Imaginary Playmates Research Articles

The Validation of the Free Fantasy Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents: From Imaginary Playmate to "Dreamtime".

Fantasy in children is a precocious and important skill. In normal subjects some imaginative events, very close to hallucinations (perception-like experiences), have been found. Therefore, a better knowledge on both fantasy and the difference between imagination and the external world is needed. The aims of this study are: (a) to validate a new questionnaire for fantasy in children and adolescents; (b) to test its clinical application in ADHD children. 1.707 participants aged 8–18 years were enrolled: 1557 were recruited from a survey in six schools, whereas 150 participants were recruited in an ADHD Center. They filled out a new questionnaire, the Free Fantasy Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents, FFQ. Statistical analyses were performed to validate the FFQ and to study five parameters of fantasy. Analyses showed good properties of the FFQ as regards factor structure and reliability. Descriptive analysis showed that: 10% of the adolescents frequently have fantasy with paracosmos and 9.5% sometimes have a fantasy with imaginary relatives. Moreover, in the 64.3% of participants of primary school, in the 34.5% of lower-secondary, and in the 27.4% of upper-secondary school Perception-like experiences, involving invisible but real personages, were found. Quality of fantasy and Lack of control on imagination are correlated with a high score in the Reality/Unreality Dimension and Perception-like experiences. As regards ADHD participants, the 40% of the group showed Perception-like experiences: the 21.66% of them reported a very high score in the dimension Reality/Unreality, have some dissociative symptoms, and the 3.33% presented a clear dissociative identity disorder. All were free from psychosis or neurologic disorders. A new questionnaire to study fantasy in children and adolescents was validated. Many children and adolescents of the general population declared Perception-like experiences. These events seem to be specific, and probably normal, features of the mind; they could be better named as “Dreamtime,” whereas only in extreme conditions they could represent a risk for dissociation.

Things to Do with Your Imaginary Child

This essay considers texts in which adults consciously invent children whom they represent to the world as “real,” children who can then investigate the limits that their inventors may test in other people. Drawing on clinical psychological theories of children’s imaginary playmates—and the value that psychologists ascribe to the juvenile practice of inventing imaginary children—I consider what the adult invention of a child might suggest about the “uses” of children more generally. Texts under consideration are Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener, and Lorrie Moore’s Anagrams.

Things to Do with Your Imaginary Child

This essay considers texts in which adults consciously invent children whom they represent to the world as “real,” children who can then investigate the limits that their inventors may test in other people. Drawing on clinical psychological theories of children’s imaginary playmates—and the value that psychologists ascribe to the juvenile practice of inventing imaginary children—I consider what the adult invention of a child might suggest about the “uses” of children more generally. Texts under consideration are Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? , Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener , and Lorrie Moore’s Anagrams .

Preschoolers' Imaginative Play as Precursor of Narrative Consciousness

Can the early childhood play of preschoolers foreshadow the form and complexity of adult ongoing consciousness? The beginnings of make-believe play in children from about two years of age are reviewed starting with transitional objects, play with soft toys, or imaginary playmates. The roles of pretending and story-telling play are next examined and their contribution not only to sheer enjoyment but to an array of cognitive, social, and emotional skills are considered. We discuss the contribution of adults as nurturers and enhancers of such play. We turn finally to the aspects of adult consciousness: wakeful perception; identification, labeling, and encoding; guided imagery, mental trial actions, and playfulness. The features of childhood play may be seen to foreshadow an array of functions of ongoing conscious thought, especially its narrative components and, following Baars' theory, its role as a “theater” for prioritizing, decision-making, contextualizing, and creativity.

Are Children with Imaginary Playmates and Children Said to Remember Previous Lives Cross-Culturally Comparable Categories?

Some 15-66% of children in western countries talk about imaginary playmates; in India only 0.2% of children are said to remember a previous life. Both phenomena occur from the age of 30 months to 60-90 months. This article explores whether the two phenomena are cross-culturally comparable categories. The article describes a study of the psychological characteristics of a sample of 15 children said to remember a previous life in India, compared with a matched sample; and compares it with a sample of 15 children with imaginary playmates and a matched sample from Charlottesville, Virginia. No significant differences between the target group and the comparison group were found in either culture, suggesting that both phenomena are normal. One case of an American child with an imaginary playmate and one case of a child in India who is said to remember a previous life are described, using a video-recording of the child's dialogue.

Preadolescent Religious Experience Enhances Temporal Lobe Signs in Normal Young Adults

The hypothesis was verified that an ontogenetically earlier onset of temporal lobe transients, as defined by a preadolescent religious experience, facilitates more frequent and varied temporal lobe signs in adults. Data were collected for 868 male and female university students in psychology over a 10-year period; the 19% of students who reported this early experience displayed more frequent depersonalization, beliefs in psi phenomena, sensations of presence, sensitivity to odors, widened affect, childhood imaginary playmates, and left (writing) handedness. Early experiments were more likely to display confusion of boundaries between themselves, other people, and cosmic forces.

Differences between multiple personality disorder and other diagnostic groups on structured interview.

The Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule was administered to 20 subjects with multiple personality disorder, 20 with schizophrenia, 20 with panic disorder, and 20 with eating disorders. The findings showed that multiple personality can be differentiated from the other groups on variables such as history of physical abuse, sexual abuse, substance abuse, sleepwalking, childhood imaginary playmates, secondary features of multiple personality and extrasensory and supernatural experiences. Those with multiple personality also differ from the other groups on DSM-III criteria for multiple personality, psychogenic amnesia, and psychogenic fugue. The groups did not differ on the number of subjects who had had a major depressive episode.

Visual hallucinations. An outline of etiological and pathogenetic concepts.

Visual hallucinations have played an important role in religion, culture, and all concepts of mental disease. A brief review of these phenomena in healthy individuals as well as in clinical medicine is provided. We analyse the pathomechanisms involved in the development of visual hallucinatory experiences and argue that no single model can serve to explain all the phenomena encountered in the field of visual hallucinations. We question the validity of the current distinction between hallucination and illusion, and delineate conditions which are only appreciable psychologically, e.g. the 'imaginary playmates' of childhood and visual hallucinations in the face of a severe grief reaction. At least three putative mechanisms for the genesis of visual hallucinations can be described in biological terminology: irritative phenomena, release phenomena, and processing disturbances within the visual pathways.

Jampy: Imaginary Playmate as Counselor Educator

Jampy: Imaginary Playmate as Counselor Educator

A voice within: The prophetic experience of vocation

When I was a child, I had an imaginary playmate. I kept him a secret because I thought other people would ridicule me if I told them he existed. But in my solitude I would converse with him as if he reaUy were another Uttle child sit ting or standing beside me. I remember that some of the most "serious" decisions I made as a child were formulated under the influence of his advice. I would caU to him and he would caU to me; I would laugh or cry with him; he would laugh or cry with me. There was no doubt in my mind that he was the best friend I would ever have. I sometimes wonder if that has not been the case.

Gender-Role and Sex Differences in Recreation

The present purposes were to assess the relative influences of gender-role orientation and sex on recreational preferences and time spent in recreation and work. Undergraduate volunteers (48 men, 61 women) completed a recreational inventory and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire. Chi-squared analyses by gender-role orientation indicated that there was a greater representation of androgynous individuals in the social activities category and that masculine-typed individuals were underrepresented in the vicarious activities category. Significant chi-squared analyses by sex indicated that men were overrepresented in the chance, strategy, and physical skill and strategy categories and women were overrepresented in social activities and imaginary playmates categories. Subjects' gender-role orientation and its interaction with sex significantly predicted time spent on work and approached significance for recreation.

American children who claim to remember previous lives.

An unknown number of American children claim to remember previous lives. In this paper data of 79 such children are analyzed and compared with data from a larger number of cases in India. Few American children of these cases make verifiable statements, and those who do nearly always speak about the lives of deceased members of their own families. In this feature, American cases differ from Indian ones, in which the children usually speak of the lives of deceased persons in another family and often in another community. Indian children also frequently make verifiable statements about the lives of such persons. In some other respects, however, such as the age of first speaking about the previous lives, the content of the statements they make, and related unusual behavior, American subjects closely resemble ones in India. Although many of the American cases may derive from fantasies, a wish-fulfilling motive or obvious gain for the child is not discernible in most of them. Nor do the cases resemble in their form fantasies of imaginary playmates. Some American cases of this type occur in families already believing in reincarnation, but many others do not. In these families the child's statements about a previous life are often puzzling and even alarming to his or her parents. The child is sometimes involved in conflict over the apparent memories with members of his or her family.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Science Observed: Essays Out of My Mind

What do quarks and a French woman in a bikini with a daughter with imaginary playmates have in common? What is the relationship between Albert Einstein, Stanley Kubrick, Bobby Fisher, and Carl Sagan? The common thread is Jeremy Bernstein, whose field is elementary particle physics, but whose relevance to us is as science reporter, translator, and analyst. He has presented the reader with a delightful, well-written, and informative series of seemingly disconnected essays. They range from artificial intelligence to science fiction to the general and special theories of relativity to making movies (a la Kubrick) to playing chess (a la Fisher) to television science (a la Sagan) to bubble and squeak. The definition of the last I'll leave to your reading of the 15th essay in this volume. Why does this review appear in a pediatrics journal, of all places? Because too often we become embedded in our own concerns

'I was an imaginary playmate."

'I was an imaginary playmate."