Imaginary Companions Afford a Context for Learning to Combine Fantasy and Reality

• In Event: Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

Despite early claims (e.g., Piaget, 1952) that young children are poor at differentiating fantasy and reality, several researchers (e.g., Harris, 2012; Woolley, 2013) have pointed out myriad ways in which children successfully make this distinction. However, learning to combine the two—while maintaining the distinction—might be another important developmental task. After all, adults use imagination to combine what is with what might or will be every day—we consider counterfactuals in decision-making; in enjoying fiction, we feel real emotions about unreal scenarios. This ability to simultaneously distinguish between fantasy and reality and to purposefully ignore or blur that distinction has received little attention in development.

Young children might practice combining fantasy and reality in pretend play (PP), except that when children pretend, their actions are often confined to a separate context quarantined from reality (Lillard et al., 2011). In contrast, young children’s imaginary companions (ICs) are often described in such realistic terms that parents initially mistake new ICs for real others. And although ICs are often considered a form of PP, they might paradoxically exist in the real world in a way that typical PP does not. We hypothesized that ICs provide a context in which children merge imagination and reality. As such, in comparison to PP, ICs were expected to appear a) in reality rather than quarantined from it, b) spontaneously, c) outside of designated play times, and to d) exist primarily in conversation with real others, and e) be incorporated into the ongoing stream of behavior. We did not expect differences in whether PP and ICs were social vs. solitary activities.

Parents of 82 children (Mage = 52.56 mos.) kept diaries of their children’s engagement in pretend play (n = 31; 79 episodes) or interactions with ICs (n = 51; 131 episodes) over the course of two weeks or 10 episodes, whichever came first. Episodes were coded (yes/no) for quarantine from reality, spontaneity (vs. prompted, for example, by seeing toys and wanting to play), designated play time, social (vs. solitary) play, narrative (vs. enactment of pretense), and rated as continuous with previous or following behavior.

Using binary logistic regression, we found that an episode was more likely to be from an IC than PP if it was unquarantined, spontaneous, narrative, and flowed seamlessly into what happened next. IC and PP episodes were not distinguished by designated play times, solitary vs. social play, or the extent to which the episode flowed from previous behavior (see Table 1). The model correctly predicted 87.6% of episodes, Chisq (7) = 124.72, p < .001, Nagelkerke R2 = .61. In contrast to the image of ICs existing in a child’s solitary, fantasy world, engagement with ICs is more likely than PP to take place in reality, unconnected to toys or other play prompts, and to consist of a conversation with a real other that leads seamlessly into the next activity or conversation. These creations thus afford a playful context for learning to combine imagination and reality in adult-like ways.

Authors

• Tracy Gleason, Wellesley College
  Presenting Author

• Mona Baloch, Wellesley College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Arielle Belluck, Wellesley College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chantal Alejandra Valdivia, Wellesley College
  Non-Presenting Author