	Casting back to anxiety as a catalyst of non-rational thinking, a study by Simonds, Demetre, and Read examined the link between the acquisition of magical thinking and a spectrum of anxiety disorders, most notably obsessive-compulsiveness.  What brought them to investigate the particular association between anxiety levels and magical thinking were previous studies on the relationship between ritualized behavior in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and magical thinking.  It has been hypothesized that individuals diagnosed with OCD may perform repetitive, ritualized behavior to mitigate anxiety, with the individual “acting as if s/he believes that outcomes can be influenced by behaviors that have little or no causal bearing on the event in question”.  Several questionnaires were distributed and used to determine a sample of non-clinical children's levels of anxiety and magical thinking, with the result being a positive correlation between magical thinking and generalized forms of anxiety.
	On the other hand, fantastical modes of thinking need not be relegated only to the realm of fear.  Between the ages of two and three, children are likely to begin their foray into the land of make believe.  This could be an attempt to fend off anxiety or seek control, but arguably, may reflect the mind's tendency to seek out novelty and stave off boredom.  In a study conducted by Teresa Belton, she examined the imaginative nature of children's make-believe tales and discovered that children's first-hand experience provided the most material for the creation of their imaginative stories.  Additionally, she also posits that television may detract from children's imaginative abilities, as children devote increasing amounts of time toward external stimuli rather than engaging the creative processes of their own mind.  The fact that imagination and fantastically-based thinking is found to be lacking in children who frequently watch television illustrates the communicable nature of magical thinking from direct experience.  This, again, supports the existence of phenomenalistic reasoning.  While children are still within the formative period during which prototypal phenomenalism serves as their go-to mode of reasoning, then outside influences such as television could have an impact on their cognitive development in such a way as to inhibit or otherwise limit the range of their fantastical thinking.  Further research on the nature of boredom in relation to imaginative processes in children might provide more insight as to the cause behind an almost ubiquitous tendency toward fantasy in young children and the nascent development of magical causality.
	For the nonce, copious evidence suggests that children as well as adults appear to revert to magical thinking when compelled by anxiety-inducing or generally uncontrollable situations.  Moreover, there are telling commonalities between the constraints placed on both ordinary and magical causal reasoning that suggest a precedent process is at work behind the scenes of human cognition.  Subbotsky ties these similarities together in what is known as the “coexistence model”, wherein scientifically-based causal reasoning is not the usurper of the mind, as has been previously speculated, but merely a later-developed method of causality against a submerged background of alternate ways of reasoning.  Magical thinking is one such causal reasoning process, and it can be spurred to the forefront as a way for the mind to regain control in distressful situations that threaten the self or selfhood.
