Imaginary companions: An evaluation of parents as reporters.

Parents are often solicited as reporters on their children's imaginary companions (ICs), but the correspondence between their reports and children's descriptions of pretend friends has received little attention. Sixty 4-year-old children and their parents provided descriptions of the children's interest in fantasy play, and 40 of these pairs also reported on children's ICs (20 on invisible friends and 20 on personified objects such as dolls). Results indicated that reports from parents of children with ICs matched their children's reports for involvement in fantasy play better than those of parents of children without ICs. For both IC groups, parents' reports concurred with children's for IC form, sex and physical description, but overall, parent–child agreement was higher for invisible friends than for personified objects. Results imply that parents may be better reporters of normative developmental processes that are slightly atypical than those that are common to most children. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]