Having an imaginary friend is a natural part of growing up. In fact, most preschool-aged kids have an imaginary friend, and by the age of seven, about 65 percent of children have played with at least one imaginary friend at some point in their lives.

About two years ago Marjorie Taylor, psychology professor at the University of Oregon, started the Imagination Research Lab. The research is designed to study children and their imaginary friends.

Experimentation started last fall, and the collection of data is one-third completed. The test is conducted in the UO Imagination Lab by Taylor along with Candee Mottweiler, Emilee Naylor and Jacob Levernier. The project is the first where children, ages 9 to 12, are interviewed about paracosms or imaginary friends.

The research is currently still in progress and consists of a series of interviews where children are asked if they have an imaginary place that they like to think about. The children are also given several other creativity tasks and are asked to make a series of moral judgments based on those tasks.

Despite past research being done on imaginary friends, Taylor’s experiment differs in that before, experiments have relied almost entirely on the perspective of adults, reflecting on their childhood experiences rather then studying children who currently have imaginary worlds.

The goal of Taylor’s study is to discover the relation between creative behaviors, inspired by imaginary friends and the capacity to think through moral issues.

Thinking through moral judgment requires children to consider alternatives to reality, such as imaginary worlds and examine what should have happened or what is the right thing to do in various situations. By creating imaginary friends, children have the opportunity to think about alternative possibilities and try out various moral issues that concern them.

“We are in an early stage with this study, but we have already collected some fascinating descriptions of paracosms and are impressed with the creativity of what our participants are telling us,” Taylor wrote in an email. “We are excited to learn more about paracosms and the role that creative activities like this have in the cognitive and emotional development of school-aged children.”