freud published his famous case study of the “Rat Man” more than a century ago, little of note has been written about its distinctive phenomenology, whilst progress towards identifying its developmental and neurobiological origins has been fitful. This thesis proposes a new conceptual framework for understanding the delusions of agency, causation and association which characterise the symptom formation, based on a content analysis of semi-structured interviews with 14 OCD individuals and a systematic review of historical cases reported by child and adolescent psychotherapists working at a leading UK clinic. The framework is rooted in two contemporary models of the mind with demonstrable links to Freudian theory: the neuropsychoanalytical ideas of Solms, Panksepp and others and the free-energy formulation of Friston and colleagues. We conceptualise the early obsessional fears of magical thinkers as the anticipation of a high-entropy state, described by Freud as the “death complex”, demanding repeated action – no matter how irrational – to restore homeostasis and a feeling of safety. Following Solms and Panksepp, we consider the apparent shift from goal-directed behaviour to stimulus-response habits in the documented cases as a means of regulating negative affect through the automatisation of safety-seeking behaviour. Such efforts are continually disturbed, however, by intrusive thoughts and “not just right” experiences, which we link to excessive attention – and attribution of salience – to sensory signals associated with the original prediction of harm.
... Cultural background, including familial spiritual beliefs, seems to play only a small role in influencing children's conceptions of fantastical beings. In a study by Prentice & Gordon (1987), researchers interviewed 140 middle-class Jewish children, ages 3 to 10, about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and administered open-ended instruments on behavior interaction with imaginary figures, the ability to discriminate fantasy versus reality, and their reaction to the discovery of the figures' mythical basis. Parents also answered self-administered questionnaires on their attitudes toward encouraging children's belief in fantastical beings and their commitment to Jewish tradition. ...
Article
Our study looks at conversations between parents/caregivers and their children about potentially sensitive topics including birth, sex, death, and fantastical beings (i.e. Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny). Our paper covers information on what children know, Parent conversations, and cultural differences between all these topics. Our methods Are broken up into two parts: a parent survey and an informative website. The survey was distributed locally and included questions about parents’ beliefs towards how much their children knew about these topics and their attitudes about having the conversations. The website was created to be a tool for parents and combines the key findings of our literature review with our own survey-based research.
... We know less about the processes underlying children's evaluation of content in realitystatus judgments. The basic ability to distinguish real from not real is present by the age of 3 (e.g., Bunce & Harris, 2013;Woolley & Wellman, 1990), but the ability to properly determine the reality status of both familiar (Prentice & Gordon, 1987;Principe & Smith, 2008;Sharon & Woolley, 2004) and novel entities (Boerger, Tullos, & Woolley, 2009;Woolley, Boerger, & Markman, 2004;Woolley & Van Reet, 2006) continues to develop into adulthood. In discussing the steps that underlie assessment of reality status, Woolley (1997) proposes that both adults and children engage in the process of belief consistency detection. ...
Article
In two studies we attempt to capture the information processing abilities underlying children's reality-status judgments. Forty 5- to 6-year-olds and 53 7- to 8-year-olds heard about novel entities (animals) that varied in their fit with children's world knowledge. After hearing about each entity, children could either guess reality status immediately or listen to testimony first. Informants varied in their expertise and in their testimony, which either supported or refuted the entities’ existence. Results revealed that children were able to evaluate the fit between the new information and their existing knowledge; this information then governed their decision regarding whether to seek testimony. Testimony had the strongest effect when new information did not conflict with, but was also not representative of, children's knowledge.
... Likewise, children whose parents engage in behaviors that presuppose the existence of a fantasy character -e.g., creating evidence that the character visited their house -are more likely to believe in those characters than children whose parents do not (Woolley, Boerger, & Markman, 2004;Boerger, Tullos, & Woolley, 2009). And children whose parents do not endorse the existence of Santa may still believe in Santa if exposed to cultural support for that belief outside the household, as documented among U.S. children raised in Jewish households (Prentice & Gordon, 1987) and in fundamentalist Christian households (Clark, 1998). ...
... Research also identifies an initial resistance to the existence of novel entities, and a shift with development first toward increasing acceptance and then, in many cases, returning later to a skeptical view. Level of belief in novel beings appears to form an inverted U-shaped developmental pattern rather than the traditional pattern of a linear decrease with age common in discussions of belief in cultural fantasy figures such as Santa Claus (e.g., Prentice & Gordon, 1986) and the Tooth Fairy (Principe & Smith, 2008a;2008b). In Woolley, Boerger, and Markman (2004), for example, children were introduced in their preschool to a novel fantastical being, the Candy Witch. ...
Article
Far from being the uncritical believers young children have been portrayed as, children often exhibit skepticism toward the reality status of novel entities and events. This article reviews research on children's reality status judgments, testimony use, understanding of possibility, and religious cognition. When viewed from this new perspective it becomes apparent that when assessing reality status, children are as likely to doubt as they are to believe. It is suggested that immature metacognitive abilities are at the root of children's skepticism, specifically that an insufficient ability to evaluate the scope and relevance of one's knowledge leads to an overreliance on it in evaluating reality status. With development comes increasing ability to utilize a wider range of sources to inform reality status judgments.
... With regard to distinguishing real versus fantastical events, Samuels and Taylor (1994) found that 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, were able to distinguish fantastical storybook pictures from realistic pictures. Children also report belief in fantastical figures such as the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus well into the early elementary school years (Blair, McKee, & Jernigan, 1980;Prentice & Gordon, 1986;Principe & Smith, 2008). Overall, these results reveal a substantial amount of development in children's ability to distinguish between ''real'' and ''not real'' in reference to everyday actions, events, objects, and entities. ...
Article
Four- to 6-year-old children (N = 131) heard religious or nonreligious stories and were questioned about their belief in the reality of the story characters and events. Children had low to moderate levels of belief in the characters and events. Children in the religious story condition had higher levels of belief in the reality of the characters and events than did children in the nonreligious condition; this relation strengthened with age. Children who used God as an explanation for the events showed higher levels of belief in the factuality of those events. Story familiarity and family religiosity also affected children's responses. The authors conclude that God's involvement in a story influences children's belief in the reality of the characters and events in that story.
... Yetr esults have been inconclusive. Prentice and Gordon (1986) interviewed Jewish children 3-10years of ageabout their beliefsinSanta Clausand the ToothF airy as well as administeringaquestionnairet op arents about their encouragement of these figures. Parental encouragemento fb elief in these fantasy figures wasnot found to be related to children's beliefs. ...
Article
Full-text available
Recent research indicates that preschoolers make sophisticated choices in accepting testimony as a source of knowledge. Nonetheless, many children accept fantastical beings as real based on misleading testimony. The present study probes factors associated with belief in a novel fantastical figure, the Candy Witch, that 3- to 7-year-olds heard about at school. Short-term belief was predicted by an interaction of age, existing beliefs in fantastical figures, and whether the child was 'visited' by the Candy Witch. Stability of belief was assessed over the course of 3 weeks and again 1-year later. First year results revealed three patterns of belief: stable belief, wavering belief and stable non-belief. First year belief status was not related to age, but older children from the stable belief group were more likely than younger children to disbelieve 1-year later. The discussion presents a new proposal for the trajectory from belief to disbelief and an updated perspective on the role of individual differences in belief.
... (2) Can they use this information to determine whether the novel entity is real or pretend? Here is one potential scenario concerning a commonly believed-in fantastical being, Santa Claus (Prentice & Gordon, 1987; Sharon & Woolley, 2004). First, children may begin with a hypothesis. ...
Article
These studies investigate children's use of scientific reasoning to infer the reality status of novel entities. Four- to 8-year-olds heard about novel entities and were asked to infer their reality status from 3 types of evidence: supporting evidence, irrelevant evidence, and no evidence. Experiment 1 revealed that children used supporting versus irrelevant and no evidence differentially. Experiment 2 demonstrated that children without initial reality status biases were better at evaluating evidence than were biased children. In conclusion, the ability to infer reality status from evidence develops incrementally between ages 4 and 6, and children perform better when their evaluation is free from bias.
Article
Young children are epistemically vigilant, attending to the reliability, expertise, and confidence of their informants and the prior probability and verifiability of their claims. But the pre‐eminent requirement of any hypothesis is that it provides a potential solution to the question at hand. Given questions with no known answer, the ability to selectively adopt new, unverified, speculative proposals may be critical to learning. This study explores when people might reasonably reject known facts in favor of unverified conjectures. Across four experiments, when conjectures answer questions that available facts do not, both adults (n = 48) and children (4.0–7.9 years, n = 241, of diverse race and ethnicity) prefer the conjectures, even when the conjectures are preceded by uncertainty markers or explicitly violate prior expectations.
Article
For centuries, Santa Claus has proved to be a pervasive, persistent and influential mythic figure who dominates children’s lives for several weeks each year. But unlike most other fantasy figures, Santa Claus is presented as a real entity, a feat achieved through the widespread deception of children. This deception primarily involves a child’s family, but is also encouraged and maintained by wider society and its institutions. That educators could involve themselves in such a deception seems particularly controversial. Given their role as providers of epistemic goods, it appears like a dereliction of duty for them to seemingly encourage credulity and to deceive their students to maintain their false beliefs. However, I argue that there are epistemic benefits that can reaped by children through their experience of believing in Santa Claus and the process of independently disabusing themselves of these beliefs. For these benefits to be attained, educators must reluctantly engage in low-level paternalistic deception to keep their students in the dark about the truth, before then actively helping them to learn important epistemic lessons and foster key intellectual virtues as a result of their experiences. This justifies educators’ modest involvement in the Santa Claus deception.
Book
The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anthropology, archaeology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and the arts. An integrated theoretical-empirical-applied picture of the field is presented, which stands to inform researchers, students, and practitioners about the issues of relevance across the board when considering the imagination. With each chapter, the nature of human imagination is examined – what it entails, how it evolved, and why it singularly defines us as a species.
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This qualitative study addresses the lack of research into the role of trusted adults in the spiritual lives of children. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine children from a British primary school and the data analysed using a grounded theory approach. Six categories were identified outlining the reciprocal relationship of unavailability and withholding between children and their trusted adults and how children made sense of spirituality in the absence of explicit guidance. It was found that the children had little opportunity for negotiating a shared understanding or experience of spirituality with adults and, as a result, either preserved an isolated and secret sense of spirituality or accepted what they observed to be their trusted adults' stance. The practical and theoretical implications of the children's responses in the absence of trusted adults are discussed and recommendations are made for practice and future research.
Article
To examine how children's fantasy beliefs can affect memory for their experiences, 5- and 6-year-olds with differing levels of belief in the reality of the Tooth Fairy were prompted to recall their most recent primary tooth loss in either a truthful or fun manner. Many of the children who fully believed in the existence of the Tooth Fairy reported supernatural experiences consistent with the myth under both sets of recall instructions, whereas those who realized the fictionality of the myth recalled mainly realistic experiences. However, those children with equivocal beliefs evidenced a different pattern under each set of instructions, recalling mainly realistic experiences when asked to be truthful and reporting many fantastical experiences when prompted to relate the tooth loss in a fun manner. These findings suggest that children's beliefs in the reality of fantastic phenomena can give rise to genuine constructive memory errors in line with their fantasies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Article
Full-text available
Young children are often thought to confuse fantasy and reality. This study took a second look at preschoolers' fantasy/reality differentiation. We employed a new measure of fantasy/reality differentiation—a property attribution task—in which children were questioned regarding the properties of both real and fantastical entities. We also modified the standard forced-choice categorization task (into real/fantastical) to include a ‘not sure’ option, thus allowing children to express uncertainty. Finally, we assessed the relation between individual levels of fantasy orientation and fantasy/reality differentiation. Results suggest that children have a more developed appreciation of the boundary between fantasy and reality than is often supposed.
Article
One annual tradition that children participate in is writing letters to Santa Claus. While parents and teachers pass on the general “rules” for the letters, the children often dictate the contents. The current study focused on whether the letters to Santa have changed over the years, especially in light of recent terrorist actions (for example, on the World Trade Center and Pentagon), and if so, how. Although many aspects of the letters to Santa have remained the same across the years, results indicated that requests for gifts for other people and the number of patriotic sentiments and drawings increased in 2001 and 2002. Also, compared to the year 2000, fewer gifts were requested in 2001. Santa Claus appears to be conceptualized as part demigod, part social worker, and part grandfather. The letters to Santa Claus provide a provocative and insightful look into the everyday life and world events that impact children.
Article
Fifty-two children who no longer believed in Santa Claus were individually administered a structured interview on their reactions to discovering the truth. Their parents completed a questionnaire assessing their initial encouragement of the child to believe in Santa and rating their child's reactions to discovering the truth as well as their own reactions to the child's discovery. Parental encouragement for the child to believe was very strong. Children generally discovered the truth on their own at age seven. Children reported predominantly positive reactions on learning the truth. Parents, however, described themselves as predominantly sad in reaction to their child's discovery.
Article
In three experiments, children's reliance on other people's testimony as compared to their own, first-hand experience was assessed in the domain of ontology. Children ranging from 4 to 8 years were asked to judge whether five different types of entity exist: real entities (e.g. cats, trees) whose existence is evident to everyone; scientific entities (e.g. germs, oxygen) that are normally invisible but whose existence is generally presupposed in everyday discourse; endorsed beings (e.g. the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus) whose existence is typically endorsed in discourse with young children; equivocal beings (e.g. monsters, witches) whose existence is not typically endorsed in discourse with young children; and impossible entities (e.g. flying pigs, barking cats) that nobody believes in. Children make a broad dichotomy between entities and beings that they claim to exist (real entities; scientific entities; and endorsed beings) and those whose existence they deny (equivocal beings and impossible entities). They also make a more fine-grained distinction among the invisible entities that they claim to exist. Thus, they assert the existence of scientific entities such as germs with more confidence than that of endorsed beings such as Santa Claus. The findings confirm that children's ontological claims extend beyond their first-hand encounters with instances of a given category. Children readily believe in entities that they cannot see for themselves but have been told about. Their confidence in the existence of those entities appears to vary with the pattern of testimony that they receive.
Article
Full-text available
Investigated factors associated with the presence or absence of imaginary companions in 222 4-yr-olds using a mailed questionnaire completed by their parents. Section I of the authors' Imaginary Companion Questionnaire was designed to elicit a variety of demographic data on the children and their families and was completed by all parents. Section II was devised to obtain data concerning the imaginary companion itself and was completed only by parents of those children (N = 63) who currently or in the recent past had imaginary companions. Data are presented on family structure, play activities, and personality characteristics of the children, as well as characteristics of their imaginary companions. Results indicate that reducing loneliness is 1 of the multiple functions served by imaginary companions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
The developmental progression of children's belief in three major figures of early childhood was examined through structure interviews with children and questionnaires for parents. Belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy varied with the child's age and the level of parental encouragement of belief. However, belief in these figures was unrelated to other indices of the child's fantasy involvement.
Article
AbstractSeventy-two children (24 each from preschool, first, and third grades) were individually administered a structured interview assessing their belief in Santa Claus, as well as measures of causal reasoning and fantasy predisposition. Belief in Santa declined markedly with age. Level of causal reasoning increased with age and was related to decline in belief in Santa. Belief in Santa was unrelated to fantasy predisposition. Results were discussed within the framework of Gould's cognitive-affective theory of development which emphasizes the coexistence of several levels of cognitive maturity as the child learns to distinguish reality from make-believe.
Article
Previous investigators have identified several intellective and personality variables thought to be related to imaginary companion phenomena in young children. In the current study, the presence or absence of imaginary companions was assessed and related to intelligence, several creativity measures, and waiting ability in 84 preschool children comprised equally of boys and girls. No significant differences were found for these major variables between those children who had imaginary companions and those who did not. The findings arc compared with previous descriptive, and empirical literature on imaginary companions. Directions for future research on imaginary companion phenomena are briefly discussed.
Twolfactor index of social position Unpublished man-uscript Jewish children often feel left out at Christ-mas
  • A B Hollingshead
Hollingshead, A. B. (1957). Twolfactor index of social position. Unpublished man-uscript, Yale University, Department of Sociology, New Haven. Kirschenbaum, C. (1982, December 19). Jewish children often feel left out at Christ-mas. Austin American-Statesman, p. E-1.
Jewish children's belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Unpublished master's thesis
  • D A Gordon
Gordon, D. A. (1981). Jewish children's belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Texas at Austin.
Children's ideas about Santa Claus
  • F E Ducombe
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That Christmas problem-some prickles on the holly
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Individual and family cor-relates of imaginary companions in preschool children Should Christmas mean anything to Jews? Jewish Digest
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The annual dilemma: Should a Jewish child celebrate Christmas? Ladies Home Journal
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The Jewish American family
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Cluster analysis for applications The American Christmas: A study in national culture Little rabbit's loose tooth Children's belief in Santa Claus
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The present study is one of a series exploring the significance of imagi-nary figures in the lives of young children (Manosevitz, Fling, & Prentice, REFERENCES Anderberg, M. R. (1973). Cluster analysis for applications. New York: Academic Barnett, J. H. (1954). The American Christmas: A study in national culture. New Bate, L. (1975). Little rabbit's loose tooth. New York: Scholastic. Blair. J. R., McKee, J. S., & Jernigan, L. G. (1980). Children's belief in Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy. Psychological Reports, 46, 691-694.