Childhood & Imaginary Friends

Thanks to David Pescovitz at Boing Boing for this posting.

Research by Univ. of Washington and Univ. of Oregon has turned up that two-thirds of school-age children have an imaginary companion by age seven. It also turns out this seems to be a good thing.

A teaser from this article:
"The researchers also looked at childhood impersonation -- pretending to be an imaginary character -- and found it to be almost universal. Virtually all preschoolers pretended to be an animal or another person and 95 percent of the school-age children engaged in impersonation. The researchers did not look at impersonation in the same detail as they did imaginary companions, and were surprised that so many school-age children continued to engage in the activity. One tantalizing finding was that school-age children who did little or no impersonation scored low on emotional understanding of other people, according to Carlson.

She said that fantasy -- interacting with imaginary friends and impersonation -- plays a role in child development, both cognitively and emotionally. This kind of activity allows children to manage social situations in a safe context, such as practicing how to handle conflict with something that may or may not talk back to them. Cognitively it helps them deal with abstract symbols and thought, which leads them to abstract thought about their own identity. "

Did you have an imaginary friend or know of someone who did?