Distinguishing between fantasy and reality is a skill that develops with age. As children grow up, they are faced with both fantastical and realistic situations and are not only expected to learn from them, but also to distinguish between them. Children realize that stories can represent reality, yet many children’s storybooks are set in fantastical settings and/or involve fantastical entities. Thus, in order to learn from stories, children must determine which of this information applies to the real world. In making this determination, one cue children use is story context. Participants will hear stories with differing contexts and will then be asked to assess the reality status of a novel entity encountered within the story. My current hypothesis is that children use the context of a story to help determine the reality status of novel entities encountered within a given story..

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