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Evidence from developmental psychology on children's imagination is currently too limited to support Dubourg and Baumard's proposal and, in several respects, it is inconsistent with their proposal. Although children have impressive imaginative powers, we highlight the complexity of the developmental trajectory as well as the close connections between children's imagination and reality.

To fully understand teaching, we need to know how it develops ontogenetically. Developmental questions about the emergence of different types of teaching behaviour in young humans and the psychological capabilities that underpin them are currently overlooked. Incorporating the individual's development from learner to teacher would expand the scope and impact of Kline's useful framework.

Recent data show that human children (up to 8 years old) perform poorly when required to innovate tools. Our tool-rich culture may be more reliant on social learning and more limited by domain-general constraints such as ill-structured problem solving than otherwise thought.