Marjorie Taylor - The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination [2013][A]

Book Description
Publication Date: April 30, 2013
Children are widely celebrated for their imaginations, but developmental research on this topic has often been fragmented or narrowly focused on fantasy. However, there is growing appreciation for the role that imagination plays in cognitive and emotional development, as well as its link with children's understanding of the real world. With their imaginations, children mentally transcend time, place, and/or circumstance to think about what might have been, plan and anticipate the future, create fictional relationships and worlds, and consider alternatives to the actual experiences of their lives.
The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination provides a comprehensive overview of this broad new perspective by bringing together leading researchers whose findings are moving the study of imagination from the margins of mainstream psychology to a central role in current efforts to understand human thought. The topics covered include fantasy-reality distinctions, pretend play, magical thinking, narrative, anthropomorphism, counterfactual reasoning, mental time travel, creativity, paracosms, imaginary companions, imagination in non-human animals, the evolution of imagination, autism, dissociation, and the capacity to derive real life resilience from imaginative experiences. Many of the chapters include discussions of the educational, clinical, and legal implications of the research findings and special attention is given to suggestions for future research.

Review
"The book explores imagination in individuals diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders. Interesting research shows that children with ADHD or conduct disorder display deceased pretend play. Future thinking is a relatively new aspect in this field, which the authors believe develops at the age of three and is related to language and inhibitory control. The book ends with suggestions for future research. The chapters are organized in a fairly uniform manner, with abstracts, key words, conclusions, future directions, further readings, and references. Figures and tables help clarify the research findings, though there are not very many of them. The book is very readable." --Doody's

About the Author
Marjorie Taylor, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon.