Imaginary Companions Research Articles

Narrative Practices for Children with ASD: Hey! My Therapist Has an Imaginary Friend and Other Anti‐tantrum Practices*

Aggressive behaviour is one of the most disruptive problems in children with autism. It generates anxiety in the parents and the child, who does not know what to do, and the family's quality of life is significantly reduced. In this scenario, using narrative practices may help promote the sense of agency in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and help them find solutions based on self‐knowledge. This article explores different narrative practices to help deal with challenging behaviour in children with ASD. We discuss several examples using two techniques: a therapist's imaginary friend and using a magic coin as ways of externalising the problem and playing with metaphors. We present the procedures applied during the interventions with three children. These narrative practices can help to externalise the problem, think about possible solutions, and facilitate the development of imagination and abstract thinking in children with ASD.

Me and My Imaginary Friend: Critical Study of Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves

Me and My Imaginary Friend: Critical Study of Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves

Childhood Imaginary Companion and Schizotypy in Adolescents and Adults

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.”

Autistic children who create imaginary companions: Evidence of social benefits.

Research on neurotypical children with imaginary friends has found that those with imaginary friends have better social skills and are more able to think about how other people's minds work compared to children without imaginary friends. Research shows that some autistic children also create imaginary friends. This article is the first to look at whether or not autistic children with imaginary friends have stronger social skills and an improved ability to think about others' minds than those without imaginary friends. We asked parents to report about their children aged 5 to 12. Finding almost half reported their child had an imaginary friend, a much larger number than previous research with younger children. Our findings also suggested that autistic children with imaginary friends were better able to understand others' minds and had stronger social skills than their peers without imaginary friends. The children's language ability did not influence this. The findings of this study add to the evidence that with respect to the creation imaginary friends and their potential benefits, the play profiles of autistic children are similar to the general population. It also provides more evidence that the understanding of others' minds is not all or nothing in autism and gives reason for researchers to investigate whether the causes of these differences are the same or different for autistic children.

Explaining the illusion of independent agency in imagined persons with a theory of practice

ABSTRACT Many mental phenomena involve thinking about people who do not exist. Imagined characters appear in planning, dreams, fantasizing, imaginary companions, bereavement hallucinations, auditory verbal hallucinations, and as characters created in fictional narratives by authors. Sometimes these imagined persons are felt to be completely under our control, as when one fantasizes about having a great time at a party. Other times, characters feel as though they are outside of our conscious control. Dream characters, for example, are experienced by dreamers as autonomous entities, and often do things that frighten and surprise dreamers. Some imagined persons, such as characters in fiction, start off under conscious control of the author, but over time, can appear to gain an illusion of independent agency. I propose an explanation for different autonomy attributions: characters are by default non-autonomous, unless their personalities are well-practiced. Characters become autonomous because modeling their thinking has become automatized, like many other well-practiced activities.

Invisible Friend or Foe?How Journalists Use and Perceive Algorithmic-Driven Tools in Their Research Process

The use of algorithmic tools by journalists for information-gathering has received particular attention in recent years. While it might facilitate the research process, there are also concerns about their impact on journalism. Based on reconstruction interviews with 27 journalists, we first answer the primary question to what extent journalists actually use algorithmic-driven tools for research purposes. Then, we analyze which folk theories journalists create during their use of algorithm-driven tools. Results show that algorithmic tools specifically designed for the journalistic research process are rarely or not at all used. Yet, more crucially, search engines and social media, that are driven by algorithms, play a major role when it comes to the search, selection, and verification of sources and information. However, journalists are not aware of this hidden research assistant facilitating their research process. When explicitly asked, they profess specific notions regarding the use of algorithmic-driven tools in the form of folk theories, which are predominantly negative regarding the influence of AI on journalism. At the same time, there is a still a strong feeling of a professional authority among journalists who feel they are able to work autonomously of any kind of influence, including algorithms.

영화 [조조 래빗]의 통과의례 연구

The aim of this article is to analyze the structure and aspects of the rite of passage in the film <Jojo Rabbit>(2019). This film, directed and adapted by Taika Waititi based upon the novel Caging Skies of Christine Leunens, is a Jojo Betzler’s growth story. He is a ten-year-old boy in Nazi Germany during the second world war. He is extremely patriotic and loves his country and loves the Führer - he talks to his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler, who, in his mind, he sees as his best friend and biggest cheerleader. The rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. According to Arnold van Gennep, the rites of passage have three phases: Separation, transition, and incorporation. In the first phase, people withdraw from the group and begin moving from one place or status to another. In the third phase, they reenter society, having completed the rite. The transition phase, liminality, is the period between states, during which people have left one place or state but have not yet entered or joined the next. During the liminal state, one's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, as it is a period of transition. According to the schematic of the rite of passage, the narrative in <Jojo Rabbit> is structured in the form of a correlation between Jojo, who enters through the front door of his house, and then opens the door again and leaves. Jojo has been thoroughly indoctrinated that Jews are horned witches and needs to be killed, falls into chaos while living with Jewish Elsa hiding in his closet. Therefore, as a time and domain of ambiguity, Jojo's house functions as a space for the transition rite equipped with the threshold quality. Taking Elsa outside, Jojo completes the rite of passage. In the rite of passing through the threshold, tying Elsa’s shoelaces symbolizes the growth of Jojo. In the incorporation phase, Jojo assumes his "new" identity, and re-enters society with his new status. Overcoming racial hatred and prejudice, he empathizes and loves Elsa, a Jewish girl. She then tells Jojo to dance with her ― Rosie believes that dancing is one of the few ways you can be free under this Nazi regime.

Cleaning in progress: the line between art and life

This exposition combines image, text, and video to provide an overview of my artistic research, which focuses on the embodied experience of art-making in relation to the everyday. Equipped with the notions of a line and a circle, I explore the connections and overlaps between art and life through a multi-disciplinary art practice that combines installation, sculpture, drawing, performance, and video, and merges this with everyday experiences, mainly cleaning, one of the more mundane aspects of everyday life. In this work, I am accompanied by three imaginary friends, who are also artists. We find ourselves constantly crossing the lines between art, art-making, and everyday life as we move between our roles and various places of work, such as home, university, library, and studio. We dip into the everyday for materials, tools, and techniques, and work in the manner of a bricoleuse, using a ‘make do’ approach and ‘what is at hand’. Along the way, we ponder the specialness of art, especially from the perspective of an artist for whom art and art-making are a part of the everyday and therefore quite un-special. As we puzzle over the distinctions of whether something is practical or impractical, useful or useless, art or non-art, mundane or special, we end up blurring the borders to discover an approach that attempts to dispense with the idea of boundaries and binaries altogether.

Imaginary friend play in light of enactivism

Review of psychological data of how children engage in imaginary friend play (IFP) shows that it involves a lot of explicit embodied action and interaction with surrounding people and environments. However, IFP is still seen as principally an individualistic activity, where, in addition to those interactions, the actor has to mentally represent an absent entity in imagination in order to engage in IFP. This capacity is deemed necessary because the imaginary companion is absent or not real. This article proposes a proof of concept argument that enactivism can account for complex imaginary phenomena as imaginary friend play. Enactivism proposes thinking of IFP in a fundamentally different way, as an explicitly embodied and performative act, where one does not need to mentally represent absent entities. It reconceptualizes imagination involved in IFP as strongly embodied, and proposes that play environments have present affordances for social and normative interactions that are reenacted in IFP—there is no “absence” that needs to be mentally represented first. This article argues that IFP is performed and enacted in the world without having to be represented in the mind first, which best captures the social and interactive nature of this form of play.

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an ‘I’ The imaginary in playful academic development

'Once upon a time four very different women went into the Academy. They did not share a disciplinary homeland but forged new bonds closer than kinship and worked together for teaching to triumph over research. Things change, and scattered to the four corners of the realm they vowed to remain true to their playful hearts. Through missives, they storied, imagined, and strove to sing new worlds of wonderment into being.'This paper chronicles their quest, tells of the old ways and the new, tells tales of beings and becomings, of how we make stories and stories make us.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;We share our experience of academic development as inherently playful. We suggest that reflective practice, narratives of teaching philosophy and exploration of teaching identity engage academics with an exploration of their possible teaching selves. This potentiality is inherently fictional – we invite academics to dwell in imagined worlds, to imagine the possible, to exist in uncertainty, and initiate uncanny encounters. By engaging colleagues playfully, we can support them in pushing the boundaries of self and practice. This paper will embody an uncanny encounter, as we interrogated our work through letters exchanged and remixed to create imagined worlds and imaginary friends. A spirit of play brought a willingness to accept and embrace constraints, to try something difficult where success was not guaranteed. Extending playfulness into our methodology brought risk, challenge, and failure as we lost ourselves in fictional flow, until reflection-in-action restored us. We propose that this union between playful fiction and reflection can promise a happily ever after. Reader should we marry them?&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;

Predicting Surrogates' Health Information Seeking Behavior via Information Source and Information Evaluation

AbstractThis study investigates surrogates' health information sharing behavior through information sources and information evaluation. A lab‐based experiment was conducted. Twenty‐five participants read five scenarios, each with three preselected webpages from a government, a commercial, and an online forum source. Participants had to decide whether to share the information with an imaginary friend of theirs and provide rationales (an indication of information evaluation). Content analysis and mixed effects logistic regression models were performed. Government websites were recommended for sharing the most, followed by commercial and online forum sources. Criteria predicting participants' intention to share information were different for each information source. The content's usefulness and trustworthiness were two criteria predicting participants' intention to share commercial websites. Source's trustworthiness and individual relevant criterion were two significant predictors for government sources. Source's trustworthiness had negative effects on sharing information from online forums. 13.3% of the information evaluation involved using both positive and negative criteria.

Cognitive basis of drawing in young children: relationships with language and imaginary companions

ABSTRACT It has been suggested that children’s drawings are associated with their representation ability. However, there is little research on the cognitive basis of drawing in young children. In this study, we investigated the relationship between drawing, language ability, and the presence of imaginary companions (ICs) in children aged between three and six. We found that children with higher drawing scores and more number of colours used had higher receptive and expressive language, and language concepts. Further, children with higher drawing scores and more number of colours used were likely to have ICs. These findings demonstrate that the cognitive basis for drawing is based on the ability of children to grasp representations and images. New findings have shed light on the underlying mechanisms linking children’s drawings and cognition.

Did Children Interact With Their Personified Objects During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Although previous studies revealed the characteristics of children with imaginary companions, the characteristics of children alone could not explain why some children create and interact with imaginary companions. The current cross-sectional study examined the impact of the situational factors, decreased opportunities to meet and play with real playmate due to the COVID-19 pandemic, on the prevalence of imaginary companions. Five hundred sixty caregivers of children aged 2–9 years (half of them were girls) were asked whether their children currently had imaginary companions (personified objects and invisible friends) before (September 2019) and during the pandemic (April 2020). The logistic regression model showed that only the prevalence of personified objects increased during the pandemic, OR = 2.01, 95%CI [1.34, 3.00], even when potential variables were controlled. The results suggest that children more frequently played with their personified objects during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic.

Tito and Children in Political Folklore 1980: Wishes for Tito's Speedy Recovery

In 1980 Tito's health deteriorated. The citizens of Yugoslavia followed the news about the course of his illness with apprehension and anticipation. From January to May 1980, citizens sent more than four hundred thousand messages wishing Tito a speedy recovery. Among the most numerous were children. Starting from the assumption of the closeness between political socialization, folklore and political culture in Yugoslav society, in this paper I analyze some of the basic motives present in the messages that children sent to Tito. Insight into the messages that the editors of the publication "Tito. Messages, wishes - the children of Yugoslavia" call a "vow", and in the sense of the promise that children will preserve the achievements of Yugoslav socialism, it enables the reconstruction of Yugoslav political myths and Tito's representation within children's political culture. The reconstruction of the narrative enables the recognition of the following motives: Tito as a hero and a fighter against all evil; 2. Tito as a solar deity; 3. Tito as an (imaginary) friend and protector of all the children of the world. For the purposes of this paper, wishes for a speedy recovery are understood as a folklore genre, and some of the specifics of Yugoslav children's political folklore.

Believing in Bits: Digital Media and the Supernatural

Believing in Bits: Digital Media and the Supernatural

Social work student telephones Expert by experience. Service users involvement in social work education during Covid-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT This article presents an innovative activity based on the involvement of Experts by Experience in social work education. The activity was conducted in Italy during weeks of lockdown. In the spring of 2020, due to containment measures adopted by the Italian government to face with COVID-19, day-long meetings of students of social work with Experts by Experience were suspended. This impediment encouraged educators to develop a new initiative named ‘Social work student telephones Expert by Experience’ in which 119 students of social work and 69 Experts by Experience participated. The activity entailed a telephone call exchanged between a student and an Expert by Experience. After their respective calls, each student was invited to fill out an online form describing the lived experience through a short story addressed to an imaginary friend. Three main themes emerged from the content analysis of the students’ stories: students’ learnings acquired through the activity; students’ feelings during the activity; students’ overall opinions on the educational activity. In the international field of service users’ involvement in social work education, the activity represents an innovation that could inspire other universities to adopt similar practices.

The Ghostly Character of Childhood Imaginary Companions: An Empirical Study of Online Accounts

The Ghostly Character of Childhood Imaginary Companions: An Empirical Study of Online Accounts

The Ghostly Character of Childhood Imaginary Companions: An Empirical Study of Online Accounts

The Ghostly Character of Childhood Imaginary Companions: An Empirical Study of Online Accounts

The imaginary friends of my friends: Imagined contact interventions which highlight supportive social norms reduce children’s antirefugee bias

Fostering inclusive attitudes among children in host classrooms is key to integrating refugee children. A field experiment tests the prejudice reduction effects of a teacher-led activity integrating imagined intergroup contact and normative influence. To enhance the effectiveness of imagined contact, scenarios include supportive ingroup norms. In 29 classes, 545 children ( Mage = 10.88, SD = 0.96) were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: standard imagined contact, imagined contact encouraged by family, class peers, or religious ingroups, or a control. Children in all norm-framed imagined contact conditions had significantly less antirefugee bias compared with the control. The class-peer norm frame significantly reduced affective and cognitive facets of bias. The family norm frame reduced affective bias, and the religious norm frame reduced cognitive bias. Standard imagined contact did not differ from the control. Potential mediating pathways are explored. These findings illustrate the utility of incorporating norms into imagined contact interventions to reduce antirefugee bias among schoolchildren.

A Review of Imaginary Companions and Their Implications for Development

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.