Imaginary agents exist perceptually for children but not for adults

Mental imagery refers to representations and the accompanying experience of sensory information in the absence of appropriate sensory input. Little is known about children’s social imagery, imagery about an agent. It is possible that children’s social imagery may qualitatively differ from that of adults by involving more perceptual characteristics. We conducted three experiments to investigate the perceptual existence of social imagery when induced by verbal cues. Experiment 1 was a precondition for Experiments 2 and 3, and we examined whether children’s and adults’ predictive eye movements were disrupted by the presence of a real person’s face. Preschool children (n = 20) and adults (n = 20) watched a video where a woman, with/without her face shown, placed balls into a bucket. Participants’ gazes were less predictive of the woman’s actions in ‘Face’ versus ‘No-Face’ videos, indirectly indicating the perceptual presence of agents. Next, we examined whether adults’ and children’s predictive eye movements were affected by imagining a person. In Experiment 2, adult participants were presented with a video where the balls moved automatically and were asked to either watch the video (Ball condition, n = 20) or imagine that an invisible person moved the balls (Imagination condition, n = 20). Adult gazes did not differ between conditions. However, in Experiment 3, preschool children’s gazes were less predictive when imagining an invisible person’s actions (Invisible condition, n = 20) than when not imagining anything (Ball condition, n = 20) or when imagining an object (Fan condition, n = 20). The results suggest that children experience realistic social imagery induced by verbal cues.