The Unified Theory of the Nervous System
and Behavior
Cognitive Philosophy /Brain Theory by Steven Michael Harris
Imaginary Companions Can Be Child's Fast Friends (HealthDayNews, 12/13/2004) (link retired)
So who and what are these magical playmates?
About half of the time, preschoolers played with make-believe pals inspired by toys, while more than two thirds of school-age children (67 percent) cited invisible friends. Also, 57 percent of the imaginary companions of school-age youngsters were humans and 41 percent were animals. And they came in all shapes, sizes, and even species. Imaginary companions, according to the study, could be invisible boys and girls, a squirrel, a panther, a dog, a 7-inch-tall elephant or a 100-year-old GI Joe doll.
Imaginary friends play an important role in a child's development, Taylor said. "What we have shown in previous work is that having an imaginary companion is associated with advanced social understanding -- being able to take the perspective of another person." Think of it as dress rehearsal for real life, interacting with all types of characters and handling conflict resolution, the researchers said.
This professor offers the explanation for why imaginary playmates exist, and this offering is just an invented theory and I'd like to offer another theory about this here.
Notice how the examples of what constitute an imaginary playmate. (Consider, also, that these researchers do not tell us here if the child believes that such a playmate really exists - an important detail.)
An imaginary friend can be invisible, but represented by a name. It can also be a friend that is represented by an object and a name. We don't know if other species have imaginary friends and we doubt that such is possible. I doubt it too. The brain gets into a pattern of organizing by association and language changes the logic of the brain considerably so that we get in the habit of considering things that are not in sight all the time as real (when we speak of them we think of them, even when they are not there). Language is a logic of things that exist in words (and in the thoughts organized by words after language has developed). A child will hear mention of persons in language that they have never seen but that they know are real. It is no big step to start inventing persons or things that exist that are not there when the brain is learning to use language to represent things that are not there all of the time. Without language, a thing is either there to deal with or it is not. Language makes us consider things that are not there all of the time. Combine this learning to use spoken symbols as things that exist (whether observable or not) with the insistence that we teach our children magical thinking in fairy tales and Santa Clause and such and the invention of magical beings or non-existent beings is no big jump.
Yes, there will be rehearsal for life in such play, but all living is rehearsal for later life for everyone and my explanation is simpler and does not imply any complex evolutionary psychology theories that would require extremely complex behaviors to somehow be encoded in genetics. (Always avoid the complex behaviors encoded into genetics argument, especially when a simpler explanation without any genetic information required is possible. This is necessary especially with all of the current evidence that the human genome has about the same number of genes as the roundworm.)
"Engaging in imaginary play is for children a way of taking the big, complicated world outside and converting it into something they can manage," explained Jerome Singer, professor emeritus of psychology and child study at Yale University. "They may use a toy or transform some other object, like a cardboard box, into anything they want. It's an important experience for them that gives them a sense of power, and a source of fun."
This statement that transforming an object into something else is something that gives the child a sense of power is as much an invention as the imagination inventions of those kids. My previous statement also explains that observation as well.
Added Taylor: "Children with imaginary companions, if anything, are less shy than other children and more sociable. They do use imaginary companions to cope with various issues or problems, but this is a positive adaptive response."
A previous press release about this same topic mentioned that girls have more imaginary friends than boys, but that boys catch up later. This correlates with the fact that boys are more autistic than girls and that autism is a disorder of stress where the different parts of thinking don't get together. So with less assimilation of different subject matter, putting together an observation with a representation in language or other thought is more difficult (and so it may never come or just come later in time).
They mention later that a child with more imaginative play will be more creative later on but this is a carrot and horse issue as those who are more autistic are less likely to have imaginary play and be creative as well. That difference might be there without the influence of such play on development.
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