Imagination is the ability to produce images, ideas and sensations in the mind without any immediate input of the senses (such as seeing or hearing). It is also described as the forming of experiences in the mind, which can be recreations of past experiences such as vivid memories with imagined changes or that they are completely invented.[1] Imagination helps make knowledge applicable in solving problems and is fundamental to integrating experience and the learning process.[2][3][4][5] A basic training for imagination is listening to storytelling (narrative),[2][6] in which the exactness of the chosen words is the fundamental factor to "evoke worlds".[7]
Imagination is a cognitive process used in mental functioning and sometimes used in conjunction with psychologicalimagery. It is considered as such because it involves thinking about possibilities.[8] The cognate term of mental imagery may be used in psychology for denoting the process of reviving in the mind recollections of objects formerly given in sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts with that of ordinary language, some psychologists have preferred to describe this process as "imaging" or "imagery" or to speak of it as "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" or "constructive" imagination. Constructive imagination is further divided into voluntary top-down imagination driven by the prefrontal cortex, that is called mental synthesis, and spontaneous bottom up involuntary generation of novel images that occurs during dreaming. Imagined images, both novel and recalled, are seen with the "mind's eye".
Imagination, however, is not considered to be exclusively a cognitive activity because it is also linked to the body and place, particularly that it also involves setting up relationships with materials and people, precluding the sense that imagination is locked away in the head.[9]
Imagination can also be expressed through stories such as fairy tales or fantasies. Children often use such narratives and pretend play in order to exercise their imaginations. When children develop fantasy they play at two levels: first, they use role playing to act out what they have developed with their imagination, and at the second level they play again with their make-believe situation by acting as if what they have developed is an actual reality.[10]
