Imaginary Companions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

One of the deficits observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is impaired imaginative play. One form of imaginative play common in many typically developing (TD) children is having an imaginary companion (IC). The occurrence of ICs has not been investigated extensively in children with ASD. We examined differences in parent report of IC between TD and ASD populations in 215 (111 with ASD) gender-matched children aged between 2 and 8 years. Findings indicate that significantly fewer children with ASD created ICs, although there were many between-group similarities in IC forms and functions. Results are discussed in terms of qualitative differences in play, social attributions, and how children with ASD conceptualize their ICs’ minds.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

• Publication date

  2018-03-21

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s10803-018-3540-yPMID 29564680PMCID 6061017
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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• Preface

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