Effects of Context on Judgments Concerning the Reality Status of Novel Entities Jacqueline D. Woolley The University of Texas at Austin Jennifer Van Reet The University of Virginia Three studies examined the effects of context on decisions about the reality status of novel entities. In Experiment 1 (144, 3- to 5-year-olds), participants less often claimed that novel entities were real when they were introduced in a fantastical than in a scientific context. Experiment 2 (61, 4- to 5-year-olds) revealed that defining novel entities with reference to scientific entities had a stronger effect on reality status judgments than did hearing scientifically oriented stories before encountering the novel entities. The results from Experiment 3 (192, 3- to 6-year-olds) indicated that definitions that support inferences facilitate reality status judgments more than do definitions that simply associate novel and familiar entities. These findings demonstrate that children share with adults an important means of assessing reality status. Children are frequently exposed to new information. Much new knowledge results from firsthand ex- perience with the world. For example, young children often acquire knowledge about animals through interacting with their family pet. However, children are also exposed to unfamiliar concepts for which firsthand experience is not available. Children may hear about new things by conversing with others, reading storybooks, or watching television, and must assimilate these concepts without direct experience. Much of this sort of information is ve- ridical, and represents entities that truly exist (e.g., the planets). Yet some information is not and repre- sents nonexistent entities (e.g., the Easter Bunny). Often the new information that children encounter contains a mix of real and fantastical. For example, Elmo, a muppet monster, teaches children about science, and Harry Potter, a boy, performs magic spells. A critical task of childhood is to separate the real from the unreal and to assign entities and events to their proper (real or not real) categories. The ability to differentiate between what is real and what is not is basic to human cognition, yet children have traditionally been viewed as confused about it. The traditional view of young children is that they are credulous and effortlessly believe most of what adults tell them (Dawkins, 1995; Gilbert, 1991; Piaget, 1930). Piaget (1930) first painted this picture of the child as a credulous being, who, with age, develops into a skeptical, rational thinker. Gilbert (1991) used the presumed credulity of children to support his Spi- nozan model of belief formation, in which informa- tion is first accepted automatically and only later evaluated critically. Researchers outside of psych- ology have also accepted and endorsed the view of young children as credulous, some even proposing that it might be adaptive to be so (Dawkins, 1995). This credulity is purported to lead to a range of errors about what is real and what is not, as reflected, for example, in beliefs in the existence of fantastical entities like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. There is evidence, however, that children are not entirely credulous and that the ability to distinguish reality from nonreality develops significantly during the preschool years. Research has shown that chil- dren as young as age 3 distinguish between real things and toys, between real things and pictures, and between real and pretend entities (DeLoache, Pierroutsakos, Uttal, Rosengren, & Gottlieb, 1998; Flavell, Flavell, & Green, 1989; Woolley & Wellman, 1990). Other research has addressed children’s abil- ity to differentiate mental states, like imagination, from reality (Estes, Wellman, & Woolley, 1989; Harris, Brown, Marriott, Whittall, & Harmer, 1991; r 2006 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2006/7706-0019 We thank the children and adults who participated and the staff at the Children’s Research Lab, as well as the following people who helped with data collection: Jennelle Anderson, Mary Clark, Victoria Cox, Tiffany Dang, Jennifer Friedman, Christie Garner, Megan German, Rebecca Katchinoski, Matt Maa, Yarot Montoya, Jeff Nelson, Laura Palm, Dana Pitts, Mysti Pride, Lisa Rogers, Ike Shipman, Ansley Tullos, Young Song, Vi Quach, Sapna Veluru, and Tony Vo. We are grateful to Beth Boerger, Cheryl Browne, Huay-Ying Lo, and Rebecca Lengnick-Hall for comments on the original manuscript. Experiment 2 was conducted as the Honors Thesis of Jennifer Van Reet. The results of this research were presented at the 3rd biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society , October 2003. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jacqueline Woolley, Department of Psychology, 1 University Sta- tion, A8000, The University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712. Child Development, November/December 2006, Volume 77, Number 6, Pages 1778 – 1793