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A Good Story: Children With Imaginary Companions Create Richer Narratives
Child Development
Abstract
In line with theories that children's pretend play reflects and extends their narrative skills, children with imaginary companions were predicted to have better narrative skills than children without imaginary companions. Forty-eight 5(1/2)-year-old children and their mothers participated in interviews about children's imaginary companions. Children also completed language and narrative assessments. Twenty-three of the children (48%) were deemed to have engaged in imaginary companion play. Children with and without imaginary companions were similar in their vocabulary skills, but children with imaginary companions told richer narratives about a storybook and a personal experience compared to children without imaginary companions. This finding supports theories of a connection between pretend play and storytelling by the end of early childhood.
... Although young children routinely exercise their imaginations in a variety of ways, from simple symbolic play in which they substitute one object for another (e.g., pretending to use a banana as a telephone), to elaborate role-playing games with other children or adults, creating an IC is considered to be the epitome of young children's imaginative capability (see Singer & Singer, 1990;Taylor, 1999). Children with ICs have advanced narrative and social-cognitive skills compared to children without ICs (Taylor, 1999;Taylor & Mannering, 2006;Trionfi & Reese, 2009), and some parents perceive the children's ICs to be fulfilling important sociocognitive functions (Gleason, 2017;Gleason & Kalpidou, 2014). Anecdotal evidence (Taylor, 1999) suggests that children's imaginary companions can be significant figures in family life and that family stories are often created about children's imaginary companions. ...
... The reported overall prevalence of imaginary companions ranges from 17% (Bouldin & Pratt, 1999) to 65% (Singer & Singer, 1990). However, when this percentage is broken down by age of reporting, the average rates tend to be higher in research involving children (see e.g., Davis, Meins, & Fernyhough, 2011, 2013Gleason, 2004aGleason, , 2004bGleason & Kalpidou, 2014;Manosevitz, Prentice, & Wilson, 1973;Taylor, Sachet, Maring, & Mannering, 2013;Trionfi & Reese, 2009) than in research involving adolescents and adults (e.g., Bonne, Canetti, Bachar, De-Nour, & Shalev, 1999;Brinthaupt & Dove, 2012;Gleason, Jarudi, & Cheek, 2003;Kidd, Rogers, & Rogers, 2010;Schaefer, 1969). It is important to note, however, that Taylor and colleagues (2004) found that only 39% of the 6-to 7-year-old children who had reported an imaginary companion when they were 3-4 years old could recall the companion they had described earlier. ...
... The current study is the first, to our knowledge, to track prospectively children's memory for imagining into adolescence. At age 5½, children and their mothers reported in separate interviews on children's past and present imaginary companions, and 23 out of the 48 children (48%) were assessed as having an imaginary companion (Trionfi & Reese, 2009). At age 16, 46 of the original sample (95%) reported on their imaginary companions from childhood. ...
Do adolescents remember imaginary companions (ICs) from early childhood? Researchers interviewed 46 adolescent participants in a prospective longitudinal study about their ICs from early childhood (age 5½). The existence of one or more ICs was documented in early childhood for 48% of children (G. Trionfi & E. Reese, 2009). At age 16, most adolescents had forgotten their early childhood ICs: Only 5 of the 23 participants who had early childhood ICs recalled those ICs later. Eight participants who had forgotten their early childhood ICs recalled a later IC, and four participants who did not have an IC at age 5 ½ reported one by age 16. Ten of the 23 participants who had early childhood ICs claimed never to have had an IC. Girls were more likely to recall their early childhood ICs. Retrospective reports of ICs in adolescence or later life may be unreliable for investigating differences between those with and without imaginary companions. Those with ICs may not be a homogenous group, with some creating ICs throughout childhood and some desisting from this behavior in early childhood. Findings indicate that both the remembering and forgetting of ICs has potential to illuminate cognitive and creative processes surrounding both memory and imagination.
... Studies in the field of developmental psychology have shown that ICs may play an important role in children's social, emotional, and cognitive development (Bouldin & Pratt, 2002;Giménez-Dasí, Pons, & Bender, 2014;Gleason, 2004a;Gleason & Kalpidou, 2014;Hoff, 2005;Mottweiler & Taylor, 2014;Taylor, 1999;Taylor & Carlson, 1997). For example, research has shown that children with ICs may have more developed sociocognitive skills (Roby & Kidd, 2008;Taylor & Carlson, 1997) or narrative skills (Trionfi & Reese, 2009) compared to those without ICs. Other studies examined the effects of ICs in children's coping competence (Benson & Pryor, 1973;Bouldin & Pratt, 2002;Gleason & Kalpidou, 2014;Hoff, 2005). ...
... Indeed, Taylor and Mannering (2006) reanalyzed the data they collected and reported that, of the 592 descriptions of ICs, 356 (60.14%) pertained to IFs, whereas 236 (39.86%) pertained to special toys and objects that functioned as an IC (i.e., PO). This is not an unusual case, because several studies have showed a similar pattern in the prevalence of ICs (Davis, Meins, & Fernyhough, 2011;McInnis, Pierucci, & Gilpin, 2013;Trionfi & Reese, 2009). ...
... Some variants of this method exist in the extant body of research. Some researchers regarded children to have an IC if the parents or the children indicated the presence of an IC (Trionfi & Reese, 2009), whereas other studies required both parents and children to indicate the existence of ICs (Davis et al., 2011). In the strictest form, children and parents were interviewed twice, and their responses were required to be consistent at two different time points (Taylor & Carlson, 1997). ...
Having an imaginary companion (IC) is a fascinating example of children's imaginative and pretend play. However, there are inconsistencies in the reported prevalence of children's ICs. This study examined how culture may affect this prevalence. We conducted a meta-analysis to assess whether the culture, as well as age, assessment method, sex, and birth order, may affect the prevalence of ICs in studies that included children under age 12. The results revealed that culture, as well as assessment method and sex/birth order, may have a significant impact on the prevalence of ICs. Specifically, children in Western cultures were more likely to report invisible friends as compared to children in Japan, but the total prevalence of ICs did not differ across cultures. We illustrate several implications for future research on ICs.
... Além disso, os amigos imaginários parecem ajudar a criança a lidar com problemas emocionais ou medos (Taylor, 1999), podendo inclusive promover resiliência (Taylor, Hulette, & Dishion, 2010). O fenômeno tem sido associado ainda a aspectos muito positivos do desenvolvimento, como: (a) criatividade (e.g., Hoff, 2005b), (b) sociabilidade ou competência social (Gleason, 2002;Hoff, 2005a;Manosevitz, Prentice, & Wilson, 1973) e (c) competência narrativa (Taylor, Cartwright, & Carlson, 1993;Trionfi & Reese, 2009). ...
... A criação de amigos imaginários também tem sido associada a diversas vantagens linguísticas. Mais especificamente, quando comparadas a pares que não se engajam nesse tipo de faz de conta, as crianças com amigos imaginários apresentam: (a) habilidades verbais mais maduras, entre os 4 e 8 anos (Bouldin, Bavin, & Pratt, 2002); (b) produção de narrativas mais ricas, aos 5 anos, mesmo controlando-se vocabulário (Trionfi & Reese, 2009); (c) além de maior competência em comunicação referencial, em que a tomada de perspectiva é requerida, entre crianças de 4 a 6 anos (Roby & Kidd, 2008). ...
... Confirmando a hipótese inicial, a criação de amigos imaginários se correlacionou positivamente com a medida de linguagem receptiva, sugerindo que o fenômeno se associa a uma linguagem mais desenvolvida, conforme os dados de Davis et al. (2011). Cabe ressaltar que a literatura indica que o fenômeno se associa, ainda, a outras habilidades verbais, como uma linguagem mais sofisticada (Bouldin et al., 2002), habilidades comunicativas referenciais mais desenvolvidas (Roby & Kidd, 2008) e uma maior habilidade narrativa (Trionfi & Reese, 2009). ...
Resumo A criação de amigos imaginários é uma manifestação de faz de conta comum na infância, que tem sido pouco explorada na literatura psicológica. A presente pesquisa teve como objetivo investigar a relação entre esse fenômeno e o desenvolvimento da linguagem e da cognição social. Quarenta crianças entre 6 e 7 anos (18 com amigos imaginários e 22 sem) foram avaliadas por medidas de teoria da mente, compreensão emocional e vocabulário, bem como entrevistas para explorar o engajamento em fantasia. Uma entrevista sobre as experiências de fantasia da criança foi feita com 11 pais/responsáveis. Os resultados sugerem que o fenômeno se associa a um vocabulário receptivo mais desenvolvido e não é indicativo de déficits em desenvolvimento sociocognitivo.
... Studies in the field of developmental psychology have shown that ICs may play an important role in children's social, emotional, and cognitive development (Bouldin & Pratt, 2002;Giménez-Dasí, Pons, & Bender, 2014;Gleason, 2004a;Gleason & Kalpidou, 2014;Hoff, 2005; Mottweiler & Taylor, 2014;Taylor, 1999;Taylor & Carlson, 1997). For example, research has shown that children with ICs may have more developed socio-cognitive skills (Roby & Kidd, 2008;Taylor & Carlson, 1997) or narrative skills (Trionfi & Reese, 2009) compared to those without ICs. Other studies examined the effects of ICs in children's coping competence (Benson & Pryor, 1973;Bouldin & Pratt, 2002;Gleason & Kalpidou, 2014;Hoff, 2005). ...
... Indeed, Taylor and Mannering (2006) re-analyzed the data they collected, and reported that, out of the 592 descriptions of ICs, 356 (60.14%) pertained to IFs, whereas 236 (39.86%) pertained to special toys and objects that functioned as an IC (i.e., PO). This is not an unusual case, because several studies have showed a similar pattern in the prevalence of ICs (Davis, Meins, & Fernyhough, 2011;McInnis, Pierucci, & Gilpina, 2013;Trionfi & Reese, 2009). ...
... Some variants of this method exist in the extant body of research. Some researchers regarded children to have an IC if the parents or the children indicated the presence of an IC (Trionfi & Reese, 2009), whereas other studies required both parents and children to indicate the META-ANALYSIS OF IMAGINARY COMPANIONS 8 8 existence of ICs (Davis, et al., 2011). In the strictest form, children and parents were interviewed twice and their responses were required to be consistent at two different time points (Taylor & Carlson, 1997). ...
Having an imaginary companion (IC) is a fascinating example of children’s imaginative and pretend play. However, there are inconsistencies in the reported prevalence of children’s ICs. This study examined how culture may affect this prevalence. We conducted a meta-analysis to assess whether the culture as well as age, assessment method, sex, and birth order may affect the prevalence of ICs in studies that included children under 12 years of age. The results revealed that culture as well as assessment method and sex/birth order may have a significant impact on the prevalence of ICs. Specifically, children in Western cultures were more likely to report invisible friends as compared to those in Japan, but the total prevalence of ICs did not differ across cultures. We illustrate several implications for future research on ICs.
... Dječačka je imaginacija nerijetko i nešto drugačija od one u djevojčica, pri čemu dječaci osmišljavaju prijatelje s kojima proživljavaju razne avanture, a djevojčice se češće uključuju u igru pretvaranja koja zahtijeva brigu ili njegu. Sukladno tome, djevojčice će češće imati izmišljene prijatelje koji imaju važnu ulogu u stvaranju sociodramatičke igre, dok će dječaci češće utjeloviti snažniji i kompetentniji lik ili personificirati određeni objekt o kojima manje ovisi kreacija same igre (7,10,14,19). Te razlike ipak ostaju primijećene samo kod mlađih dobnih skupina, jer na uzorcima djece ranog školskog uzrasta, ali i kasnije, autori ne pronalaze statistički značajne spolne razlike u javljanju fenomena izmišljenih prijatelja (7,18). ...
... Sukladno tome, djevojčice će češće imati izmišljene prijatelje koji imaju važnu ulogu u stvaranju sociodramatičke igre, dok će dječaci češće utjeloviti snažniji i kompetentniji lik ili personificirati određeni objekt o kojima manje ovisi kreacija same igre (7,10,14,19). Te razlike ipak ostaju primijećene samo kod mlađih dobnih skupina, jer na uzorcima djece ranog školskog uzrasta, ali i kasnije, autori ne pronalaze statistički značajne spolne razlike u javljanju fenomena izmišljenih prijatelja (7,18). ...
... Tako velik broj istraživanja ukazuje kako je interakcija s izmišljenim prijateljima pozitivno povezana s lingvističkim vještinama (4,7,23,28,30). Na području razumijevanja tuđih emocija autori pronalaze značajnu korelaciju između prisutnosti izmišljenih prijatelja te sposobnosti za razumijevanje emocija drugih (10). Uz to, djeca s izmišljenim prijateljima pokazuju ranije razumijevanje lažnih vjerovanja od ostale djece (2). ...
The question of emotional, social and cognitive development outcomes in children involved in playing with an imaginary companion is still open. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the frequency and age of manifestation of imaginary companions as well as to investigate the relationship between the phenomena of imaginary companions, social competence and behavioral problems on the sample of preschool children. The study included 224 parents of children aged between 2 and 7 years. The parents provided information about the children's imaginary companions, their social competence and internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems. The results indicate that 40.2% of the children in the sample had an imaginary companion, and the most frequent age of occurrence was around 3 years of age. It was more common for girls to have imaginary companions, and most of the children were imagining only one companion who was then commonly present for a few months. The imaginary companion was the same age as the child in 31% of the children and was the same gender for 92% of the boys and 49% of the girls. The study also found that children with and without imaginary companions had equal levels of social competence but not of externalizing problems, which were lower in children with imaginary companion. The young girls with imaginary companions were more likely to have greater internalizing problems than the rest of the sample. © 2017 Croatian Academy for Medical Sciences. All rights reserved.
... Therefore, they do not completely match the characteristics of general transitional objects. In this case, stuffed toys are imaginary companions [31,32]. Many young children have imaginary companions [33]. ...
... Many young children have imaginary companions [33]. Children with imaginary companions have more friends, are less shy, are more imaginative, have a better understanding of the theory of mind, and have better language skills in real life [32]. Imaginary companions are important friends who share daily lives with children for a certain period and support their development. ...
... The high fantasy-proneness inherent to IC play (Wilson & Barber, 1983) might further allow children to practice and expand creative thought, thereby promoting intellectual and creative growth (Somers & Yawkey, 1984). This agrees with findings that children with ICs are capable of more covert private speech (Davis et al., 2013), constructing more complex narratives (Trionfi & Reese, 2009), as well as sharing details about their IC experiences with interested adults (Gleason, 2004). But the news is not all good. ...
... Particularly, children with ICs have more active imaginations than children who do not have ICs in that their fantasy lives are enriched with more vivid imagery in daydreaming or playing pretend games (Bouldin, 2006). Additionally, children with ICs appear to have a stronger "theory of mind" (i.e., ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others) and better emotional understanding (Gimenez-Dasi et al., 2016;Taylor & Carlson, 1997), show a coherent developmental pattern in adulthood towards social orientation characterized by sensitivity and accommodation to others' needs (Gleason et al., 2003), have a better understanding of questioner requirements in conversation (Roby & Kidd, 2008), and are able to tell richer narratives about storybooks and personal experiences (Trionfi & Reese, 2009). The findings on vivid imagination and narrative ability are especially relevant to Fernyhough et al.'s (2019) comments about IC engagement. ...
... Πιο συγκεκριμένα, σύμφωνα με έρευνες που έχουν γίνει, τα αφηγήματα των παιδιών αυτών που ενισχύονται οι αφηγηματικές τους ικανότητες από το οικογενειακό πλαίσιο, έχουν πιο πλούσιες αφηγήσεις από τα παιδιά που δεν ενισχύονται. Επιπλέον, σύμφωνα με τους Dodwell & Davin (2008), τα παιδιά με καλή μνήμη (λεκτική μνήμη) και αυτά που έχουν κάποιο φανταστικό φίλο ή έχουν εξοικειωθεί με το συμβολικό παιχνίδι και το παιχνίδι προσποίησης (Trionfi & Reese, 2009), παρουσιάζουν συνήθως πιο σύνθετη σύνταξη και μακρύτερες δηλώσεις. Στην ηλικία των 5-6 ετών, τα παιδιά είναι ικανά να αφηγηθούν ιστορίες με αρκετά επεισόδια και τα αφηγήματά τους να έχουν συνοχή καθώς παράγουν ολοκληρωμένες ιστορίες (Βοσνιάδου, 1992(Βοσνιάδου, & Κάτη, 2009(Βοσνιάδου, & McCabe, 1994. ...
... Δυσκολεύεται η ανάκληση παλιών πληροφοριών που μπορεί να χρειάζονται για τα αφηγήματά τους ή η ανάκληση μια ιστορία(Dodwell & Bavin, 2009).Επιπροσθέτως, ένας άλλος παράγοντας που επηρεάζει τα αφηγήματα των παιδιών είναι και το συμβολικό παιχνίδι. Αν τα παιδιά έχουν κάποιο φανταστικό φίλο ή έχουν αναπτύξει την ικανότητα του συμβολικού παιχνιδιού και του παιχνιδιού προσποίησης(Trionfi & Reese, 2009) τότε, παρουσιάζουν συνήθως πιο σύνθετη σύνταξη και μεγαλύτερες προτάσεις Τα παιδιά με ΔΑΦ παρουσιάζουν προβλήματα στο συμβολικό παιχνίδι και για αυτό παρουσιάζουν και ελλείματα στα αφηγήματά τους.Σε αυτό το σημείο, είναι σημαντικό να αναφερθεί πως ένα κομμάτι του πραγματολογικού τομέα βασίζεται στην επικοινωνιακή πρόθεση. Η επικοινωνία είναι ένα πολύ σημαντικό εργαλείο για τους ανθρώπους και εξυπηρετεί πολλούς σκοπούς. ...
... Children's oral narrative skills were measured at 51 and 65 months with a story retell procedure (see Reese et al., 2012;Trionfi & Reese, 2009). At each age, a researcher read an unfamiliar storybook to the child (The Snowy Day (Keats, 1962) at 51 months and A Perfect Father's Day (Bunting, 1991) at 65 months), asking the child a series of comprehension questions at predetermined points during the reading (see Reese, 1995;Snow, Tabors, Nicholson, & Kurland, 1995). ...
... All early childhood assessments took place in the families' homes (see Reese & Read, 2000;Trionfi & Reese, 2009). The meth- odology and other results from the age 12 phase of the study have been published in detail elsewhere ( Reese et al., 2010), so only a brief overview of the relevant measures from that assessment are provided here. ...
Previous research suggests that (a) individual differences in reading and language development are stable across childhood, (b) reading and vocabulary are intertwined, and (c) children's oral narrative skill contributes to later reading comprehension. Each of these three phenomena is assessed using a longitudinal design spanning 15 years, from when children were 19 months old until they were 16 years old. Alongside measures for maternal vocabulary, a host of language and (early) reading measures, including vocabulary, early literacy development, oral narrative skill, and reading comprehension, were administered across eight time points to a sample of 58 children. Specific early language and reading skills were generally strongly correlated over time. Reading comprehension at age 12 was predicted by vocabulary at 19 months and emergent literacy at school entry. Vocabulary at 19 months of age predicted early literacy skills prior to school entry and reading comprehension at age 12 years, as did school entry literacy skills. Controlling for maternal and infant vocabulary, children's oral narrative skill around school entry related uniquely to reading comprehension 10 years later. Findings provide new evidence for the long-term interplay between early language, literacy, and later reading and vocabulary development .
... Around 7 and 8 years old, children can merge their stories around an argument, problems, and solutions (Botvin & Sutton-Smith, 1977;Esposito et al., 2020;Iandolo et al., 2013;Piaget, 1955) with more complex forms, coherence, and cohesion Isbell et al., 2004). In general, when a child is asked to create a story, conventional schemes, imagination, and fantasy are activated in the structuring of the story (Botvin & Sutton-Smith, 1977;Stein & Glenn, 1979;Trionfi & Reese, 2009;Zanchi et al., 2020), reflecting personal experiences and creativity (Bruner, 1991;Glaubman et al., 2001;van Bysterveldt et al., 2012). ...
During childhood, teachers’ perception of students’ behavioral and academic performance, as well as storytelling and verbal fluency are of special relevance for reaching cognitive developmental milestones. However, little is still known about the interplay between these factors for students’ success. This investigation aimed at exploring narrative skills, verbal fluency, and teachers’ perception of behavioral and academic performance in sixty-one students aged between 6 and 12 years old from a Spanish primary school. The NEPSY-II verbal fluency test and the Bears Family Projective test were administered to students and an ad-hoc questionnaire about pupils’ socioemotional and academic progress in the classroom was completed by their teachers. Students’ stories were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, coded, and analyzed using the Bears Family Integrated System. The results demonstrated that these teachers perceived girls with more typical behavior than boys in class. In general, students’ narrative skills were globally related to their academic and behavioral performance as perceived by their teachers. Students that used in storytelling the family as a unit were perceived by their teachers as happier. However, wider verbal fluency in students was unrelated to cohesion and structure in the stories, and only significantly related to more episodes and characters. Finally, students perceived by their teachers with lower academic performance and less typical behavior told more unbalanced stories with more characters’ maladaptive behaviors. In conclusion, these results highlight the importance of measuring verbal fluency and storytelling skills by teachers in primary education as potential risk/protective markers for emotional and behavioral self-dysregulation in class.
... Studies of younger children's narrative production indicate that different skills may be more influential at different ages. For example, Lynch et al. (2008) found that vocabulary was related to the structural quality of narrative retells in 4-year-olds, but not in 6-yearolds, and Trionfi & Reese (2009) found that vocabulary did not predict narrative production skills in 5-year-olds. However, the extent to which these findings extend to comprehension, as well as production, is not known. ...
The development of 4- to 6-year-olds’ narrative skills was investigated in relation to their receptive vocabulary, grammar, and home literacy environment. At Time One, 82 children aged 4 to 6 years completed standardised assessments of cognitive ability, vocabulary, and grammar. Narrative production and comprehension were assessed by the narration of a wordless picture book and questions about the book’s content, respectively. Parents completed a questionnaire about home literacy practices. Concurrently, vocabulary explained unique variance in narrative comprehension, but not narrative production. In addition, the teaching of literacy-related skills in the home was negatively related to both narrative comprehension and production, and the frequency with which parents and children engaged in interactive reading was positively related to narrative production. One year later, one aspect of the home literacy environment (print exposure) explained unique variance in later narrative comprehension, after controlling for earlier narrative skills. These data show that vocabulary and grammar skills and home literacy practices are related to different types of narrative skills and suggest that literacy experiences in the home make a unique contribution to the development of narrative comprehension and production.
... The high fantasy-proneness inherent to IC play (Wilson & Barber, 1983) might further allow children to practice and expand creative thought, thereby promoting intellectual and creative growth (Somers & Yawkey, 1984). This agrees with findings that children with ICs are capable of constructing more complex narratives (Trionfi & Reese, 2009) as well as sharing details about their IC experiences with interested adults (Gleason, 2004). ...
Studies of the mediating factors of imaginary companions (ICs) in children and adults are well-represented in the literature. However, the nature and structure of behavioral expressions in IC characters have been less formally scrutinized. We examined these issues in a convenience sample of 389 adults. Of these, 155 self-reported childhood ICs and retrospectively characterized their IC phenomenology via a set of 14 items modified from previous research. Rasch analyses showed that IC experiences form a true probabilistic hierarchy whose structure varied little across respondents’ age, gender, having siblings, as well as the respondents’ number of past ICs, or their decision to inform others about their IC. This hierarchy starts with shallow (i.e., ostensibly ‘adaptive or positive’) experiences and transition to deep (i.e., relatively ‘maladaptive or negative’) contents at higher levels. Network analysis suggested that respondents invented ICs primarily to combat feelings of loneliness. However, contrary to the Rasch model, when comparing shallow vs deep IC experients’ answers, positive and negative perceptual contents lost their distinction, thereby severely distorting measurement. These distortions were sufficiently powerful to reliably predict respondents’ group membership. Results derived from retrospective accounts of childhood experiences, which might differ from IC contents and dynamics measured either in real-time or within adult populations. However, these findings suggest that ICs comprise a latent dimension of shallow-to-deep perceptions that might relate to schizotypal or dissociative phenomena manifesting in everyday contexts.
... It is not just ToM and fantasy orientation where IC and NIC children deviate in their profiles; these groups have been found to differ in narrative ability, private speech (Davis et al., 2013;Trionfi & Reese, 2009), the way that they describe scenes and friends (Davis et al., 2014;Roby & Kidd, 2008), knowledge of their own inner worlds (Davis et al., 2011), and even social skills (Davis et al., 2022;Giménez-Dasi et al., 2016). A potential reason for these various differences is that children conceptualize their ICs as having human minds and personalities of their own (Davis et al., 2014;McInnis et al., 2013;Taylor & Carlson, 1997), thus enabling children to attune themselves to the mind and improve their own metacognitive skills when engaging with the IC. ...
Spontaneous imaginary companion (SIC) creation in childhood is a typical imaginative play behaviour associated with advanced sociocognitive skills; however, the direction of causality has not been established. To investigate this experimentally, researchers must determine whether children can create, on request, qualitatively equivalent imaginary companions (ICs) to those created spontaneously. We examined whether children could create ICs, and how these compared to SICs. Nine elementary school children were encouraged to create ICs in a 3‐month intervention. Accounts of elicited ICs were compared with an age‐matched sample of interviewees with SICs. Seven children maintained ICs for 6 months post intervention. Template analysis of IC interviews found four themes: Realistic Play, Multifaceted IC Mind, Utility of the IC, and Elicited IC Across Time. Analysis suggests elicited and SICs were similar in nature and utility, although intervention ICs tended to have animal rather than human appearances. Findings support the argument that children can be encouraged to create ICs similar to SICs.
... They tend to be supportive, providing companionship and emotional support, and improving self-esteem. Children with imaginary friends tend to have better theory of mind abilities, and be more social (Giménez-Dasí, Pons, and Bender 2016; Taylor et al. 2013), and even create more interesting and elaborate stories (Trionfi and Reese 2009). They straddle the world of reality and imagination and, whilst children are aware that imaginary friends do not really exist (Taylor and Mottweiler 2008), imaginary friends seem so real that they provide the emotional support of an ideal friend (Majors 2013). ...
In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transition, dedicated chapters examine evolutionary pressures, responses in changes in human emotional capacities and the archaeological evidence for human social behaviours. Starting from our earliest origins, in Part One, Professor Spikins explores how after two million years ago, movement of human ancestors into a new ecological niche drove new types of collaboration, including care for vulnerable members of the group. Emotional adaptations lead to cognitive changes, as new connections based on compassion, generosity, trust and inclusion also changed our relationship to material things. Part Two explores a later key transition in human emotional capacities occurring after 300,000 years ago. At this time changes in social tolerance allowed ancestors of our own species to further reach out beyond their local group and care about distant allies, making human communities resilient to environmental changes. An increasingly close relationship to animals, and even to cherished possessions, appeared at this time, and can be explained through new human vulnerabilities and ways of seeking comfort and belonging. Lastly, Part Three focuses on the contrasts in emotional dispositions arising between ourselves and our close cousins, the Neanderthals. Neanderthals are revealed as equally caring yet emotionally different humans, who might, if things had been different, have been in our place today. This new narrative breaks away from traditional views of human evolution as exceptional or as a linear progression towards a more perfect form. Instead, our evolutionary history is situated within similar processes occurring in other mammals, and explained as one in which emotions, rather than ‘intellect’, were key to our evolutionary journey. Moreover, changes in emotional capacities and dispositions are seen as part of differing pathways each bringing strengths, weaknesses and compromises. These hidden depths provide an explanation for many of the emotional sensitivities and vulnerabilities which continue to influence our world today.
... Inclination toward fantasy and more advanced imaginative abilities among those with IC play experience was further explored in other studies (Firth et al., 2015) . Trionfi and Reese (2009) found that children with ICs are better able to tell detailed narratives about a story and a personal experience than their peers. In a study of 102 female students, Gleason et al. (2003) found associations between having ICs and more imagery use, as well as more vivid night dreams and violent daydreams. ...
Objective: This study evaluated the association of Childhood Imaginary Companion (CIC) status and schizotypy levels of adolescents and adults within the framework of the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP). Method: The sample included 255 Iranian adolescents and adults, grouped according to their CIC status, who responded mostly via e-questionnaires on a website. Schizotypy dimensions were compared between these two groups. Two measures compatible with the HiTOP model were also evaluated both in relation to the short scale of the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences (sO-LIFE) schizotypy dimensions and the CIC status of participants; one scale used exclusively with adolescents (i.e., the Achenbach System of Empirically-Based Assessment-Youth Self-Report [ASEBA-YSR]), and another with adults (i.e., the NEO-Five Factor Inventory [NEO-FFI]). Results: Scores on the unusual experiences (UnEx) the impulsive nonconformity (ImpNon) dimensions, and the total score of the sO-LIFE were higher for the CIC group. For adolescents, the UnEx dimension and the Thought Problems subscale of the ASEBA-YSR correlated. Scores on three subscales of the ASEBA-YSR (i.e., Thought Problems, Obsessive-Compulsive Problems, and PTSD Problems) were significantly higher for the CIC group. For adults, the neuroticism domain of the NEO-FFI correlated strongly with total score of the sO-LIFE and the cognitive disorganization (CogDis) dimension. This domain of the NEO-FFI was the only one in which CIC adults scored higher than the NIC group. Conclusion: CIC in adolescents and adults is associated with a set of schizotypy dimensions in line with the concept of the “happy schizotype.”
... Rather than serving as a marker for potential risk, the presence of imaginary companions among typically developing children is associated with several positive correlates, including advanced social understanding skills (Lillard & Kavanaugh, 2014;Taylor & Carlson, 1997), and the tendency to be less shy (Taylor, Sachet, Mannering, & Maring, 2013). Having an imaginary companion has also been associated with the ability to tell and retell high-quality narratives (Trionfi & Reese, 2009), as well as a greater interest in and aptitude for pretend play (Singer & Singer, 1981;Tahiroglu et al., 2011;Taylor et al., 1993). For instance, Taylor et al. (1993) and Tahiroglu et al. (2011) found that preschool-age children with imaginary companions outperformed other children on a phone task in which children needed to pretend to call a friend. ...
Both past and current research indicates that the creation of an imaginary companion is a common, normative, and healthy form of elaborated role-play that emerges in early childhood. Imaginary companions are often the invisible friends that children create for themselves, or the special stuffed animals or dolls that children imbue with personalities. Despite being imaginary, children often describe and experience their imaginary companions in ways that parallel real friendships with peers. Children’s emotional investment in these invented characters raises important questions about the broader roles they serve in their lives. Current research in this area has focused on the developmental significance of imaginary companions, and the extent to which they might have a real and meaningful impact on the development. This chapter reviews the extant literature on imaginary companions, with a particular focus on the relations between children’s imaginary companions, creativity, and coping with adversity.
... Although often hypothesized to be linked with coping strategies, studies show no or weak links between having an IC and coping (e.g., Gleason and Kalpidou, 2014). Having ICs is not correlated with vocabulary size, but it has been found to be positively related to story-telling and narrative ability (Trionfi and Reese, 2009). ...
Engaging in pretend, imaginative, and fantastical thinking and behavior is a characteristic, but not an essential, component of typical psychological development. Indeed, there is wide variability in both how much individuals use these abilities and how interested they are in engaging them. The capacity to pretend and imagine emerges early in development and becomes more sophisticated with age. This chapter highlights aspects of childhood pretense, imagination, and fantasy, including (but not limited to) object substitution, role play, sociodramatic play, and the creation of imaginary companions and paracosms, as well as a number of correlated skills. The question of whether post-childhood activities like generating fiction and fan art, cosplay, playing role play games or acting rely on the same cognitive and social mechanisms as childhood imaginary and fantastical play is considered. Pretense, imagination, and fantastical thought and behavior can promote positive well-being, but the degree to which it does may be dependent on individual temperament and interest.
... Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. CHI '21 Extended Abstracts, May 8-13, 2021 [15,38]. Today's virtual reality (VR) technology allows a transfer of these imaginary worlds from imagination into an outside world of virtual reality. ...
... For example, the ability to produce extended decontextualised narratives depends on sentence-level and discourselevel language skills; the standardised measure of receptive vocabulary in this study captured only word-level knowledge. Previous research indicates that children's narrative skills may also be supported by higher-level cognitive factors including executive function (Friend & Bates, 2014), metacognition (Lepola et al., 2020) and imagination (Trionfi & Reese, 2009). This study has several limitations. ...
Narrative production draws upon linguistic, cognitive and pragmatic skills, and is subject to substantial individual differences. This study aimed to characterise the development of narrative production in late childhood and to assess whether children's cumulative experience of reading fiction is associated with individual differences in narrative language skills. One hundred and twenty-five nine-to 12-year-old children told a story from a wordless picture book, and their narratives were coded for syntactic, semantic and discourse-pragmatic features. The grammatical complexity and propositional content of children's narratives increased with age between 9 and 12 years, while narrative cohesion, coherence and use of mental state terms were stable across the age range. Measures of fiction reading experience were positively correlated with several indices of narrative production quality and predicted unique variance in narrative macrostructure after controlling for individual differences in vocabulary knowledge, word reading accuracy and theory of mind. These findings are discussed in terms of the continued importance of "book language" as part of the language input beyond early childhood.
... Developmental psychology research has shown that ICs may play an important role in children's cognitive [21] and verbal skills [146], as well as coping [36] and stress management [50]. ICs provide entertainment, playmates and even friendship that enable a child to overcome times of boredom and loneliness, and they can also be a source of comfort when the child is experiencing difficulties. ...
Maladaptive daydreaming (MD) is an excessive and vivid fantasy activity that interferes with individual's normal functioning and can result in severe distress. Research has shown that MD is a clinical condition associated with a number of personal, interpersonal and behavioral problems. Therefore, a need exists to differentiate MD from other mental activities that involve an excessive or otherwise problematic use of fantasy. These include, among others, daydreaming, mind wandering, dissociative absorption, fantasy proneness, sluggish cognitive tempo, lucid dreaming, and autistic fantasy. In this article, we examine the commonalities and differences between MD and these mental activities, to promote a better understanding of the MD phenomena and their specificity, and to foster the quality of its assessment in clinical settings. A clinical case study is employed to elucidate our analysis and to demonstrate the differential diagnosis of MD.
... Since research in this area adopted new methodological standards in the 1990s, ICs have been associated with a range of positive developmental outcomes (Taylor, 1999). Several studies have linked engagement with an IC to superior social cognition (Taylor and Carlson, 1997;Roby and Kidd, 2008;Davis et al., 2011), while other studies have indicated that children with an IC are more creative (Schaefer, 1969;Seiffge-Krenke, 1997;Hoff, 2005), more sociable (Mauro, 1991), and capable of constructing more complex narratives (Trionfi and Reese, 2009). ...
Interacting with imaginary companions (ICs) is now considered a natural part of childhood for many children, and has been associated with a range of positive developmental outcomes. Recent research has explored how the phenomenon of ICs in childhood and adulthood relates to the more unusual experience of hearing voices (or auditory verbal hallucinations, AVH). Specifically, parallels have been drawn between the varied phenomenology of the two kinds of experience, including the issues of quasi-perceptual vividness and autonomy/control. One line of research has explored how ICs might arise through the internalization of linguistically mediated social exchanges to form dialogic inner speech. We present data from two studies on the relation between ICs in childhood and adulthood and the experience of inner speech. In the first, a large community sample of adults (N = 1,472) completed online the new Varieties of Inner Speech – Revised (VISQ-R) questionnaire (Alderson-Day et al., 2018) on the phenomenology of inner speech, in addition to providing data on ICs and AVH. The results showed differences in inner speech phenomenology in individuals with a history of ICs, with higher scores on the Dialogic, Evaluative, and Other Voices subscales of the VISQ-R. In the second study, a smaller community sample of adults (N = 48) completed an auditory signal detection task as well as providing data on ICs and AVH. In addition to scoring higher on AVH proneness, individuals with a history of ICs showed reduced sensitivity to detecting speech in white noise as well as a bias toward detecting it. The latter finding mirrored a pattern previously found in both clinical and nonclinical individuals with AVH. These findings are consistent with the view that ICs represent a hallucination-like experience in childhood and adulthood which shows meaningful developmental relations with the experience of inner speech.
... Interview measures (child, parent, teacher) • Imaginary Companion Questionnaire (Carlson & Taylor, 2005;Mottweiler & Taylor, 2014;Pierucci, O'Brien, McInnis, Gilpin, & Barber, 2014;Taylor & Carlson, 1997;Taylor et al., 1993Taylor et al., , 2013Taylor, Carlson, Maring, Gerow, & Charley, 2004;Thibodeau et al., 2016;Trionfi & Reese, 2009) • Impersonation Interview (asked child about impersonating an animal, a different person, machine) (Thibodeau et al., 2016;Van Reet, 2014) • Teacher report questionnaire with questions about imaginary friends and engaging in make-believe (Lalonde & Chandler, 1995) Fantasy Predis-position Tending to enjoy games that involve some sort of fantasy ...
Pretend play is a central component of child development, but causal inferences about its effects are difficult to make due to inconsistencies in definitions and measurement. A thorough analysis of how pretense is measured, coherences and disagreements in measurement strategies, and the behaviors involved in pretend play is needed. We review 199 empirical articles where pretend play was measured and propose a new hierarchical developmental progression of pretend play, rooted in developmental theory and 50 years of research. We suggest pretend play behaviors are likely to develop additively from least to most psychologically complex in the following order: object substitutions, attribution of pretend properties, social interactions within pretend, role enactment, and pretense-related metacommunication. Researchers must use methods in future studies to better capture this developmental progression. This will strengthen construct validity and improve understanding of the mechanisms within pretend play possibly responsible for positive child outcomes.
... As noted above, children's predisposition for fantasy associated with having imaginary companions (Carlson & Taylor, 2005;Singer, 1973). In childhood, those who have imaginary companions, as compared to those without, show more imaginativeness and emotionality in their spontaneous play (Singer & Singer, 1990); attribute mental states to their friends more (Davis, Meins, & Fernyhough, 2014); demonstrate better emotion understanding and theory of mind (Giménez-Dasí, Pons, & Bender, 2016;Taylor, 1999); engage in more private speech (Davis, Meins, & Fernyhough, 2013); have better language abilities (Singer & Singer, 1990); and tell richer narratives (Trionfi & Reese, 2009). Additionally, in research with adolescents and adults recollecting whether they had an imaginary companion in childhood, those with imaginary companions were rated as being 24 more creative (Kidd et al., 2010;Schaefer, 1969), more aware of their own internal states (Gleason, Jarudi, & Cheek, 2003), more likely to become absorbed in their recollections and imaginings (Kidd et al., 2010), and scored higher on other general measures of imagination such as imagery and vivid dreams (Firth, Alderson-Day, Woods, & Fernyhough, 2015;Gleason et al., 2003). ...
This thesis focuses on the imaginative activities that are present in middle childhood, and how children engage in the fictional worlds created during play in non-virtual and virtual activities. This was investigated in the context of the Cardiff Child Development Study, a UK-based prospective longitudinal study of first-born children.
In Chapter 3, I analysed questionnaire data on children’s play activities. The children were reported by caregivers’ as enjoying a variety of playful and imaginative activities, including activities previously considered to be absent at this age, or neglected in previous research. Gender differences were reported for some activities, supporting those found in existing literature.
In Chapters 4 and 5, I developed coding schemes of children’s engagement with the fictional world (play frame) created when children played with Playmobil figures, and their immersion in the virtual world of a bespoke video game. Children’s engagement with the play frame was considered to be in the role of an actor, manager, or narrator of the play. Children’s engagement with the video game was considered to reflect their immersive engagement with the virtual world or functional engagement with the mechanics of the game. Boys were more engaged in the role of an actor in the play frame and more immersed with the virtual world than girls.
In Chapter 6, I examined links between the virtual and non-virtual tasks. Positive associations were found between children’s engagement as an actor and their immersion, even when controlling for gender. Children’s references to the internal states of the fictional characters were also compared as an indication of their engagement with the fictional worlds, and were associated across contexts when controlling for receptive vocabulary and gender.
These findings add to knowledge regarding imagination in childhood, in supporting that children’s engagement in fictional worlds could represent an expression of an imaginative characteristic.
... The findings from our lab and elsewhere show that in Western cultures having an imaginary companion during the preschool years is relatively common (Singer & Singer, 1990;Taylor, 1999) and tends to be associated with positive characteristics such as advanced social understanding (Taylor & Carlson, 1997) and narrative depth in storytelling (Trionfi & Reese, 2009). And contrary to the stereotype, imaginary companions do not seem to be associated with fewer friendships with real children (Gleason, 2004). ...
Lack of physical activity is often associated with electronic media use. However, augmented reality exergames require player movement, making them a potential health application (app). In the exergame Pokémon GO, characters were embedded into the external environment through a live camera feed and viewed through a player’s smartphone screen. Online surveys from adults (N = 230) who played the Pokémon GO app reported about their childhood emotionally tinged, parasocial relationships with a favorite Pokémon character, motivations to play Pokémon GO, and frequency of Pokémon GO play. Those who had stronger childhood parasocial relationships with a Pokémon character reported playing the Pokémon GO app for nostalgic reasons but reported less frequent app play. Older participants were motivated to play Pokémon GO to increase their physical activity levels and reported more frequent app play. The findings suggest that the age and motivations of players are important considerations for exergame design.
... However, more recent studies have shown that imaginary companions are healthy phenomena, as demonstrated by findings that there were no significant, negative effects of having imaginary companions on social skills for building relationships with friends or teachers (Manosevitz et al., 1973;Pratt, 1999, 2002;Gleason et al., 2000;Gleason, 2004;Gleason and Kalpidou, 2014). On the contrary, some studies have suggested that having an imaginary companion can serve as a simulation of social exchanges, which enhances the child's understanding of social relationships (Singer and Singer, 1990;Taylor and Carlson, 1997;Taylor and Mottweiler, 2008;Trionfi and Reese, 2009;Gleason and Kalpidou, 2014;Lin et al., 2016). ...
Children often personify non-living objects, such as puppets and stars. This attribution is considered a healthy phenomenon, which can simulate social exchange and enhance children's understanding of social relationships. In this study, we considered that the tendency of children to engage in personification could potentially be observed in abstract entities, such as numbers. We hypothesized that children tend to attribute personalities to numbers, which diminishes during the course of development. By consulting the methodology to measure ordinal linguistic personification (OLP), which is a type of synesthesia, we quantified the frequency with which child and adult populations engage in number personification. Questionnaires were completed by 151 non-synesthetic children (9–12 years old) and 55 non-synesthetic adults. Children showed a higher tendency than adults to engage in number personification, with respect to temporal consistency and the frequency of choosing meaningful answers. Additionally, children tended to assign unique and exclusive descriptions to each number from zero to nine. By synthesizing the series of analyses, we revealed the process in which number personification diminishes throughout development. In the discussion, we examined the possibility that number personification serves as a discrimination clue to aid children's comprehension of the relationships between numbers.
... 421). Perhaps the production of a paracosms develops from earlier pretend play involving imaginary companions, an activity that has been associated with advanced social understanding (Lillard & Kavanaugh, 2014;Taylor & Carlson, 1997), as well as creative story telling (Mottweiler & Taylor, 2014;Trionfi & Reese, 2009). We explored these possibilities in two studies in which the children themselves were interviewed about paracosms, instead of relying on what a sample of adults could remember about their childhoods. ...
The invention of imaginary worlds (“paracosms”) is a creative activity of middle childhood that has previously been investigated primarily with retrospective adult reports and biographical accounts. In descriptions collected from 8‐ to 12‐year‐old children, the prevalence was 16.9% in Study 1 (n = 77) and 17.4% in Study 2 (n = 92). Children with and without paracosms did not differ in verbal comprehension, divergent thinking (Studies 1 and 2) or working memory (Study 2). However, children with paracosms had more difficulty with inhibitory control (Study 2) and had higher creativity scores on a story‐telling task (Studies 1 and 2). Paracosms provided a vehicle for stories associated with imaginary companions and/or for developing complex narratives alone or with friends.
... Similarly, research has suggested that creating an IC is an advanced form of fantasy play (Harris, 2000;Taylor, 1999), with children who have such companions scoring significantly higher on measures of fantasy predisposition and ability than those without (Bouldin & Pratt, 1999;Taylor & Carlson, 1997). Furthermore, children with ICs have been found to show advanced functioning in tests measuring theory of mind, narrative skills, and referential communication (Roby & Kidd, 2008;Taylor & Carlson, 1997;Trionfi & Reese, 2009), thus mirroring the developmental advantages that have been linked to fantasy play overall (Ashiabi, 2007). ...
This article describes the development and initial psychometric properties of the Retrospective Childhood Fantasy Play Scale (RCFPS), a brief 11-item retrospective self-report measure of preference for, and engagement with, fantasy play during childhood. Five studies were conducted to (a) develop the initial items for the scale (n = 77), (b) determine the underlying factor structure (n = 200), (c) test the fit of the model (n = 530), and (d) and (e) ascertain construct validity (n = 200) and convergent validity (n = 263). Overall, the results suggest that the RCFPS is a unidimensional measure with acceptable fit and preliminary validity. The RCFPS may prove useful in educational and developmental research as an alternative to longitudinal studies to further investigate how childhood fantasy play relates to individual differences in adulthood (e.g., in the areas of creativity, theory of mind, and narrative skills).
... Some studies report that having an IC is related to superior ToM and emotion understanding abilities (Giménez-Dasi et al. 2016;Taylor and Carlson 1997), although others have reported null findings for this relation (Davis et al. 2011(Davis et al. , 2014Fernyhough et al. 2007). Children with ICs are more likely than their NIC counterparts (a) to know that their minds are opaque to others (Davis et al. 2011), (b) to form richer narratives when storytelling (Trionfi and Reese 2009), (c) show more sophisticated self-directed speech (Davis et al. 2013), and (d) are better able to take the listener's perspective into account during a referential communication paradigm (Roby and Kidd 2008). They also are more likely to describe friends with reference to their mental characteristics instead of behavioral tendencies or physical appearance (Davis et al. 2014). ...
One of the deficits observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is impaired imaginative play. One form of imaginative play common in many typically developing (TD) children is having an imaginary companion (IC). The occurrence of ICs has not been investigated extensively in children with ASD. We examined differences in parent report of IC between TD and ASD populations in 215 (111 with ASD) gender-matched children aged between 2 and 8 years. Findings indicate that significantly fewer children with ASD created ICs, although there were many between-group similarities in IC forms and functions. Results are discussed in terms of qualitative differences in play, social attributions, and how children with ASD conceptualize their ICs’ minds.
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... Children must be the subjects in books appropriate for children. These books must highlight their curiosity, their readiness to explore, their sincerity and dynamism, their active nature, their creativity and imagination, and how they distance themselves from taking advice or orders from others (Hyson, 2004;Perry, 2001;Sharp, 2004;Trionfi & Reese, 2009). They also need to express their world, their thoughts and feelings, their joys and fears, and their worries in a way that they can understand. ...
Consequently, this study tested the validity a checklist for assessing children’s books. Drawing on the study results obtained, it can be recommended that this checklist may be used by centres for children’s literature in diverse communities and cultures. It would be useful to receive feedback on its validity for children’s books from various communities and cultures as well as to see how effective it is in assessing a broad array of children’s books.
... For example, in comparison to their peers, children with ICs have been found to be more sociable (Partington & Grant, 1984), more cooperative (Singer & Singer, 1990), and better at talking to and initiating activities with adults (Manosevitz et al., 1973). Some research finds advanced theory of mind among young children with ICs in comparison to their peers (Taylor & Carlson, 1997) as well as a richness in the narratives they tell to others (Trionfi & Reese, 2009) and in their understanding of what information another person needs in hearing a story (Roby & Kidd, 2008). Again, teasing apart the causal relationships between these skills and the simulation of a social relationship has not been accomplished, and the significant number of children who do not create ICs and yet develop sophisticated social skills suggests that this phenomenon is but one pathway to successful, adaptive social functioning in adulthood. ...
Although social play is common to many species, humans are unique in their ability to extract some of the benefits of social play through imagination. For example, in play with imaginary companions (ICs), children often practice skills that might be useful for later adaptive social, relational, and emotional functioning. While play with ICs does not provide the same immediate feedback that play with real others affords, this imagined, quasisocial context allows children to experiment with or rehearse events that might occur in real relationships. This symbolic enactment of social relationships might afford opportunities to experience not just social situations but all manner of positive and negative emotions in a risk-free way. In addition, children’s interactions with real others around their ICs allow for negotiation of social roles in real relationships. ICs also provide a forum for psychological distance that might help young children manage their real relationships and engage in processes such as negotiation and cooperation, which are needed for successful social adaptation. Although play with ICs is clearly not of adaptive value in an evolutionary sense, for the children who create them, ICs might hold psychological significance for adaptive social development.
... Estos trabajos pusieron de manifiesto la existencia de semejanzas entre el juego simbólico y la narrativa, tanto en su estructura como en el estilo de lenguaje empleado en ellos. Por un lado, tanto el juego simbólico como la narración han sido caracterizados como "dos expresiones distintivas del pensamiento simbólico" (Kavanaugh & Engel, 1998, p. 81) dado que ambos implican la (re)creación de un contexto (Trionfi & Reese, 2009). Durante el juego simbólico, para la creación de dicho contexto, los niños realizan transformaciones de objetos y transformaciones ideacionales -transformaciones más abstractas e independientes de los objetos presentes-. ...
Con la participación de niños de sectores medios de Argentina, se presenta un estudio longitudinal acerca de la construcción del mundo ficcional y de la trama narrativa en situaciones de juego. Investigaciones previas evidenciaron las relaciones entre el juego y las habilidades narrativas. Son escasos los estudios que analizaron los recursos que contribuyen a elaborar el mundo ficcional del juego, así como las características de su trama narrativa. Se analizaron 60 situaciones de juego simbólico en las que participaron 12 niños y sus madres cuando los primeros tenían 2.6 y 3.6 años. Los participantes emplean diversos recursos para la construcción del mundo ficcional. Se observaron variaciones longitudinales respecto del uso de enunciados metalúdicos, el tipo de mundo ficcional y la complejidad de la trama narrativa del juego.
... In typically developing children, the creation of an imaginary companion is believed to be a healthy activity. Having an imaginary companion is often associated with positive correlates, such as advanced referential communication (Roby & Kidd, 2008) and narrative creativity (Mottweiler & Taylor, 2014;Schaefer, 1969;Trionfi & Reese, 2009). In contrast, for children who have experienced maltreatment, having an imaginary companion has been viewed with more concern and as a possible antecedent to later mental health problems (Lovinger, 1983;Lynn, Rhue, & Green, 1988;McLewin & Muller, 2006;Sanders, 1992;Trujillo, Lewis, Yeager, & Gidlow, 1996). ...
This study was designed to provide some preliminary information about the imaginary companions created by children who have lived in foster care, including prevalence rates and qualitative descriptions of the imaginary companions. We were also interested in how descriptions of the imaginary companions created by children who had lived in foster care compare to those of other children. Children with a history offoster care (n = 21) and children from a low SES community sample (n = 39) were interviewed about imaginary companions. Twenty-six children (43.3%) reported having imaginary companions. Although having an imaginary companion has sometimes been believed to be more common in children with a history of maltreatment, in this preliminary study, prevalence rates did not differ between the two groups of children. In addition, both groups of children described companions that were a positive source of entertainment, friendship,and social support.
Friendship with the ancients is a set of imaginative exercises and engagements with the work of deceased authors that allows us to imagine them as friends. Authors from diverse cultures and times such as Mengzi, Niccolò Machiavelli, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Clare Carlisle have engaged in it. The aim of this article is to defend this practice, showing that friendship with the ancients is a species of philosophical friendship, which confers the unique benefits such friendships offer. It is conducive to epistemic virtue, notably the related virtues of epistemic humility and of relational understanding. When we cultivate friendship with the ancients, we are not learning facts about them, but aim at understanding their views in their full scope in a way that a relationship between friends allows.
Humans are the only species that engages in sustained, complex pretend play. As pretend play is practically ubiquitous across cultures, it might support or afford a context for developmental advances during the juvenile period that have implications for functioning in adulthood. Early in development, learning to separate our thoughts from reality is practiced in pretend play and is associated with changes not just in cognition, but in emotional and social domains as well. Specifically, pretend play affords opportunities to engage in abstractions that could support abilities such as perspective-taking, emotion recognition and regulation, and cooperation and negotiation in childhood. In turn, the abstraction skills promoted by early pretend play might underlie creativity, innovation, and our capacity to feel empathy and moral obligation to others in later childhood and adulthood. In fact, because pretend play affords sharing our abstractions with others, it might be an early context for behaviors that ultimately promote the shared abstractions of human culture itself.
Imaginary friends or invisible companions are common features of cross-cultural childhoods. Research is primarily located in developmental psychology, where invisible companions are considered part of imaginary play. We argue for a reconceptualization of the core phenomenon, to one of regularly interacting with a person who is not normally perceptible to others, instead of uncritically adopting the dominant Euro-Western ontology of imagination. Analyzing the central experience through other branches of psychology, anthropology, religion, and spirituality shows that different fields are potentially discussing the same phenomenon, albeit obscured by disciplinary boundaries. We outline some implications of this new approach for the development of childhood studies.
This study examined parent-child storytelling for insights into children’s fantastical thinking. We targeted differences in storytelling based on story genre (fictional-reality and fictional-fantasy) emotion, and storyteller, and how dyads treated fantasy within the stories. 49 3- to 5-year-olds and their parents told stories based on images that depicted either human or anthropomorphic animal protagonists who expressed happiness, fear, or sadness. Results reveal that variations in storytelling varied mainly by emotion and storyteller and less by story genre, and that fantastic information was treated somewhat conservatively. Findings point to storytelling as a context in which focus is placed on reality more than fantasy.
Este artículo pretende identificar los modelos teóricos que describen el desarrollo de la narrativa oral en niños y establecer cuáles componentes del lenguaje influyen en dicho proceso. Con este propósito, llevamos a cabo una revisión sistemática de las investigaciones más recientes sobre este tema (2000-2019). Analizamos 10 estudios longitudinales que reportan resultados de medidas del lenguaje y la narrativa oral tomados durante el seguimiento de una población de niños y niñas por un periodo de al menos 12 meses. Estas medidas son la conciencia metalingüística, el lenguaje estructural y el discurso narrativo, entre otras. Nuestros resultados indican que la habilidad de contar un relato es uno de los mejores predictores del desarrollo del lenguaje en la etapa preescolar y del aprendizaje de la lectoescritura en la edad escolar. También encontramos que los modelos para explicar este proceso son escasos y que ignoran con frecuencia el componente pragmático.
A curious childhood phenomenon that has received relatively little attention in developmental literature is the imaginary companion (IC). Increased recognition of the importance of imaginative play and a desire to stimulate children’s early cognitive development makes ICs a particularly relevant topic. The significant prevalence of ICs in the population has permitted a modest yet diverse range of research investigating the functions, correlates, and implications of ICs for the children that create them. This literature review summarizes some of this research in order to describe the functions and forms that ICs may take, as well as social and personality characteristics of children with ICs. It also examines the role that ICs may serve in cognitive and social development, particularly with respect to children’s acquisition of Theory of Mind. Finally, this article addresses ways to integrate ICs into other aspects of children’s lives, gaps in the existing literature, and potential directions for future research in the field.
Determining the utility of auditory hallucinations (including imaginary friends) in developing logic is sorely under-investigated (Fernyhough, Charles. 2016. The voices within: The history and science of how we talk to ourselves . New York: Basic Books). The present account demonstrates how Peirce’s double consciousness fueled by his endoporeutic principle, provides insight into how abduction directs adopting arguments from one source while dismissing others. Peirce’s categories provide hints as to which voices become admitted to logical scrutiny, and which are validated – consequent to irritations imposed by surprise/conflict. Effort/resistance (4.536) clearly illustrates how Secondness legitimizes emerging perspectives, facilitating examination of peripheral voices, which can be competitive (MS 9) or collaborative (4.551). Peirce’s Energetic and Emotional Interpretants (MS 318) impel or inhibit new habits (attention to one stimulus over another). Consciously inhibiting forces hastens self-control (Thirdness) integrating voices on the fringes of conventionality into one’s own (MS 318). Ultimately, incorporating alterity via imagined arguments satisfies Peirce’s endoporeutic maxim because reflecting upon the legitimacy of alien perspectives transforms habits from the outside in.
The imagination of young children has notable constraints. The outcomes and possibilities that they imagine rarely deviate from the everyday regularities they have observed and remembered. Their reality-based imagination is evident in a variety of contexts: early pretend play, envisioning the future, judgments about what is possible, the instructive role of thought experiments, tool making, and figurative drawing. Overall, the evidence shows that children's imagination helps them to anticipate reality and its close alternatives. This perspective invites future research on the scope of children's thinking about counterfactual possibilities, their ability to make discoveries about reality on the basis of thought experiments, and the ways in which cultural input can expand the scope of the possibilities that they entertain.
The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anthropology, archaeology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and the arts. An integrated theoretical-empirical-applied picture of the field is presented, which stands to inform researchers, students, and practitioners about the issues of relevance across the board when considering the imagination. With each chapter, the nature of human imagination is examined – what it entails, how it evolved, and why it singularly defines us as a species.
The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between cooperative play and cognitive development in preschool age. The study involved 56 children aged 5-6 years (29 boys and 27 girls) of Moscow kindergartens. The article describes the main parameters of the observations of peer play (indicators of substitution, implementation of plan, play interaction). Analysis of the results revealed the presence of two correlation pleiades. The first one shows significant relationships between a child's ability to draw up a story and different play aspects associated with the development of the internal action plan and visual thinking (sustainability of play plot, subject substitution, substitution of playing space, organizing character of interaction, level of ideas). The second correlation pleiade centers around the unfolding of the play idea which is linked with the ability to understand emotions of others, with self-regulation of cognitive processes, and with visual memory. The obtained data show the presence of two sources of development in child play: one is associated with visual-imaginative thinking, and the other with partner interaction.
Having an imaginary companion (IC) during childhood is associated with developmental advantages. ICs also appear to persist and may serve as a coping mechanism for at-risk children. Few studies have examined imagination in blind and deaf children, two groups who may struggle with peer relationships and loneliness. This study explores the presence of ICs in a sample of 12 blind, 13 deaf, and 26 typically developing, ethnically diverse 8- to 12-year-old children. It examines teacher- and child-reports of competence potentially associated with having an IC. Results indicate that 54% of the children reported a current or prior IC, and those children engaged in more pretend play and fantasy than children without ICs. Deaf children reported the highest rates, and blind children the lowest rates, of ICs. The data suggest that having an IC may be associated with social and emotional benefits for deaf and blind children.
The purpose of this study was to develop a checklist whose validity has been tested in assessing children's books. Participants consisted of university students who had taken a course in children's literature. They were selected through convenience sampling and randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. Participants in the experimental group were exposed to quality books based on the criteria of appropriateness for children which were developed by Çer and Şahin (2016, Appendix-A), whereas those in the control group were exposed to non-quality children's books. Both groups learned how to use a checklist in order to assess the books. The experimental group's evaluation of the design, contents, and instructional qualities of the books was significantly higher than that of the students in the control group for all dimensions. Thus, it is possible to assess children's books through this checklist whose validity has been proven. Moreover, this checklist can be of benefit to centres for children's literature when assessing books produced in various cultures and societies. Further research may extend the validity of this checklist in different contexts, such as when assessing books for children of various ages and developmental stages.
This study is a longitudinal exploration of relations between parents’ and children's provision of narrative structure in joint retellings of the past and children's developing personal narrative skills. Fifteen White, middle-class families participated when children were 40 and 70 months old. At both ages, mothers and fathers talked separately with children about shared past events and uninformed experimenters elicited children's personal narratives. Whereas mothers and fathers did not differ in how they structured past narratives, children narrated differently with fathers than with mothers. Further, even at 40 months, girls’ narratives were more contexted and evaluative than boys, but parents’ provision of narrative structure increased similarly with daughters and sons over time. Children's early abilities to provide evaluative narratives was a strong predictor of their later abilities to provide evaluative narratives; maternal emphasis on evaluations also predicted children's later narrative structure. Parental and child influences on personal narrative skill development are discussed.
In this study, different measures derived from 41 3- to 4-year-old children’s selfgenerated picture-book narratives and their performance on a general measure of language development (TELD-2, Hresko, Reid & Hammill, 1991) were evaluated with respect to their possible predictive relation two years later with 5 areas of academic achievement (General information, Reading recognition, Reading comprehension, Math, Spelling) assessed using the Peabody Individualized Achievement Test – Revised (PIAT-R, Markwardt, 1998). Children’s TELD-2 scores were significantly predictive of their General information scores. The narrative measures of conjunction use, event content, perspective shift, and mental state reference were significantly predictive of later Math scores. Post-hocanalyses revealed that, for the same children, the observed relations with Math achievement did not arise with nonspontaneous adult-prompted narrations.
In this study we investigated maternal and child factors in children's autobiographical memory development. Fifty-eight mother-child dyads discussed unique past events when the children were 19, 25, 32, and 40 months old. In addition, children participated in experimenter-child interviews about unique events when they were 25, 32, and 40 months old. The developmental progression to children's independent verbal memory begins with children's early interest in participating in the conversations and maternal reminiscing style, which together elicit children's later shared memory elaborations. Subsequently, children's shared memory elaborations and maternal reminiscing style both contribute to children's later independent memory at approximately 31/2 years of age. We address the idea that autobiographical memory development is essentially a collaborative process, with children significantly contributing to the development of their own reminiscing style from its inception.
We compared the incidence of imaginary companions and impersonated characters in 152 three- and four-year-old children (75 males and 77 females). Children and their parents were interviewed about role play in two sessions. Although there were no sex differences in verbal ability or fantasy predisposition, there was a significant difference in the form of children's imaginary characters: girls were more likely to create imaginary companions, whereas boys were more likely than girls to actively impersonate their characters. There were no significant sex differences in the competence ratings of imaginary companions or impersonated characters. These results suggest that it is important to examine the form and function of children's pretense to understand sex differences in fantasy play.
A sample of 102 college women completed a set of imagination and personality measures and reported whether they had ever had imaginary companions during childhood. Participants who reported imaginary companions scored higher than did those who did not on measures of imagination including imagery use, hostile daydreams, and vivid night dreams, and on personality scales including dependent interpersonal styles and internal-state awareness. Participant groups did not differ significantly on shyness, other interpersonal styles, or measures of self-concept. Comparison of these results with research on children and adolescents with imaginary companions suggests a coherent developmental pattern in social orientation characterized by sensitivity and accommodation to others' needs. [Gleason, T.R., Jarudi, R.N., & Cheek, J.M. (2003). Imagination, personality, and imaginary companions. Social Behavior and Personality, 31, 721-738.]
Combinatorial abilities in language and elicited symbolic play were compared in a longitudinal study of 30 children at 20 and 28 mo. At 20 mo, group descriptive statistics for lengths of utterances and elicited symbolic play sequences were comparable, whereas by 28 mo utterances (in morphemes) produced were longer than symbolic play sequences. This modality shift apparently reflects the acquisition of productive morphology. Multivariate analyses were used to assess the stability of individual differences. Play measures were chosen to represent potentially separable contributions to multiword speech: vocabulary, structural limits on the length of combinations, and ordering. No language–gesture relationships were observed at 28 mo. At 20 mo, however, mean length of utterance as well as composite scores representing "referential" and "grammatical morpheme" language interview measures were predicted by combinatorial sequences involving object substitutions in play. Different symbolic play variables contributed unique variance to different language variables. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Outlines the important similarities in the development of both language and literacy, drawing on research findings and the author's case study of a young boy as he learned to talk and read. S was tape-recorded at home (from 18–36 mo of age) during everyday activities such as meals, dressing, undressing, playtimes, and reading books. It is concluded that the characteristics of parent–child interaction that support language acquisition—semantic contingency, scaffolding, accountability procedures, and the use of routines—also facilitate early reading and writing development. The author dismisses the explanation that variations in the level of literacy in the home are responsible for social class differences in school achievement. It is emphasized that there are distinctive ways in which middle-class families prepare preschoolers to understand and produce decontextualized language. (62 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Relations among specific aspects of language (comprehension and production, semantics, and utterance length) and relations between language and symbolic play were evaluated when children were 13 and 20 mo of age. The contributions of maternal stimulation to toddler performance and whether associations among toddler abilities might be explained by maternal behaviors were also examined. Although measures of toddler language covaried, language–play associations in toddlers were specific to semantic aspects of language. Associations between mother and toddler behaviors emerged and tended to be specific: Maternal language related to toddler language, and maternal play related to toddler play. Moreover, relations among toddler abilities maintained after maternal influences were partialed. The multidimensional structure of language and specificities in language–play associations are discussed with reference to models of early representational development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
12 4-yr-olds with imaginary companions (ICs) and 15 without ICs were asked to describe and pretend to interact with the IC or a real friend. Children with ICs readily described them and were more willing than children without ICs to pretend the IC or real friend was in the lab. Children were interviewed about 7 mo later, and the IC descriptions were as stable as the descriptions of real friends. Children with and without ICs did not differ in their ability to distinguish fantasy and reality, but IC children were more likely to hold an imaginary object instead of substituting a body part when performing a pretend action and were more likely to engage in fantasy in a free-play session. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigated factors associated with the presence or absence of imaginary companions in 222 4-yr-olds using a mailed questionnaire completed by their parents. Section I of the authors' Imaginary Companion Questionnaire was designed to elicit a variety of demographic data on the children and their families and was completed by all parents. Section II was devised to obtain data concerning the imaginary companion itself and was completed only by parents of those children (N = 63) who currently or in the recent past had imaginary companions. Data are presented on family structure, play activities, and personality characteristics of the children, as well as characteristics of their imaginary companions. Results indicate that reducing loneliness is 1 of the multiple functions served by imaginary companions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A discourse-oriented classroom activity in an ethnically mixed, first grade classroom is studied from an interpretive perspective, integrating ethnographic observation and fine-grained conversational analysis. “Sharing time” is a recurring activity where children are called upon to describe an object or give a narrative account about some past event to the entire class. The teacher, through her questions and comments, tries to help the children structure and focus their discourse. This kind of activity serves to bridge the gap between the child's home-based oral discourse competence and the acquisition of literate discourse features required in written communication.
Through a detailed characterization of the children's sharing styles, evidence is provided suggesting that children from different backgrounds come to school with different narrative strategies and prosodic conventions for giving narrative accounts. When the child's discourse style matches the teacher's own literate style and expectations, collaboration is rhythmically synchronized and allows for informal practice and instruction in the development of a literate discourse style. For these children, sharing time can be seen as a kind of oral preparation for literacy . In contrast, when the child's narrative style is at variance with the teacher's expectations, collaboration is often unsuccessful and, over time, may adversely affect school performance and evaluation. Sharing time, then, can either provide or deny access to key literacy-related experiences, depending, ironically, on the degree to which teacher and child start out “sharing” a set of discourse conventions and interpretive strategies. (Urban communication, ethnic/subcultural differences in discourse style, the transition to literacy, American English.)
Personal narratives are integral to autobiographical memory and to identity, with coherent personal narratives being linked to positive developmental outcomes across the lifespan. In this article, we review the theoretical and empirical literature that sets the stage for a new lifespan model of personal narrative coherence. This new model integrates context, chronology, and theme as essential dimensions of personal narrative coherence, each of which relies upon different developmental achievements and has a different developmental trajectory across the lifespan. A multidimensional method of coding narrative coherence (the Narrative Coherence Coding Scheme or NaCCS) was derived from the model and is described here. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by its application to 498 narratives that were collected in six laboratories from participants ranging in age from 3 years to adulthood. The value of the model is illustrated further by a discussion of its potential to guide future research on the developmental foundations of narrative coherence and on the benefits of personal narrative coherence for different aspects of psychological functioning.
This research investigated the link between oral narrative and reading skills in the first 3years of reading instruction.
Study 1 consisted of 61 children (M=6:1years) who had experienced 1year of reading instruction on average. Children’s story retelling was scored for memory
and narrative quality. The quality of children’s narratives correlated positively with their reading skill at this age, but
narrative quality did not uniquely predict their reading skill 1year later. Study 2 consisted of 39 children (M=7:0years) who had experienced 2years of reading instruction on average. At this age, the quality of children’s narratives
uniquely predicted their reading skill concurrently and 1year later, even after controlling for their receptive vocabulary
and early decoding. These findings have implications for theories of the oral language foundations of reading and for assessment
in the early years of reading instruction.
KeywordsOral language-Oral narrative-Decoding-Reading comprehension-Reading fluency
This study was designed to examine a hypothesis built on the theories of
[26] and [27], Vygotsky (1978), and Parten (1932) that children's play becomes increasingly intersubjective during preschool years. The notion of intersubjectivity is defined as joint understanding established between players. The structural features and negotiations of social play are used as indicies of intersubjectivity. The data for the analyses derived from the play sessions of twelve 3-year-olds and twelve 4 1/2-year-olds who engaged in videotaped 20 min play in same-age and same-sex dyads. The results provide support for the hypothesis that social play of preschoolers becomes increasingly shared from 3 to 4 1/2 years of age.
This paper examines the effects of the playworld educational practice on the development of narrative competence in 5- to 7-year-old children. The playworld educational practice is derived from play pedagogy and the theory of narrative learning, both developed and implemented in Scandinavia. The playworld practice consists of joint adult–child pretense based in a work of children's literature, discussion, free play, and visual art production. When compared to children under a control intervention (conventional school practices without pretend play), children who participated in the playworld practice show significant improvements in narrative length, coherence, and comprehension, although not in linguistic complexity. These findings provide further evidence concerning the role of pretense in the narrative development of young children.
Early mother-child conversations may be differentially related to children's emergent literacy, depending on the contexts examined and the function of specific utterance types within those contexts. Twenty White middle-class mothers talked about shared past events and read books with their children at 40, 46, and 58 months of age. Children completed a comprehensive literacy assessment at 70 months of age. Through regression analyses, distinct patterns of prediction emerged for children's print and narrative skills. Mothers' overall use of demanding, decontextualized utterances positively predicted children's print skills. However, mothers' increasing use of contextualizing utterances over the 18-month predictor period, especially during talk about the past, was an even stronger predictor of children's 70-month print performance. Finally, children's earlier participation figured more prominently in their later narrative skills than print abilities. Implications are discussed for scaffolding models of mother-child conversation and children's unique contributions to their own narrative development.
Past research with 152 preschoolers found that having an imaginary companion or impersonating an imaginary character was positively correlated with theory of mind performance. Three years later, 100 children from this study were retested to assess the developmental course of play with imaginary companions and impersonation of imaginary characters and how these types of role play were related to emotion understanding, self-perception, and personality. The results showed that school-age children interact with imaginary companions and impersonate imaginary characters as much as preschoolers. Overall, 65% of children up to the age of 7 had imaginary companions at some point during their lives. School-age children who did not impersonate scored lower on emotion understanding. Theory of mind at age 4 predicted emotion understanding 3 years later.
The developmental significance of preschool children's imaginary companions was examined. Mothers of 78 children were interviewed about their children's social environments and imaginary companions (if their children had them). Results revealed differences between invisible companions and personified objects (e.g., stuffed animals or dolls) in terms of the pretend friends' stability and ubiquity, identity, and relationship with the child. Relationships with invisible companions were mostly described as sociable and friendly, whereas personified objects were usually nurtured. Mothers reported that personification of objects frequently occurred as a result of acquiring a toy, whereas invisible friends were often viewed as fulfilling a need for a relationship. Compared to children without imaginary companions, children with imaginary companions were more likely to be firstborn and only children.
John and Elizabeth Newson investigate the upbringing of seven hundred Nottingham children as they reach the age of four. Parents are interviewed in their homes with a realistic yet human approach and the minimum of technical jargon, and the open-ended questions allow them to produce 'a detailed and descriptive study of how parents do in fact treat their children and - equally important - how children treat their parents.
The authors examine recent research on the effect of children's symbolic play on their literacy development. First, the roles of Piagetian and Vygotskyan theories are discussed. These two theories, it is noted, make different assumptions about the homogeneity of cognitive processing and the role of social interaction, generally, and of adults/peers, more specifically, in children's development. These differences have implications for research design and data analysis. Second, longitudinal naturalistic and experimental research on the role of symbolic play in literacy development is reviewed. While all studies reviewed were limited by possible observer bias, consistent results were found whereby adults' roles in children's symbolic play and oral language production were limited. Further, children's use of language to talk about language while interacting with peers was an important factor in early reading. Third, implications for pedagogy and future research are discussed. /// [French] Les auteurs examinent les recherches récentes sur l'effet du jeu symbolique des enfants sur leur apprentissage de la lectureécriture. Ils discutent d'abord du rôle des théories de Piaget et de Vygotsky. Ces deux théories, notent-ils, ont des positions différentes sur l'homogénéité des processus cognitifs et le rôle des interactions sociales, en générale, et, plus précisément, des interactions adultes/pairs dans le développement de l'enfant. Ces différences ont des implications sur les projets de recherche et l'analyse des résultats. On a effectué ensuite une revue des recherches, longitudinale sur le terrain et expérimentale, sur le rôle de jeu symbolique dans le développement de la lecture-écriture. Alors que toutes les études examinées sont limitées par un éventuel biais de l'observateur, on a trouvé des résultats solides suivant lesquels le rôle des adultes dans le jeu des enfants et dans leur production de langage oral est limité. Par ailleurs, l'usage du langage que font les enfants pour parler du langage lorsqu'ils sont en interaction avec d'autres enfants est apparu comme un facteur important en début d'apprentissage de la lecture. On a discuté, enfin, des implications pour la pédagogie et les recherches à venir. /// [Spanish] Los autores examinan la investigación reciente acerca del efecto del juego simbólico en los niños sobre el desarrollo de la alfabetización. En primer lugar, se discuten los roles de las teorías piagetiana y vigotskiana. Estas dos teorías hacen diferentes consideraciones sobre la homgeneidad del procesamiento cognitivo y el rol de la interacción social, en general, y más específicamente, entre adultos/pares, en el desarollo. Estas diferencias tienen implicancias para los diseños de investigación y el análisis de los datos. En segundo lugar, se revisó la investigación longitudinal naturalista y experimental sobre el rol de juego simbólico en la alfabetización. Si bien todos los estudios revisados estaban limitados por un posible sesgo del observador, se hallaron resultados consistentes en cuanto a la limitación del rol de los adultos en el juego y la producción oral de los niños. Más aún, el uso del lenguaje por parte de los niños para hablar acerca del languaje mientras interactúan con sus pares fue un factor importante en la lectura inicial. En tercer lugar, se discuten implicancias para la pedagogía y la investigación futura. /// [German] Die autoren analysieren aktuelle Untersuchungen über den Effekt kindlichen symbolischen Spiels auf die Entwicklung ihrer Lese- und Schreibfähigkeiten. Zunächst wird die Relevanz der Theorien von Piaget und Vygotsky diskutiert. An beiden Theorien wird beobachtet, daß sie verschiedene Annahmen über den Zusammenhang von kognitiver Entwicklung und sozialer Interaktion generell und im speziellen über den Einfluß Erwachsener bzw. Gruppenzugehöriger auf die kindliche Entwicklung machen. Diese Unterschiede haben Implikationen für Untersuchungskonzepte und Datenanalyse. Des weiteren wird ein Überblick gegeben über die Feldforschungen und Experimente im Längsschnitt, die die Rolle von symbolischem Spiel bei der Entwicklung der Lesefähigkeit untersuchen. Obgleich alle geprüften Studien durch eine mögliche Beobachtervoreingenommenheit eingeschränkt waren, wurden konsistente Ergebnisse aufgewiesen, aufgrund derer die Rolle der Erwachsenen beim kindlichen Spiel und der mündlichen Sprachproduktion begrenzt scheinen. Als weiterer wichtiger Faktor beim frühen Lesenlernen erschien der kindliche Gebrauch von Metasprache in der Interaktion mit Gruppenzugehörigen. Drittens werden Implikationen für Pädagogik und zukünftige Untersuchungen diskutiert.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the language use of 40 children with imaginary companions (IC) and 40 children without imaginary companions (NIC) across two age levels: a younger group aged 4;0–5;11 and an older group aged 6;0–7;11. The study investigated the language of these children by examining their use of adverbial and relative clauses, complement clauses, co-ordinating conjunctions and modal types. The findings indicated that, compared with NICs, ICs used a significantly greater number of adverbial clauses, relative clauses, and and, with their use of but approaching significance. Overall, the results were interpreted as indicating that ICs use more mature language, and this demonstrates enhanced social-cognitive skills. It was concluded that the presence of imaginary companions is positively associated with language use and discourse competency of children.
This study investigated relationships between preschoolersí oral discourse and their later skill at reading and writing. Thirty-two children participated in narrative and expository oral language tasks at age 5 years and reading comprehension and writing assessments at age 8 years. Childrenís ability to mark the significance of narrated events through the use of evaluation at age 5 predicted reading comprehension skills at age 8. Childrenís ability to represent informational content in expository talk at age 5 also predicted reading comprehension at age 8. Control of discourse macrostructures in both narrative and expository talk at age 5 was associated with written narrative skill at age 8. These findings point to a complex and differentiated role for oral language in supporting early literacy.
Early research on imaginary companions suggests that children who create them do so to compensate for poor social relationships. Consequently, the peer acceptance of children with imaginary companions was compared to that of their peers. Sociometrics were conducted on 88 preschool-aged children; 11 had invisible companions, 16 had personified objects (e.g., stuffed animals animated by the child) and 65 had no imaginary companion. The three groups were compared on positive and negative nominations, social preference, social impact, and total number of reciprocal friends. Given the positive correlation between pretend play and social competence, fantasy predisposition was used as a covariate. The groups did not differ on number of positive nominations by peers, total number of reciprocal friends, or social preference scores. However, compared to their peers, children with personified objects had higher social impact scores, largely as a result of negative nominations. Attention is thus called to the differences between personified object and invisible imaginary companions, and to the underlying social cognition that may be involved in their creation.
Communication in mother-infant dyads and mother-infant-sibling triads was examined to determine how variations in the number of people and type of activity affect the way language is used by all participants. Home-based videotaped observations were made of 16 first- and 16 later-born children when they were between 18 and 23 months old. All children were observed in 2 activities-free play with toys and picture book reading-with their mothers. Later-borns were observed also with both their mother and preschool-aged older sibling. A coding system was developed to classify all the participants' uses of language. Included were "referential," "social regulative," and "metalingual" categories of language use. Analyses revealed differences in mother's and infant's language use as a function of sibling status, type of activity, and number of participants. In general, later-born infants used more social regulative speech than did firstborns; their mothers used less metalingual speech than did mothers of firstborns; and, inclusion of siblings appeared to magnify these differences for both groups. Of particular interest, mothers' "metalingual" uses were important in predicting observed measures of the infant's linguistic ability.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Recent theoretical and empirical evidence for relations between children’s symbolic play and literate behavior are reviewed. Symbolic play and literate behaviors are said to involve similar mental processes: the production and comprehension of decontextualized language and narrative competence. Studies are classified and discussed according to these similarities. Results of the studies are reviewed and critiqued in terms of methodological and theoretical issues. Observational results suggest that decontextualized language and narrative skills are involved in both symbolic play and school-based literacy events. Experimental results, however, raise a number of problems with the theory that symbolic play is related causally to literate behavior. Suggestions for future research are made
Contends that the uses and functions of imaginary play companions (IPCs) in the lives of young children are being recognized and better understood by teachers and parents. Research suggests that the belief in IPCs is linked with creative and intellectual growth. The development of sensitivity, elaboration, and originality have been linked with IPCs. The key elements connected to intellectual growth appear to include symbolic functioning, decontextualization, object relations, and symbolization. It is suggested that these same elements can be used as guidance strategies by adults working with these children who have imaginary friends and that their use has the potential for increasing creative and intellectual thought in both school and home settings. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The phenomenon of imaginary companions, which is usually regarded as normal in children, but which when encountered in adults suggests a psychopathologic condition, appears to have had little investigation. However, numerous theories in regard to its significance have been advanced, some of which are sociologic, others psychologic and others psychoanalytic.SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PHENOMENON
Sociologic Theories.
—Cooley1 observed that:Some children appear to live in personal imagination from the first month. Others occupy themselves in early infancy mostly with solitary experiments upon blocks, cards and other impersonal objects, and their thoughts are doubtlessly filled with images of these.... People differ in the vividness of their imaginative sociability.... There is no separation between real and imaginary persons; indeed to be imagined is to become real in a social sense.Mead2 reported that in New Guinea there are for the children no socially defined lacks in their lives and consequently
recent work in developmental psychology has shown that young children explain and predict behaviour in terms of every-day mental concepts, notably beliefs and desires / from this evidence, some have concluded that children adopt a theory of mind / I shall argue instead that children engage in an increasingly sophisticated process of mental simulation that allows them to make quasi-theoretical predictions
mental simulation depends on the capacity to engage in two successive steps: (1) to imagine having a particular desire of belief, and (2) to imagine the actions, thoughts or emotions that would ensue if one were to have those desires or beliefs / the products of such a simulation can then be attributed to other people who do have the simulated desires or beliefs
my analysis incorporates the notion of role-taking . . . but seeks to show how such a process might operate in early childhood / it provides a framework for interpreting two reasonably well-established facts: (1) the increasing accuracy with which children can diagnose mental states, and (2) the deficits shown by autistic children in making such diagnoses
the capacity for pretence / reasoning with pretend premises / altering default settings (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The present paper develops a theoretical framework for the study of pretense as a symbolic system designed to serve affective functions. The first part of the paper presents a review of three theories which acknowledge the affective function of pretense and constitute the background for the theory proposed in this paper. The second part of the paper presents an affective theory to analyze children's spontaneously generated pretend protocols. A study is then summarized as an illustration of the affective theory and directions for future research are noted.
Parents are often solicited as reporters on their children's imaginary companions (ICs), but the correspondence between their reports and children's descriptions of pretend friends has received little attention. Sixty 4-year-old children and their parents provided descriptions of the children's interest in fantasy play, and 40 of these pairs also reported on children's ICs (20 on invisible friends and 20 on personified objects such as dolls). Results indicated that reports from parents of children with ICs matched their children's reports for involvement in fantasy play better than those of parents of children without ICs. For both IC groups, parents' reports concurred with children's for IC form, sex and physical description, but overall, parent–child agreement was higher for invisible friends than for personified objects. Results imply that parents may be better reporters of normative developmental processes that are slightly atypical than those that are common to most children. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This study investigated the specific fears, anxiety level, and temperament characteristics of children with and without imaginary companions. Mothers of children with and without imaginary companions (37 mothers in each condition) whose children were aged between 3.2 and 8.7 years were asked to complete the Fear Survey Schedule for Children - II Parent (FSSC-IIP), the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale - Parent (RCMAS-P), and the Short Temperament Scale for Children (STSC). Examination of mothers' ratings indicated no differences between groups on the fear and temperament scales. The scores for anxiety were significantly higher for imaginary companion children as a result of differences on the concentration and worry-over sensitivity subscales. However, the mean scores were still within the normal range. Consequently, it is concluded that whereas the presence of imaginary companions may be associated with some difference in levels of anxiety, overall there is no indication that children with imaginary companions experience emotional difficulties.
For more information, go to editor's website : http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=25615 Excerpts available on Google Books.
This review addresses theory and research on the role of self understanding, language, theory of mind, attachment security, and parental style in children's autobiographical memory development. Social-cognitive factors appear to interact with parental style in producing children's first verbal memories. Emotional factors, such as attachment security, may also prove to be critical for the socialization of life histories. Further longitudinal studies will be necessary to examine individual differences in the growth of this complex and multiply determined skill.
Thirty-three kindergartners from two social classes were tested on an array of prereading and oral language skills. Prereading test results were clustered into composite scores reflecting skill interpreting environmental print, understanding how print functions, producing and decoding print, isolating phonemes, and comprehending stories. Several decontextualized language skills were assessed with a picture description task and a word definition task. Prereading skills were found to be highly intercorrelated and to relate to the ability to provide decontextualized definitions for words. Oral language measures of decontextualized skill correlated within task, but not across tasks. Social class differences were found for the prereading measures and for those oral language measures that correlated with the prereading measures. Social class differences were not found on measures of ability to provide communicatively adequate definitions or for receptive vocabulary.