Research and common lore suggest that children subscribe to a rich world of fantasy, including beliefs about magical entities and events. This study explores how children use magic to explain events they witness in the real world. Children 4, 6, and 8 years of age were asked a set of interview questions designed to assess general magical beliefs. They were then presented with physical events and were asked to predict and explain their occurrence and to state whether they believed the events were magical. The extent of children's magical beliefs, as measured by the interview, decreased with age. Regarding explanations of events, the availability of correct physical explanations for the events accounted for a significant portion of the variance in children's claims that the events were magic
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Phelps et al. (1994) studied this question.
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