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.

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.

Prevalence of imaginary companions among Chinese children aged 4 to 6 years

We investigated the prevalence of Chinese children's imaginary companions (ICs) and the internal variables of IC types (personified object or invisible friend) and child–IC relationship qualities (egalitarian or hierarchical child–IC relationship). Participants were 266 children aged 4 to 6 years. Only in the 5-year-old group was the proportion of children with ICs significantly higher among girls than among boys, implying that the relationship between gender and IC was not consistent across age groups. Children from families in the highest annual income group engaged in more IC play than did children from families in the lowest annual income group, indicating a relationship between family socioeconomic environment and children's imaginary play. IC types were not associated with child–IC relationship qualities in any of the age groups, implying that these qualities may represent different dimensions of IC play as early as 4 years old.

Imagination and Reality

This chapter focuses on children’s ability to separate the imagined from the real and does so through a focus on imaginary companions. Imaginary companions appear in many forms; they can have physical forms (a puppet friend), or they can be purely mental creations. Typically, imaginary companions have ideas, emotions, and desires separate from the child’s, and thus they are saturated in theory-of-mind understandings. Although some authorities and many parents worry that imaginary companions are a particularly good example of children’s inability to separate the imagined from the real, research shows that young children easily distinguish between fantasy and fact, between the mental and the real, between imagined entities and real physical ones. Moreover, children who have imaginary companions not only distinguish between mind and reality, but also show numerous theory-of-mind strengths.

Children Demonstrate Selfishness in the Presence of Their Personified Objects

The audience effect causes people to change their behavior in the presence of another person. It can lead to better motor performance and greater generosity. Both human entities and invisible characters can induce this effect in young children and adults. In this study, we examined whether children’s imaginary companions can induce this effect. Accordingly, 49 children, aged 4 to 6 years, who had personified objects were subjected to a simple motor task (dropping marbles as fast as possible within 2 minutes) and moral task (deciding how many stickers to take from anonymous children) across three conditions: alone, in the presence of a human adult, and personified object, respectively. Performance on the simple motor task did not differ across conditions. However, children took more stickers in the presence of their personified objects than in the human conditions. These results are discussed in relation to children’s recognition of their personified objects.