Imaginary friends are a frequent company for children between the ages of two and eight. And, according to a new scientific study, they promote communication and make us more social and creative as we reach adulthood.
To reach this conclusion, Australian psycholinguist Evan Kidd of La Trobe University in Melbourne conducted a survey of 330 university students to find out if they remembered having a fictional friend in their childhood. The experiments revealed that students who had had such imaginary "company" displayed greater communication skills, more empathy, and more creativity as adults than the rest of their peers.
At the same time, in collaboration with the University of Manchester, Kidd investigated the role of these figures in 44 children between the ages of three and six, half of whom had imaginary friends. And they found that the latter had a much richer vocabulary and were more creative than the rest of their peers. "They are more experienced communicators ," Kidd says. And he adds that "being in charge of both parts of a conversation facilitates the development of communication skills", with a long-term positive effect.
