Imaginary friends help kids develop better language skills

Sydney, Aug 7 : Having an imaginary friend seems to play a positive role in a child's language development, says a new study.

Elaine Reese, professor at the University of Otago (UO), New Zealand and Gabriel Trionfi investigated the language skills of 48 boys and girls aged five-and-a-half, of whom 23 had imaginary friends.

They found that the 13 girls and 10 boys who currently or previously engaged in imaginary companion play had more advanced narrative skills than children who did not engage in this type of play.

"Because children's storytelling skills are a strong predictor of their later reading skills, these differences may even have positive spin-offs for children's academic performance," said Reese.

The researchers assessed the children's language skills in several ways. First, they measured the children's vocabulary levels. They then asked them to tell two types of stories, one fictional and the other realistic.

In the fictional storytelling task, the children were read a dialogue-heavy book and then asked to retell the story to a puppet. The stories were scored for both recall and quality of the story, including whether they mentioned character's names and used dialogue.

In the realistic storytelling task, children were asked to talk about a recent outing, such as a trip to the beach. Again, the stories were scored on recall and quality indicators such as information about time and place.

While children were not found to differ in their sheer vocabulary levels, those with invisible companions told higher-quality stories, both about fictional and real events.

"Most importantly, the children with imaginary friends tailored their stories to the task. For fictional stories, they included more dialogue. For realistic stories, they provided more information about time and place compared to children without imaginary friends," said Reese.

These findings appeared in the latest issue of Child Development.

--IANS