Imaginary agents exist perceptually for children but not for adults

Yusuke Moriguchi,Shoji Itakura,Shinsuke Shimojo,Yasuhiro Kanakogi,Yuko Okumura,Ikuko Shinohara

doi:10.1057/s41599-019-0350-6

Abstract

Mental imagery refers to representations and the accompanying experience of sensory information in the absence of appropriate sensory input. Little is known about children’s social imagery, imagery about an agent. It is possible that children’s social imagery may qualitatively differ from that of adults by involving more perceptual characteristics. We conducted three experiments to investigate the perceptual existence of social imagery when induced by verbal cues. Experiment 1 was a precondition for Experiments 2 and 3, and we examined whether children’s and adults’ predictive eye movements were disrupted by the presence of a real person’s face. Preschool children (n = 20) and adults (n = 20) watched a video where a woman, with/without her face shown, placed balls into a bucket. Participants’ gazes were less predictive of the woman’s actions in ‘Face’ versus ‘No-Face’ videos, indirectly indicating the perceptual presence of agents. Next, we examined whether adults’ and children’s predictive eye movements were affected by imagining a person. In Experiment 2, adult participants were presented with a video where the balls moved automatically and were asked to either watch the video (Ball condition, n = 20) or imagine that an invisible person moved the balls (Imagination condition, n = 20). Adult gazes did not differ between conditions. However, in Experiment 3, preschool children’s gazes were less predictive when imagining an invisible person’s actions (Invisible condition, n = 20) than when not imagining anything (Ball condition, n = 20) or when imagining an object (Fan condition, n = 20). The results suggest that children experience realistic social imagery induced by verbal cues.

Highlights

Mental imagery refers to representations and the accompanying experience of sensory information in the absence of appropriate sensory inputs (Pearson et al, 2015)
It has been shown that preschool children have four aspects of mental imagery, including image generation, maintenance, scanning, and rotation, their performance in some aspects were worse than older children and adults (Frick et al, 2009; Kosslyn et al, 1990; Wimmer et al, 2016)
We examined whether adults’ (Experiment 2) and children’s (Experiment 3) predictive eye movements were affected by imagining a person, and whether the effects were different in children and adults

Summary

Introduction

Mental imagery refers to representations and the accompanying experience of sensory information in the absence of appropriate sensory inputs (Pearson et al, 2015). Recent brain imaging studies have shown that the activated regions for social imagery (e.g., face) were different from those in imagery about an object (e.g., place) (O’Craven and Kanwisher 2000; Reddy et al, 2010) In this regard, few studies have examined children’s social imagery, it is well known that young children often verbally report that they enjoy interacting, playing, and talking with an invisible agent or imaginary companion (IC) (Fernyhough et al, 2007; Gleason, 2002; Moriguchi and Shinohara, 2012; Moriguchi and Todo, 2017, 2018; Tahiroglu et al, 2011; Taylor, 1999), which is “an invisible character, named and referred to in conversation with other persons or played with directly for a period of time, at least several months, having an air of reality for the child but no apparent objective basis” (Svendsen, 1934). These characteristics can be objectively measured through the behavioral consequences of children’s imaginative experiences

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Results