Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: the third part in our series on pretend play, the
Speaker 3: type of play that involves non literal understanding. So when
Speaker 3: a child or an adult, but it's usually a child.
Speaker 3: When a child runs around the living room saying room, room,
Speaker 3: I am a truck. Or when they turn a cardboard
Speaker 3: box that a package came in into a house and
Speaker 3: live in the house and do things in there and
Speaker 3: talk about the tiny people who live in there with them.
Speaker 3: When they pretend to feed and care for a plastic
Speaker 3: dinosaurs if it were a baby, When they have adventures
Speaker 3: with an imaginary friend. All of these are forms of
Speaker 3: pretend play. It's played that takes anything in the world
Speaker 3: and the situation in an object in the cell health
Speaker 3: as something other than literally what it is now. In
Speaker 3: the past two episodes, we got into a number of
Speaker 3: fascinating ideas and concepts from the academic study of pretend play.
Speaker 3: We talked about the standard schedule on which pretend play
Speaker 3: appears to emerge, usually with the first type of play
Speaker 3: being object substitution, So you know, this stick is a sword,
Speaker 3: this dinosaur toy is a baby, this remote control as
Speaker 3: a phone. We talked about the evidence for possible links
Speaker 3: between pretend play and the development of complex cognitive capacities
Speaker 3: like symbolic understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and theory of mind. And
Speaker 3: in part two we talked about some of the existing
Speaker 3: research on imaginary friends and imaginary companions, how prevalent they
Speaker 3: are within and across different cultures, how they work, what
Speaker 3: different forms they take, and what children believe they know.
Speaker 3: And today we're back to talk about more.
Speaker 2: When you mentioned how work, it instantly made me wonder
Speaker 2: if there are some imaginary friends who have jobs. I
Speaker 2: would not be surprised to find that some imaginary friends
Speaker 2: do have jobs, but I don't think I read anything
Speaker 2: about that in particular.
Speaker 3: Oh well, based on what I've been reading, there are
Speaker 3: a good number of observations of imaginary friends doing what
Speaker 3: the child themselves cannot. So you know, there's a kind
Speaker 3: of vicarious attainment of life goals or vicarious participation in
Speaker 3: activities through the use of imaginary friends. So maybe if
Speaker 3: in the same way that the child can pretend they
Speaker 3: can like play mom and dad and go to work
Speaker 3: even though they're not actually going anywhere. They could also
Speaker 3: have the imaginary friend have a job, and that's another
Speaker 3: way of simulating, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Now, as we discussed in the last episode,
Speaker 2: and I would encourage everyone to go back and listen
Speaker 2: to the previous episode. The previous two episodes actually take
Speaker 2: these in order because a lot of the things we're
Speaker 2: discussing they may stand alone, but we're also build upon
Speaker 2: what we talked about previously. But one of the things
Speaker 2: we talked about with imaginary friends and or imaginary companions
Speaker 2: is that, of course they seem to be widespread and
Speaker 2: fairly common, but there's a lot to discuss about samples
Speaker 2: and where you're looking and also even time. So is
Speaker 2: this a capacity that all children have and is that
Speaker 2: capacity not really maxed out in every culture and certainly
Speaker 2: at every time in human history. I don't know. There
Speaker 2: are some interesting cases to be made for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In fact, that very thing might come up with
Speaker 3: some stuff I want to talk about later in this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, as we roll into what we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about next, it's just important to bear in mind
Speaker 2: that there are a lot of caveats involved here, A
Speaker 2: lot of the research. Most of the research is certainly
Speaker 2: focused on children in the West, and therefore it's not
Speaker 2: necessarily allowing for cultural differences that may be in play
Speaker 2: regarding how these trends are expressed in given children. Now,
Speaker 2: having talked about imaginary friends and imaginary companions, we've touched
Speaker 2: on one very fascinating phase in the imaginative lives of children. Storytelling,
Speaker 2: of course, weaves its way through this and other examples
Speaker 2: of imaginative play that we've discussed so far, even in
Speaker 2: its simplest forms. Right dinosaur is hungry for crayons and
Speaker 2: therefore eats crayons.
Speaker 3: Is a sort of story, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a tragedy.
Speaker 2: It depends on the exact line graph of how the
Speaker 2: plot flows. Right, is the dinosaur getting everything it wants
Speaker 2: on it and its lead up to downfall or is it?
Speaker 2: Or is it just one disappointing meal after the other,
Speaker 2: and eventually it will rise to the top of a
Speaker 2: crayon buffet?
Speaker 3: And I think something about does it end in a marriage?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it may. Marriages sometimes do occur for toy dinosaurs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you know, our ability to engage in storytelling, of course,
Speaker 2: only becomes more and more refined as we get older.
Speaker 2: Even children but also adults who do not think of
Speaker 2: themselves as storytellers inevitably engage with the power of storytelling
Speaker 2: on a daily basis. We've talked about this before in
Speaker 2: the show. We craft events in our lives into stories
Speaker 2: that we relate to others and to ourselves. We come
Speaker 2: to live our lives and reflect on ourself as a
Speaker 2: character in a narrative to varying degrees.
Speaker 3: You know, this is just reminding me of I think
Speaker 3: an episode or a couple of episodes that we did
Speaker 3: years ago. Now I forget what it's even called, but
Speaker 3: we were exploring the work of a particular philosopher who
Speaker 3: was this was one of the most like perverse and
Speaker 3: yet persuasive ideas we've ever encountered on the show. It
Speaker 3: was pursuing the idea that ultimately fiction is bad for us.
Speaker 3: And I remember was like they this guy made a
Speaker 3: fairly persuasive case that like, it's not very good for us,
Speaker 3: you know, like it causes us to think about the
Speaker 3: world and incorrect ways and makes allowances for bad behavior
Speaker 3: and all this kind of stuff. And yet it's just like, well,
Speaker 3: we're not getting rid of it, and I like it
Speaker 3: too much, so it's like too bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole discussion to be had about
Speaker 2: how life isn't story shaped, but we often compare it
Speaker 2: to stories and end up with expectations based on those stories.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's uh, it's complex, and I think, you know, honestly,
Speaker 2: I feel like there's there's give and take on both sides. There,
Speaker 2: Like stories and storytelling enrich our lives in so many ways,
Speaker 2: but yes, they can you know, also lead to false expectations, disappointment,
Speaker 2: and and and again. Coming to back what we're directly
Speaker 2: talking about here, Yeah, thinking about yourself as a character
Speaker 2: in a narrative, you know, can maybe get into maladaptive
Speaker 2: territory at times.
Speaker 3: But we're not going to stop.
Speaker 2: No, no, why would we stop now? There are many
Speaker 2: different forms of narrative activities to be found in childhood,
Speaker 2: and they range from the nonfictional to the fictional, from
Speaker 2: social to private, from acted out to linguistic, and all
Speaker 2: with varying levels of character and plot development. There might
Speaker 2: not be any plot development in the saga of Dinosaur
Speaker 2: Eats Crayons, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have some
Speaker 2: form of story to it, right, right, But one particularly
Speaker 2: interesting form of imaginative storytelling can be found in middle childhood,
Speaker 2: generally around the ages of eight through twelve. And in
Speaker 2: this we explore the world of paracosm. So this goes
Speaker 2: beyond the notion of an imaginary companion and it transcends
Speaker 2: into the realm of an imaginary world.
Speaker 3: So if the single imaginary companion or imaginary friend is
Speaker 3: the equivalent of a fiction writer creating a character, this
Speaker 3: is the equivalent of world building exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And obviously this is a rich area to dream about,
Speaker 2: and indeed to tell stories about. C. S. Lewis's Narnia
Speaker 2: and mister rogers neighborhood of make Believes certainly come to
Speaker 2: my mind. I'd throw Alice in Wonderland in there as well,
Speaker 2: while we're at it. And these are probably some of
Speaker 2: the examples that resonate with folks who grew up in
Speaker 2: the same decade as me on a similar media diet.
Speaker 2: But there of course far more number of these that
Speaker 2: you can think of any number of these. There are,
Speaker 2: of course, more concrete ideas of actual fantasy worlds that
Speaker 2: one might venture into that are at the same time
Speaker 2: linked to the concept of creatively imagined worlds. You can
Speaker 2: also look to any magical treatment of characters crossing over
Speaker 2: into the worlds of books, TV, and movies, as well
Speaker 2: as so many different sci fi, virtual reality, dream walking scenarios,
Speaker 2: all creative treatments on the idea that imagine worlds become
Speaker 2: a place in the mind that we might retreat to play,
Speaker 2: dream and seek soft.
Speaker 3: You know, just now thinking about it, it struck me
Speaker 3: how many of these stories about characters who want to
Speaker 3: escape into an imaginary world focus on showing the characters
Speaker 3: struggles and and unhappiness about real life. You know, it's
Speaker 3: there in the Never Ending Story, it's there. And I
Speaker 3: don't know why. This is the other example that came
Speaker 3: to mind for me, But the Last Action Hero, you know,
Speaker 3: there's just like it's just like, oh, well, real life,
Speaker 3: you know, it's full of troubles, but there's this other
Speaker 3: world that's so much more interesting and exciting and better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many examples of there's so many different
Speaker 2: like subgenres of it, like the changing channels variations you see,
Speaker 2: and I think at least a handful of not several
Speaker 2: different movies, especially the nineties, where oh I'm sucked into
Speaker 2: the television again, I'm going from TV channel to TV channel,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know, you can even get into
Speaker 2: things like well Star Trek in general as again a
Speaker 2: fictional universe we might escape into imaginatively. But also they
Speaker 2: have the Holo deck in there, which is its own
Speaker 2: form of paracosm within a paracosm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. But I just brought it up because
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting that in reality. I don't think
Speaker 3: one need be unhappy with real life in order to
Speaker 3: enjoy thinking about alternate worlds. But this is like a
Speaker 3: thing that we sort of go to in fiction when
Speaker 3: we're sketching this character who wants to escape.
Speaker 2: No, no, it does, certainly it does come up. One
Speaker 2: source I was looking as a twenty eighteen Artifact magazine
Speaker 2: article by one George James and Jane cites child psychologist
Speaker 2: Gwynn Abin, who argues that when faced with trauma, children
Speaker 2: and adolescents may fall back in their development, returning to
Speaker 2: a place where they felt more safe and quote a
Speaker 2: paracosm is similar, the goal being to step out of
Speaker 2: reality because it is too difficult to process. Now I
Speaker 2: agree with you, and I think other things I've read
Speaker 2: backs that up the idea that you may see this
Speaker 2: some of the time, certainly, but you don't need to
Speaker 2: have something in particular you're escaping to engage in paracosm,
Speaker 2: to have an imagined world that you're dreaming yourself into
Speaker 2: and building out in your mind, you know, especially during
Speaker 2: these vital years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it might in fact be one way people
Speaker 3: get there, but it's not the only way exactly.
Speaker 2: That's my redone it anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry to interrupt your flow though.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, But I think it is worth
Speaker 2: noting as well that this is this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: The energy of this doesn't necessarily go away in the
Speaker 2: human experience. Obviously. Adults are certainly quite capable of escaping
Speaker 2: into their own imagined worlds in plenty of perfectly healthy ways,
Speaker 2: as well as some potentially less healthy ways. We discussed
Speaker 2: the idea of maladaptive day dreaming on the show in
Speaker 2: the past, so you could line that concept up with
Speaker 2: some of this. But yeah, I mean, on any given day,
Speaker 2: I challenge listeners out there, how many different imaginary worlds
Speaker 2: have you engaged with so far today? In one form
Speaker 2: or another, and you know, I was just like, I
Speaker 2: don't have a firm count in my head, but I
Speaker 2: feel like it's been at least five, you know. So
Speaker 2: you know, our lives are full of imaginary spaces. It
Speaker 2: just depends on how much time, what sort of engagement
Speaker 2: we're getting into there, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that does raise an interesting question, like how
Speaker 3: much engagement is generally required for it to be thought
Speaker 3: of as paracosm play. I would assume just like reading
Speaker 3: a book is not usually would not usually qualify as
Speaker 3: engaging with paracosms, or would it.
Speaker 2: Well, the stricter definition of paracosms, as mentioned in that
Speaker 2: Artifact magazine article by James, is that it would be
Speaker 2: a paracosm would have to adhere to the idea that quote,
Speaker 2: the formation of the world must occur within childhood or
Speaker 2: early adolescence and in many cases continued on into adulthood.
Speaker 2: Doesn't have to continue on into adulthood, but at least
Speaker 2: like the memory of it often does. So generally we're
Speaker 2: looking looking at this specific time. You know. You can
Speaker 2: certainly people dream up very rich imagined worlds as adults,
Speaker 2: but we might think of that differently because it's not
Speaker 2: emerging out of this key time period in middle childhood
Speaker 2: and early adolescence.
Speaker 3: And it sounds to me, based on that definition, like
Speaker 3: something about the paracosm experience is usually taken to have
Speaker 3: a kind of daydreaming aspect, like the child is directly
Speaker 3: participating in the construction of this imaginary world and thinking
Speaker 3: about it, apart from just say, participating in a story
Speaker 3: written by somebody else.
Speaker 2: Right right, though there are some connections to pre existing work,
Speaker 2: as we'll get into. So the other paper that I
Speaker 2: turned to to understand this topic is a twenty twenty
Speaker 2: paper published in the journal Childhood Development by Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 2: at All titled Paracosms The Imaginary Worlds of Middle Children. Now,
Speaker 2: first of all, no one is denying the existence of
Speaker 2: paric and children. There's there's plenty of evidence, plenty of
Speaker 2: reports on this, but exactly what we can draw from
Speaker 2: the accounts and how it all factors into childhood development
Speaker 2: requires a bit more effort and varies somewhat in the
Speaker 2: specific theories. During middle childhood, some children develop and or adapt,
Speaker 2: so it doesn't have to be a world that's created
Speaker 2: completely wholesale, And I think ultimately, you know, that's a
Speaker 2: lot of pure imagination to expect from adult creatives, much
Speaker 2: less children.
Speaker 3: But dealing with something more like fan fiction here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I mean you can make a case
Speaker 2: that everything's fan fiction to some degree, right, but but
Speaker 2: but yeah, it doesn't have to be created wholesale, but
Speaker 2: it's a rich imagined world that may entail. Each world
Speaker 2: may entail its own government, geography, language, culture, associated artifacts.
Speaker 2: A lot of these worlds have particular names, so it
Speaker 2: gets it gets very deep. Like you know, apps may
Speaker 2: be involved, either mental or actually recreated physically. Now, what
Speaker 2: are the percentages you're probably wondering. You know, we talked
Speaker 2: about the percentages for imaginary friends in the previous episode
Speaker 2: and those were quite high, based again on the sample
Speaker 2: groups generally in the West. Yeah, the percentages here. I
Speaker 2: think we'll be able to grind the numbers down a
Speaker 2: little bit in a minute here. But the percentages either
Speaker 2: referenced in the text or from other studies or produced
Speaker 2: by the authors in this study range from three to
Speaker 2: twelve percent to sixteen to seventeen percent. And in individual
Speaker 2: sample groups you see some much higher percentages, like up
Speaker 2: into the forties. But so generally, just to sum it up,
Speaker 2: it seems like there's a lower percentage of paracosms compared
Speaker 2: to imaginary companions or imaginary friends.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In some of the Western sample data, we were
Speaker 3: looking at somewhere between one third to two thirds of
Speaker 3: children having some form of imaginary companion, depending on how
Speaker 3: strict your definition is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, Joe, I have to ask, we talked about
Speaker 2: imaginary friends in the last episode in our own experiences
Speaker 2: or lack they're off with them, did you have any
Speaker 2: paracosms or something you think might constitute a paracosm when
Speaker 2: you were younger.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess again this would be a question of definitions.
Speaker 3: I absolutely did dream up imaginary worlds, but I always
Speaker 3: remember thinking of them as ideas for stories I wanted
Speaker 3: to write. So it wasn't like I was dreaming of
Speaker 3: living in these imaginary worlds or say playing like, oh here,
Speaker 3: you know, here I am in my imaginary worlds. As
Speaker 3: long as I can ever remember thinking about these places
Speaker 3: I would dream up, I was thinking about them as
Speaker 3: stories that I was creating.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, you know, I don't know that that would
Speaker 2: necessarily disqualify any of this, because certainly as we'll explore
Speaker 2: there are examples of paracosms certainly becoming written created works,
Speaker 2: or you know, some sort of a creative endeavor later
Speaker 2: on in life. For my own part, I remember two
Speaker 2: specific things, like, in around third grade, I had some
Speaker 2: sort of an elaborate scenario going on in my head
Speaker 2: that was based loosely on something from the Gi Joe
Speaker 2: cartoon that involved like a space station, as well as
Speaker 2: a snippet of an animated film i'd seen part of
Speaker 2: on TV, which I would later come to believe was
Speaker 2: likely a snippet from Nausica, something with the Giant Warriors,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know what it was at the time.
Speaker 3: Well, what a privilege to have that as an inspiration
Speaker 3: for your para cosm. And that's a yeah, that's a
Speaker 3: good one.
Speaker 2: Now, this world had no name, and I even hesitate
Speaker 2: to call it a world, but I would say that
Speaker 2: it was a recurring imaginary space that I would often
Speaker 2: go into, like I remember going into it at school
Speaker 2: a lot. If I got a little bit bored or
Speaker 2: distracted in school in third grade, that's where I would go.
Speaker 2: And so that one comes to mind. And then in
Speaker 2: junior high I had a world that was loosely inspired
Speaker 2: by Ian Flux cartoons, oh, which was you know, pretty
Speaker 2: exciting at the time. I hadn't seen a lot of
Speaker 2: animation from outside of the US at the time, you know,
Speaker 2: only a little bit of anime. And of course, you know,
Speaker 2: this was a highly stylistic cartoon with graphic violence and
Speaker 2: a lot of sex appeal. So and it was on MTV,
Speaker 2: so I watched it like everything else on MTV at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 3: Well, this is really interesting. So in what sense exactly
Speaker 3: were you mentally engaging with these paracosms. Were you like
Speaker 3: just sitting there sort of mentally building them out, like
Speaker 3: thinking about new details of them, or were you imagining
Speaker 3: inhabiting them bottle or like do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: I know, not bodily. Maybe there was a certain amount
Speaker 2: of bodily presence in the third grade example, but in
Speaker 2: this junior high example, I was not there at all.
Speaker 2: It was other characters, different factions, and you know, it
Speaker 2: was like stuff sort of built on top of rough
Speaker 2: Ian Flux inspiration, so.
Speaker 3: More equivalent to kind of like writing a fiction in
Speaker 3: your head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But at the same time, this was definitely a
Speaker 2: time period when I was also you know, trying to
Speaker 2: write things and thinking about things that could be made
Speaker 2: into a short story or a book. And this was
Speaker 2: never an idea that I pointed in that direction, you know,
Speaker 2: you know I was, and I wouldn't even I wasn't
Speaker 2: even exploring it in things like Dungeons and Dragons at
Speaker 2: the time, which I was also a creative outlet then
Speaker 2: as it is now. But yeah, based on some of
Speaker 2: these parameters, I would think that maybe this second and
Speaker 2: constitute some form of paracosm, though certainly not as rich
Speaker 2: and elaborate as some of these other examples that I've
Speaker 2: read about. You know, this is not a place. It
Speaker 2: had a name, it didn't have a it didn't have
Speaker 2: its own language, I had no maps, but it had
Speaker 2: you know, rather distinct action sequences laid out.
Speaker 3: I would say, well, maybe we can come back to
Speaker 3: this question later on. But yeah, this is making me
Speaker 3: more and more curious about really what are the key
Speaker 3: distinctions between having a paracosm and just say, writing a
Speaker 3: fiction that you don't share with anybody else or maybe
Speaker 3: the Judicia you know who knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, as is pointed out in that
Speaker 2: one definition, there's the idea that you might take it
Speaker 2: on into adulthood and it becomes this cherished world that
Speaker 2: you keep going. That is not the case with my
Speaker 2: influx fan fiction or whatever it was, you know at
Speaker 2: the time. I mean, some of the sensibilities that I
Speaker 2: that are associated with that I've certainly you know, carried on.
Speaker 2: You know, I still like the idea of life forms
Speaker 2: growing on spaceships. I'm still like, you know, kick ass
Speaker 2: female action heroes, that sort of thing. But you know,
Speaker 2: this is not on the level of say like a
Speaker 2: Middle Earth or something, you know, or where the seeds
Speaker 2: of it were present in middle childhood imagination and then
Speaker 2: carries on into you know, grown up creative endeavors.
Speaker 3: This made me just realize I might be able to
Speaker 3: amend my earlier answer. This isn't This was never something
Speaker 3: super elaborate, but I remember there were a few times
Speaker 3: when I was a kid when I would wake up
Speaker 3: from having a really good dream. I would be frustrated
Speaker 3: that the dream was over and want to be able
Speaker 3: to continue the dream. So I would just sort of
Speaker 3: like try to remember the world and the scenario of
Speaker 3: the dream and keep thinking about it, and usually it
Speaker 3: would go away pretty quick anyway. But like I remember
Speaker 3: there were a few I think that had similar contours.
Speaker 3: Often they were about like discovering a secret passage or
Speaker 3: a tunnel from my house that went somewhere really amazing.
Speaker 2: Oh nice. Yeah, I think that does line up with
Speaker 2: some of the things you know, we're discussing here, and
Speaker 2: is reference the role of dreams is referenced in that
Speaker 2: Taylor at All paper.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though I don't think any of these ever really
Speaker 3: continued for you know, more than a day or so.
Speaker 3: But like I remember, at least a few of these
Speaker 3: instances making a strong impression, even if I didn't continue
Speaker 3: to develop the world or re engage with it. So
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know where I fit into
Speaker 3: this whole thing.
Speaker 2: I'm hoping we'll get some really robust examples from listeners.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are some para cosms out there that
Speaker 2: they can write in about now. As the authors point out,
Speaker 2: one of the first challenges to understanding all of this is,
Speaker 2: of course, the history of our understanding of para cosms.
Speaker 2: The earliest accounts all centered around nineteenth and twentieth century
Speaker 2: authors who enjoyed tremendous success with their works, the likes
Speaker 2: of the Bronte sisters they shared. The sisters shared three
Speaker 2: different worlds named Gondel, Angria and Galdin. I'm not super
Speaker 2: familiar with them, but yeah, they had not one, not two,
Speaker 2: but three paracosms between them. Robert Louis Stevenson is another
Speaker 2: j R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Desmond, Morris, Nietzsche. Also
Speaker 2: Thomas de Quincy I've seen thrown in there as well.
Speaker 2: And you know, obviously this can present a fallacy of
Speaker 2: excellence when it comes to paracosms, the idea that well,
Speaker 2: if you've got imaginary worlds in your middle childhood brain,
Speaker 2: then you have everything. You just got your futures paved
Speaker 2: for you. So not to discount the vividness of each
Speaker 2: individual's dreams, but I think I think it's fair to
Speaker 2: say that none of them achieved success solely on the
Speaker 2: strength of their childhood imaginations, though I think it's likely
Speaker 2: somewhere in the equation.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this seems like a kind of selection bias, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're just looking at famous authors who engaged in paracosms
Speaker 3: when they were younger, but like you're not finding out
Speaker 3: about all the people who had pair cosms, who didn't
Speaker 3: become famous.
Speaker 2: Right right, And but at the very least these accounts
Speaker 2: linked the concept with adult creativity, and we see subsequent
Speaker 2: research coming back to that. So Robert Sylvie conducted UK
Speaker 2: research in the eighties on the topic, finding a wide
Speaker 2: variety of para cosms and self reports by adults. So
Speaker 2: I believe he reached out via you know, publications and
Speaker 2: was asking like, hey, write in to me, tell me
Speaker 2: about your para cosms. This is what a paracosm is
Speaker 2: slash was. And some of these were based on toys
Speaker 2: or props, others more or less forged fresh from the
Speaker 2: individual's mind. So there's you know, there's a wide variety there.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's so this leads me to believe that you know,
Speaker 2: loosely based on G. I. Joe cartoon can certainly count. Again,
Speaker 2: it need not be just this, you know, rich original
Speaker 2: imagined world, and some para cosms seemed quote to serve
Speaker 2: as vehicles for storytelling and as a way to explore
Speaker 2: real life interests. I believe the example that one of
Speaker 2: the examples that Sylvie brought up was that of some
Speaker 2: kids who were taking a foreign language class and then
Speaker 2: therefore their para cosms had a lot to do with
Speaker 2: imagined languages.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, but his.
Speaker 2: Work indicated that paracosms peaked at nine and diminished by
Speaker 2: age twelve.
Speaker 3: Oh and that would line up with because earlier you
Speaker 3: said the most common range of paracosm activity is like
Speaker 3: eight to twelve. So I guess it would like peak
Speaker 3: by nine years old or so.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, creativity researcher Robert rut Bernstein explored the concept
Speaker 2: in subsequent decades, factoring it into his interdisciplinary view of creativity,
Speaker 2: exploring the idea that para cosms were perhaps more likely
Speaker 2: in recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship, though of note, he
Speaker 2: was also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and had
Speaker 2: pero cosms as a kid, So you know, that seems
Speaker 2: to be where that idea came from. But you know,
Speaker 2: he speculated that para cosms might be more prevalent in
Speaker 2: individuals who later pursued a creative and artistic career. To
Speaker 2: be surprising, Yeah, to put some numbers on that, he
Speaker 2: reported a rate of five to twenty six percent in
Speaker 2: MacArthur Fellowship winners, as opposed to a rate of three
Speaker 2: to twelve percent in the world at large. Okay, However,
Speaker 2: Taylor at all that main paper I was referencing earlier
Speaker 2: stressed that by the year twenty twenty, at any rate,
Speaker 2: most of what we'd put together on paracosms were from
Speaker 2: adults looking back on their childhoods and not from children
Speaker 2: in the age range associated with the height of paracosms.
Speaker 3: Ah. Okay, So there could be a strong bias in
Speaker 3: the data we're getting based on what adults remember as
Speaker 3: opposed to what children are actually doing with their minds
Speaker 3: and their time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like I don't know, just you know, shooting from
Speaker 2: the hip here, but oftentimes we're looking back in our childhood,
Speaker 2: were presented with an idea like paracosms, and we're like,
Speaker 2: that sounds great. I I wish I had one of
Speaker 2: those what do I recollect that I might be able
Speaker 2: to shoehorn into or into that category? You know, Like,
Speaker 2: if I'm being critical, I have to like second guess
Speaker 2: my own account here, Like that was daydreaming about something
Speaker 2: related to a Gi Joe cartoon actually a paracosm, or
Speaker 2: do I just like the idea that that was present
Speaker 2: in my imagination at the time.
Speaker 3: Oh, we both now have just had the experience of
Speaker 3: sitting here like half remembering our childhood thoughts. I'm trying
Speaker 3: to say, does it fit the box or not?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean not to say that, you know,
Speaker 2: it's completely wrong or anything, but obviously it would add
Speaker 2: to our understanding if we could also talk to children
Speaker 2: who were right there in the thick of it, right
Speaker 2: in the same way as we discussed imaginary friends. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of most of the research into imaginary friends
Speaker 2: and imaginary companions really focuses now on talking to both parents,
Speaker 2: all the children, and the children themselves to sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, play one against the other and see what
Speaker 2: seems to be the case. Yeah, Taylor at All's work
Speaker 2: attempts to remedy this a bit. Looking at some seventy
Speaker 2: seven children ages eight through twelve, they conducted a pair
Speaker 2: of studies consisting of a series of questions as well
Speaker 2: as creativity and storytelling exercises and evaluations, as well as
Speaker 2: at least questionnaires to the parents to also get their
Speaker 2: view on everything. So they found that seventeen point two
Speaker 2: percent of the children reported having para cosms, while ten
Speaker 2: point one percent reported what they call pre para cosms.
Speaker 2: So this would be a specific place, either partially or
Speaker 2: wholly imagined, but with little or no evidence of repeated
Speaker 2: engagement with the place and or not much elaborated detail.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, it's like a place you went
Speaker 2: once in your head, or you work on a little bit,
Speaker 2: but it's not there's nothing habitual about it.
Speaker 3: I guess, Oh, this sounds more like my dream examples,
Speaker 3: Like I had a good dream once and then I
Speaker 3: really kept entertaining that idea for I don't know, a
Speaker 3: day or two, but it's not something that like stuck
Speaker 3: with me throughout childhood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nineteen percent engaged in pretend play, which we've been
Speaker 2: talking about. Ten point one percent reported engagement with an
Speaker 2: unelaborated pretend world from a book, movie, or video game.
Speaker 2: So I don't think my Gi Joe example quite fits
Speaker 2: that because it wasn't like one hundred percent Gi Joe.
Speaker 2: But I can imagine it's very easy for children to
Speaker 2: fall into this imaginative space of just engaging with a
Speaker 2: franchise that you really like and imagine world that has
Speaker 2: you know, already been presented to you pretty much wholesale,
Speaker 2: like you you're in the Lord of the Rings. Well,
Speaker 2: take your imagination there like Tolkien's created all the details
Speaker 2: you need.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a prefab yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Four point seven percent engaged in thoughts about a real
Speaker 2: world place they had visited or would like to visit.
Speaker 2: Those sound like darling children. I was never one of them,
Speaker 2: but but yeah, yeah, it's like they went there before,
Speaker 2: they have some experiences and they would like to go back,
Speaker 2: or they're very fond of it and they imagine the experience.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that sounds good all day.
Speaker 3: I dream of Abilene.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Three point three percent reported dreams, so I
Speaker 2: think in this we're maybe getting a little bit into
Speaker 2: your dream example, and then forty three point eight percent
Speaker 2: said no or provided no detail. So you know, based
Speaker 2: on this one study, again, something like seventeen point two
Speaker 2: percent of the kids had paracosms, and then less than
Speaker 2: half had nothing. But then there's also some wiggle room
Speaker 2: for things that were adjacent to para cosms. So what
Speaker 2: does all of this mean. Well, the author's stress that
Speaker 2: paracosms do seem distinct from imaginary companions. Imaginary friends are
Speaker 2: friends you engage with, They are individuals, while the child's
Speaker 2: role in a parocosm is more of creator and observer.
Speaker 2: So it's not a world you're really active in. It's
Speaker 2: more it's more world building. Like you said, some times
Speaker 2: children seem to generate para cosms as realms associated with
Speaker 2: a previous imaginary companion, but other para cosms had no
Speaker 2: connection to previous imaginary companions. And while I don't think
Speaker 2: they nailed this down specifically, I gather it's possible for
Speaker 2: a child to engage in paracosms without ever having had
Speaker 2: an imaginary companion to begin with. My self report would
Speaker 2: seem to indicate this, unless again, I had an imaginary
Speaker 2: companion at some point that I don't remember, and my
Speaker 2: mom doesn't remember either, which is.
Speaker 3: Very likely, yes, totally possible.
Speaker 2: Here's some other general observations they make. They said, para
Speaker 2: cosms are not always private and maybe shared among children.
Speaker 2: We can go back to the example from the Bronte
Speaker 2: Sisters earlier. Right, You don't have to keep it all
Speaker 2: to yourself. You can share it with those around you,
Speaker 2: and you can have like a you know, it's almost
Speaker 2: like a role playing setting. At that point. The link
Speaker 2: between paracosms and creativity seems to vary, perhaps more pronounced
Speaker 2: when it comes to storytelling as opposed to other creative exercises.
Speaker 2: So if someone were just say, oh, well, this person
Speaker 2: had had a paracosm when they were younger, so you
Speaker 2: know they are more creative than those around them, You
Speaker 2: know that that would be incorrect. Though it's possible they
Speaker 2: might have a slight advantage on some storytelling creativity exercises.
Speaker 3: Oh, that would also make sense to me not to
Speaker 3: totally discount the idea that there might be some sort
Speaker 3: of general creativity juice that is shared among the different
Speaker 3: creative activities, but if one engages in paracosms, that sounds
Speaker 3: to me more like practice toward experience in storytelling and
Speaker 3: the writing of fiction than it does towards say, the
Speaker 3: creation of music or of painting or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there may also be a correlation between paracosms and
Speaker 2: decreased inhibition. The authors here point out that in other studies,
Speaker 2: inhibitory control is also sometimes negatively correlated with creative behavior.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. This may be something they already controlled for.
Speaker 3: But I would also wonder if, if if a decreased
Speaker 3: role of inhibition makes a child more likely to tell
Speaker 3: people about their paracosms as opposed to just making them
Speaker 3: more likely to have them. So that makes sense.
Speaker 2: That is a great point. Yeah, I don't know that
Speaker 2: they got into it in this study so much, but
Speaker 2: I think that's a good point because reporting, self reporting
Speaker 2: is pretty much the main factor here. There's no other
Speaker 2: way to know if there's an imagined world in there
Speaker 2: than by asking the child or the adult.
Speaker 3: The child becomes like, I wonder if just on self
Speaker 3: reports for all kinds of any unusual behavior, you would
Speaker 3: get more. You would find a correlation that people with
Speaker 3: lower inhibition are more likely to say they do it,
Speaker 3: doesn't necessarily mean they're more likely to actually do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, However, they stress that surprising to them. Children
Speaker 2: with para cosms don't really stand out from their peers
Speaker 2: all that much. So it's easy to sort of have
Speaker 2: this in your head, this idea of this, you're a
Speaker 2: remarkably weird Victorian child, you know, spilling the beans about
Speaker 2: their imagined world. But and you know, and again standing
Speaker 2: out from the crowd in major ways. But they write quote,
Speaker 2: they are similar to their peers in verbal comprehension, working memory,
Speaker 2: and the most commonly used created creativity task, in which
Speaker 2: children are asked to generate uses for a common object.
Speaker 2: Where they do stand out is story is in storytelling,
Speaker 2: Not only were the narratives of their paracosms impressive, they
Speaker 2: invented more creative endings to a story than the endings
Speaker 2: proposed by other children, a finding that was consistent across
Speaker 2: the two studies and in the combined analysis. And on
Speaker 2: top of that, on a sort of broader level, they
Speaker 2: discuss how creative storytelling seems to have broad positive influence
Speaker 2: on our ability to examine alternative viewpoints and engage in
Speaker 2: different modes of empathy, and how paracosms and children may
Speaker 2: relate to this.
Speaker 3: Well, we've already talked about the likely link and cognitive
Speaker 3: development between pretend to play in general, of which paracosms
Speaker 3: are sort of one extreme form, and counterfactual reasoning. I
Speaker 3: would say that there is a broad overlap between counterfactual
Speaker 3: reasoning and the ability to tell stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. So it's yeah, this is
Speaker 2: really fascinating stuff. You know, I honestly can't remember how
Speaker 2: much we may have gotten into paracosms in discussing that
Speaker 2: topic of maladaptive daydreaming. Maybe not at all, Maybe we
Speaker 2: touched on it a little bit, But at any rate,
Speaker 2: it's not a topic I'd really looked at recently, and
Speaker 2: so this was and certainly not since twenty twenty when
Speaker 2: this paper came out. So was, Yeah, this was really fascinating,
Speaker 2: and I would of course love to hear anyone out
Speaker 2: there who wants to write into the show and tell
Speaker 2: us about your para cosms from your childhood, what you
Speaker 2: took with you, what you left behind, what they seemed
Speaker 2: to consist of, and how they sort of ranked up,
Speaker 2: how they matched up with this ranking system that we
Speaker 2: just ran.
Speaker 4: Through, Top five all time para cosms.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, the next thing I wanted to look
Speaker 3: at on the subject of pretend play is the idea
Speaker 3: of pretending across cultures. As we've discussed multiple times already,
Speaker 3: pretend play research, like most psychological research, suffers from the
Speaker 3: deficiency that subjects tested in the published literature, are not
Speaker 3: a perfectly random sample of humankind as a whole, but
Speaker 3: instead are predominantly from the weird cultures, western educated, industrialized, rich,
Speaker 3: democratic cultures. The majority of these studies were conducted in
Speaker 3: the United States, Canada, and Europe, so it would be
Speaker 3: great to know more about pretend play across different cultures
Speaker 3: around the world. Is it largely the same or are
Speaker 3: there major cultural differences? Now, this was addressed a little
Speaker 3: bit in one of the big papers that I've been
Speaker 3: talking about in this series. This was a review of
Speaker 3: the research on pretend play as of the year twenty
Speaker 3: fifteen by a researcher named Dina Skolnik Weisberg, published in
Speaker 3: widely interdisciplinary Reviews Cognitive Science. Again, that was the year
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, and Weisberg goes through a basic review of
Speaker 3: the cross cultural literature and summarizes some of the main findings,
Speaker 3: one of which is that some form of pretend play
Speaker 3: in childhood really does appear to be universal. As far
Speaker 3: as we can tell. This is something basically all children
Speaker 3: in all cultures do. But there are some big differences,
Speaker 3: and I'll get to that in a second. Another thing
Speaker 3: that seems to be fairly universal is the developmental sequence.
Speaker 3: So it appears that the sequence is roughly the same
Speaker 3: across different cultures. Seems that it often begins on a
Speaker 3: similar schedule, and I think this means that usually you
Speaker 3: will get the first observable form being object substitution and
Speaker 3: so forth. However, there are clearly major cultural differences in
Speaker 3: pretend play that manifest in the amount of time spend
Speaker 3: on it and the themes and contents of the play.
Speaker 3: And this is interesting because it varies across national culture lines.
Speaker 3: So you can look at, say, the cultures of different
Speaker 3: countries and how the children do pretend to play in
Speaker 3: each country, and you can find some differences, but you
Speaker 3: also find subcultural differences within countries. And that's going to
Speaker 3: lead us to one of the big things I want
Speaker 3: to talk about in the section here. But to start off,
Speaker 3: Weisberg sites one study that compared the play themes of
Speaker 3: American children and Chinese children and found that while pretend
Speaker 3: play exists in both cultures, obviously American children's play tended
Speaker 3: to have more fantasy content. In these studies, fantasy content
Speaker 3: is non realistic material, so things like talking animals, magical beings,
Speaker 3: and so forth, and that the pretend play of Chinese children,
Speaker 3: on average tended to have more realistic content. And within
Speaker 3: some cultures or subcultures, it's clear that this is to
Speaker 3: some extent influenced by the preferences and instruction of parents,
Speaker 3: Like in some cultures and subcultures, parents will be more
Speaker 3: or less encouraging of pretend play, and these tendencies affect
Speaker 3: how much children do it. But even in cases where
Speaker 3: parents are actively discouraging it, it really seems that it
Speaker 3: doesn't stamp it out completely. And this brings me to
Speaker 3: a paper that I wanted to talk about, which actually
Speaker 3: shares one of the authors of one of the main
Speaker 3: PARACOSM papers you were just talking about. This is a
Speaker 3: paper that's looking at pretend play across different religious subcultures
Speaker 3: within the United States. So the paper is called The
Speaker 3: Influence of Culture on Pretend Play The Case of Mennonite Children,
Speaker 3: published in the Meryl Palmer Quarterly in nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 3: by Stephanie M. Carlson, Marjorie Taylor, and Gerald R. Levin.
Speaker 3: And this study wanted to look at attitudes toward pretend
Speaker 3: play within Mennonite society in two different branches of Mennonite culture.
Speaker 3: One was looking at what they called Old Order Mennonites
Speaker 3: and then also at New Order Mennonites. I can mention
Speaker 3: differences in a second and then also comparing that to
Speaker 3: non Mennonite Christians. Now apologies to the Mennonites for the
Speaker 3: brevity of the summary of their culture I'm about to
Speaker 3: give you know, you can't summarize the entire culture and
Speaker 3: a sentence, but essentially, Mennonites are known for having a
Speaker 3: fairly strict, community oriented way of life that emphasizes modesty,
Speaker 3: hard work, and piety. Often Mennonites are engaged in agriculture
Speaker 3: for a living, and they often deny the use of
Speaker 3: certain modern technologies and limit interface with the broader culture,
Speaker 3: though this varies within different branches of the Mennonite tradition.
Speaker 3: The Amish are one well known branch of the Mennonite faith.
Speaker 3: In the specific context of this study where they were
Speaker 3: where the authors were framing New Order Mennonites versus Old
Speaker 3: Order Mennonites, the New Order Mennonites seemed to be less
Speaker 3: stringent in some particular areas of faith doctrine and social lifestyle. So,
Speaker 3: for example, had apparently fewer sort of social conformity mechanisms
Speaker 3: to enforce adherence to the social doctrine about about dress
Speaker 3: and use of technology and things like that. And it
Speaker 3: appears just based on the small sample of like looking
Speaker 3: at the teachers in the study and what different technologies
Speaker 3: they used, that the New Order Mennonites were engaging with
Speaker 3: or were generally permitted to use more modern technology in
Speaker 3: a wider range of scenarios than people in the Old Order.
Speaker 3: So the survey of teachers found that like neither the
Speaker 3: Old Order nor the New Order, Mennonites went to the
Speaker 3: movies or had a TV at home, but the New
Speaker 3: Order teachers were more likely to have electricity in the
Speaker 3: home and to drive a car. So why focus on
Speaker 3: the example of Mennonite children when looking for differences in
Speaker 3: parental culture on how children engage in pretend play? Well,
Speaker 3: there was already some background literature. The on Minnite attitudes
Speaker 3: towards children's pretend play and toward fantasy. The authors say that,
Speaker 3: in general, quote, acceptable reading material for Mennite children include
Speaker 3: stories that represent an American rural way of life and
Speaker 3: teach a moral lesson, such as the value of hard work.
Speaker 3: Stories that have a fantasy orientation are considered unacceptable. The
Speaker 3: Amish quote do not want their children to read fairy
Speaker 3: tales or myths. Many object to any stories that are
Speaker 3: not true, such as those in which animals talk and
Speaker 3: act like people, or stories that involve magic, such as
Speaker 3: the Pied Piper of Hamlin. And this is citing older
Speaker 3: research by Hostetler and Huntington from nineteen seventy one, and
Speaker 3: then the authors of this paper go on to mention
Speaker 3: that the founder of the Mennonite faith Minno Simons, who
Speaker 3: is a Catholic priest in the sixteenth century who became
Speaker 3: an Anabaptist, and again the founder of this faith was
Speaker 3: down on pretend play. Essentially said, parents, do not encourage
Speaker 3: your children to engage in frivolous activities. Don't you know,
Speaker 3: pretend is no good. The quote he said was quote wink,
Speaker 3: not at their follies. The author is also stressed that
Speaker 3: the Mennonites tend to believe that children should not just
Speaker 3: be idols, should not just like have a lot of
Speaker 3: free time to run around and do whatever that they
Speaker 3: you know, they should be engaged in in structured productive time.
Speaker 3: You know, they have schoolaying, and they have helping out
Speaker 3: with things and so forth, and that it's detrimental to
Speaker 3: them to be idle too much. And we've already talked
Speaker 3: before about how sort of a free playtime alone may
Speaker 3: be a significant factor in the development of different pretend
Speaker 3: to play skills and the likelihood of developing certain pretend
Speaker 3: to play elements such as imaginary companions. So this paper
Speaker 3: has a couple of different studies and one of them
Speaker 3: is comparing the behaviors and attitudes of school teachers toward
Speaker 3: pretend play, and that was looking at Old Order Mennonite,
Speaker 3: New Order Mennonite, and Non Mennonite Christian teachers, and then
Speaker 3: also later looking at the directly observing the play of
Speaker 3: children at recess to look for signs of pretend play
Speaker 3: and see if there were differences between the three faith environments. Specifically,
Speaker 3: when looking at the attitudes of the adult school teachers,
Speaker 3: they expected to find that the Mennonite teachers would have
Speaker 3: more negative attitudes toward pretend play and would be sort
Speaker 3: of would have negative attitudes themselves about pretense and would
Speaker 3: be discouraging of it in children. Did the results actually
Speaker 3: match up with that well, sort of, but with some surprises.
Speaker 3: They did find that overall, Mennonite school teachers were not
Speaker 3: as supportive of pretend to play as non Mennonite Christian teachers. However,
Speaker 3: unlike the New Order and the Non Mennonite Christian team teachers,
Speaker 3: several of the Old Order teachers in their study reported
Speaker 3: that they actually participated in pretend to play. With the
Speaker 3: children at recess that was kind of counterintuitive. They also
Speaker 3: found that Old Order Mennonite teachers were also positive about
Speaker 3: some types of fantasy, though not all, saying that they
Speaker 3: shared their own dreams or daydreams with the children, something
Speaker 3: not said by the teachers from the other groups. Also,
Speaker 3: Old Order teachers were on the whole, surprisingly positive about
Speaker 3: imaginary companions. The authors wrote, quote, it is interesting that
Speaker 3: imaginary companions are mentioned in one of the very few
Speaker 3: published first hand reports of Mennonite childhood experiences. They cite
Speaker 3: a book by Weaver in nineteen eighty three which quote
Speaker 3: described how as a child she invented an imaginary companion
Speaker 3: who was unlike herself, able to wear fancy clothes and
Speaker 3: wear her hair and curls now. Despite that example in
Speaker 3: this other book, the authors stressed that in their direct
Speaker 3: observations in the study, there were no reports of imaginary
Speaker 3: companions allowing a vicarious way around social restrictions. Instead, they
Speaker 3: were described as more filling a social void. However, it's
Speaker 3: possible that information about I don't know, thrill seeking or
Speaker 3: non conforming elements of imaginary companions were being hidden or
Speaker 3: filtered out in these reports. I mean to the researchers,
Speaker 3: not by the researchers. Another really interesting contrast, specifically with
Speaker 3: respect to the imaginary companions, Several of the New Order
Speaker 3: and non Mennonite Christian teachers were actually somewhat concerned in
Speaker 3: a psychological or spiritual sense about imaginary companions, fearing that
Speaker 3: they might be evidence of a psychological problem or literally
Speaker 3: of demonic possession.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean getting into a scenario where the child
Speaker 2: is talking about an imagined entity that's speaking to them
Speaker 2: and perhaps sharing knowledge with them that knows more than
Speaker 2: they do. Is matching up with little discussed in the
Speaker 2: last episode.
Speaker 3: I want to come back to that question here in
Speaker 3: a minute, But okay, So that was the first study
Speaker 3: looking at the attitudes of teachers. Somewhat lined up. The
Speaker 3: Mennonite teachers were, on average not as supportive of playing pretend,
Speaker 3: but there were some surprises, more variation than expected. So
Speaker 3: let's go to study number two. This again was observing
Speaker 3: the play of children at recess and looking for signs
Speaker 3: of pretense of pretend play to see if there were
Speaker 3: differences between the three faith environments. The main finding was
Speaker 3: that Old Order Mennonite children showed differences in pretend play,
Speaker 3: but not deficits. So it was not that they didn't
Speaker 3: play pretend, but what they pretended was notably different. The
Speaker 3: content was different, and they found that old order Mennonite
Speaker 3: children tended to pretend with more realistic themes about work
Speaker 3: and adult roles within their community. There was less fantasy,
Speaker 3: less separation of the play themes from the working order
Speaker 3: of reality. And the authors note that this is in
Speaker 3: line with previous findings that when you say ask children
Speaker 3: to draw pictures, and you compare the drawings of Amish
Speaker 3: school children with non Amish children, Amish kids drawings were
Speaker 3: much more concerned with realistic daily activities like raking leaves
Speaker 3: or taking care of babies, whereas the non Amish children,
Speaker 3: by comparison, engaged in a lot more fantasy ideation in
Speaker 3: their drawings. Now why this difference, Well, for one thing,
Speaker 3: this does seem to be exactly the kind of thinking
Speaker 3: that the more strict Mennonite communities encourage. Mennonite adults on
Speaker 3: average are more supportive of preteens and play when it
Speaker 3: concerns the children's own intended future lives. So like I
Speaker 3: am pretending to be a father or a mother, I
Speaker 3: am pretending to be a farmer and so forth. Also,
Speaker 3: Old Order Minnite children, the authors point out, have limited
Speaker 3: exposure to fantasy themes through culture. These children generally do
Speaker 3: not watch movies or TV. They usually don't read books
Speaker 3: with fantasy themes. So it could be that they are
Speaker 3: simply given much less external inspiration to entertain non realistic
Speaker 3: ideas and scenarios. I don't know how much of a
Speaker 3: role that plays, but that does seem significant now.
Speaker 2: I mean, I instantly though, wonder about the Bible's.
Speaker 3: Role, and I had the same question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Bible is full of magic and giants and
Speaker 2: dragons and any number of fantastic themes.
Speaker 3: I want to ask a question at the end, and
Speaker 3: that it'll bring us back to that as well.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Another interesting observation that the authors make here is that
Speaker 3: even though the Old Order Mennite children did play pretend,
Speaker 3: they certainly did, they sometimes appeared to lack the vocabulary
Speaker 3: to properly discuss the idea of pretend play. And here
Speaker 3: I want to read from a passage the author's write quote.
Speaker 3: For example, an Old Order Mennonite first grader in our
Speaker 3: study did not know the word pretend when he came
Speaker 3: across it in a story about a bird who feigned
Speaker 3: death to deceive a predator. So to be clear, this
Speaker 3: is not even a story about playing. This is a
Speaker 3: story about nature, but it just involves the idea of pretending,
Speaker 3: as in like feigning something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this lines up with some of the study limitations
Speaker 2: that were discussing. That meta analysis that I discussed in
Speaker 2: the last episode is that sometimes talking to the children
Speaker 2: is the best source. But also, on one hand, they
Speaker 2: just might not have they might not have the linguistic
Speaker 2: ability to really discuss everything, to really couch it in
Speaker 2: terms that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Right, So this is a child who comes across the
Speaker 3: idea of pretending in a story about nature and doesn't
Speaker 3: know what the word means. I want to stress however, though,
Speaker 3: that does not mean that the child did not pretend.
Speaker 3: You can do something without having the words to describe
Speaker 3: what you're doing. The authors continue quote. On another occasion,
Speaker 3: the first author noted the comments of an old order
Speaker 3: girl who was observing another girl dress a doll. She
Speaker 3: kept repeating, in a dismissive tone, it's not a right baby.
Speaker 3: We questioned her and learned that she was trying to
Speaker 3: express that the doll was not a real baby.
Speaker 2: Oh, how I wish we called baby dolls wrong babies.
Speaker 2: That was so great.
Speaker 3: I don't want to do this in my house because
Speaker 3: it has bad normative implications. But yeah, that would be
Speaker 3: hilarious to call everything pretend wrong. This is wrong dinosaur,
Speaker 3: this is wrong food.
Speaker 2: But that's fascinating. It's so easy to take the concept
Speaker 2: of for granted, even with children, that it would just
Speaker 2: be a concept that you would latch onto so early.
Speaker 2: But yeah, not necessarily. You might not have the word
Speaker 2: for it, even if the concept is still clearly there
Speaker 2: in their mind. But how do you refer to it?
Speaker 3: Another possible explanation for these findings, similar to the last one,
Speaker 3: is the idea that Old Order Mennonite children had comparatively
Speaker 3: fewer what the authors call environmental triggers for fantasy based
Speaker 3: pretend to play than New Order Mennonites or non Mennonite Christians.
Speaker 3: And you could think of a lot of these triggers.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I think we might forget to acknowledge how many
Speaker 3: things and things in the world were surrounded by that
Speaker 3: just cause us to imagine. So examples could be like
Speaker 3: toys and costumes, other play props, decorations. Classroom decorations with
Speaker 3: fantasy themes. You might not think about those, but they
Speaker 3: talked about, you know, like a poster up on the
Speaker 3: classroom wall that has the Easter Bunny on it, or
Speaker 3: you know, oh, that actually is a kind of fantasy theme.
Speaker 3: They even cite elaborate playground equipment, which the old Order
Speaker 3: mid Night Children did not have, and the author I
Speaker 3: didn't know this, but the authors cite previous research that
Speaker 3: had found that more elaborate playground equipment, as opposed to
Speaker 3: simpler traditional playground equipment, has been found to quote promote
Speaker 3: socio dramatic play themes. So I think the idea might
Speaker 3: be that you know, these more complex kind of I
Speaker 3: don't know what even the terms for these things are now,
Speaker 3: but like these kind of towers and stuff that children
Speaker 3: climb on and have a good time on might promote
Speaker 3: a more dramatic, collaborative, fictional way of playing, if that
Speaker 3: makes any sense.
Speaker 2: No, No, I can see that. Spent enough time on
Speaker 2: playgrounds that I think I can see it. You know,
Speaker 2: It's like, even if it's certainly you have playgrounds where
Speaker 2: the equipment is taking the form of a ship, where
Speaker 2: it's taking the form of Oh, I guess generally a castle.
Speaker 2: But even if there's nothing that thick, you have like
Speaker 2: a dynamic system built out there, like the drama kind
Speaker 2: of rights itself, you know, like you know, differing heights
Speaker 2: involve narrowing spaces, bridges and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So I didn't know this, but it makes
Speaker 3: sense to me as well. I can see that being true. Okay,
Speaker 3: So one more explanation the authors offer that is community orientation.
Speaker 3: So Old Order Mennonites tend to be very focused on
Speaker 3: communal harmony and take a somewhat negative view of individualism.
Speaker 3: And interestingly, I don't think I would have put this together,
Speaker 3: but this really caught me here. Previous research has found
Speaker 3: that pretend play with realistic themes may help foster communal
Speaker 3: play between children because the script and the roles are
Speaker 3: more likely to be familiar to all the children. So
Speaker 3: I don't think that would have occurred to me naturally,
Speaker 3: but it's true. Like if we're kids out on the
Speaker 3: playground and we're playing I don't know, playing games that
Speaker 3: I used to play, which are like, let's act out
Speaker 3: the latest movie that I saw and obsessed with. So
Speaker 3: we're playing Santo versus the Martian invasion. Only the children
Speaker 3: who have seen the movie or are already familiar with
Speaker 3: the characters in the game will easily be able to participate.
Speaker 3: Kids who are not familiar with what's going on are
Speaker 3: really going to be at a loss here. But if
Speaker 3: we all come from farming families and we all play
Speaker 3: Farmer or we play house, every child is going to
Speaker 3: have some kind of relevant experience and know roughly how
Speaker 3: to play the game. So the idea is realistic. Pretend
Speaker 3: play is more accessible to more children, more easily, and
Speaker 3: the author's right. In contrast, children who have a more
Speaker 3: individualistic orientation are more likely to pursue more imaginative themes,
Speaker 3: which require negotiation and often result in conflict among play partners.
Speaker 3: And I know, you know, we're partisans of imaginative play
Speaker 3: and fantasy themes and all that, so we're not down
Speaker 3: talking it. But I can absolutely see this being true.
Speaker 3: Do you see this, Rob, Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there are I guess a few different
Speaker 2: ways to think about it. On one hand, there's the
Speaker 2: the You can easily imagine one child having to explain,
Speaker 2: you know, their obsession the game they want to play
Speaker 2: based on some sort of curated fandom that these other
Speaker 2: kids don't have, which I feel like is more common
Speaker 2: these days, you know, with kids who you know have
Speaker 2: grown up on a particular media diet, that might be
Speaker 2: a little more niche in some regards. You know, you know,
Speaker 2: one kid wants to play Thunder of the Barbarian. No
Speaker 2: other kids are watching Thunder of the Barbarian anymore, but
Speaker 2: you know their parent insisted on handing this nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: Hanna Barbara cartoon onto them, and that means they have
Speaker 2: to maybe have a frustrating job of explaining like, no,
Speaker 2: it's not a lightsaber, Thundar has a different type of
Speaker 2: light sun sort or whatever it was.
Speaker 3: Kids could be mean about this, Yeah, yeah, you don't know.
Speaker 2: But then on the other hand, like thinking about what
Speaker 2: are the differences between playing Star Wars and playing House
Speaker 2: or Farm? Like House or Farm don't really have conflict
Speaker 2: or factions. It's everyone, like you've been saying, it's communal,
Speaker 2: everyone's working together, whereas Star Wars is all about the factions. Well,
Speaker 2: like are you gonna be? You know, the good guys
Speaker 2: are the bad guys? What are you? What's your lightsaber like?
Speaker 2: And who gets to win? And so I can imagine
Speaker 2: a scenario where that leads to more conflict.
Speaker 3: Just to set the record straight, I think farm can
Speaker 3: have all kinds of conflicts. Oh well, but how many
Speaker 3: the kids under how many?
Speaker 2: Yeah, how many of those stories have they they actually
Speaker 2: engaged with? But in the Star Wars scenario, though, I
Speaker 2: will say that eventually a grown up may interfere and say,
Speaker 2: you're all Jedi, and you're all fighting invisible droids, stop
Speaker 2: hitting each other with sticks. That's what I did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But in that frame of mind. The authors go
Speaker 3: on to invoke the variable emphasis on collective social well
Speaker 3: being versus individualistic expression in different cultures and subcultures, noting
Speaker 3: that in general, if a culture or subculture places more
Speaker 3: value on social harmony and the avoidance of conflict, this
Speaker 3: could lead to a d emphasis on fantasy themes and
Speaker 3: pretend to play and a greater preference for realistic themes
Speaker 3: for the reason we just discussed. Not that it's always
Speaker 3: going to work out that way, but that's one thing
Speaker 3: that could be operative in making these distinctions. Now, there's
Speaker 3: a final question I want to come back to that
Speaker 3: we've sort of touched on a couple of times already,
Speaker 3: and this is something that comes up in the cross
Speaker 3: cultural section of that paper by Weisberg I mentioned, and
Speaker 3: this is the question of how should we think about
Speaker 3: pretend or imaginative play in a cultural context where adults
Speaker 3: and authority figures do not agree that the pretend elements
Speaker 3: are only pretend. So as a background, you know, we
Speaker 3: talked in part one about the question of can children
Speaker 3: really tell the difference between pretend and reality? This concern
Speaker 3: parents might have and even some you know, some researchers
Speaker 3: have had this concern, or I think that page was
Speaker 3: concerned sometimes that children couldn't tell the difference between fantasy
Speaker 3: and reality, didn't know whether you know that the pretend
Speaker 3: game was really real or not. By and large, it
Speaker 3: seems like the research says mostly children can tell the difference.
Speaker 3: They make a few more errors along these lines than
Speaker 3: adults do, but generally they know what's real and what isn't.
Speaker 3: But that kind of question seems a lot more cut
Speaker 3: and dry when everybody, including like all the parents and
Speaker 3: adults will all agree that yeah, okay, so you're playing dinosaur,
Speaker 3: but you're not really a dinosaur right now, or yes,
Speaker 3: it's great that you have an imaginary companion and you
Speaker 3: play with them, that we're not being to discouraging of
Speaker 3: that at all. But there's not like literally actually another
Speaker 3: person here, and the child actually knows that the adults agree.
Speaker 3: But in the case of imaginary friends, there are some
Speaker 3: cultural contexts in which the adults might say, no, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, there may really be a being. There two
Speaker 3: versions of this, one positive and one with negative connotation.
Speaker 3: Starting it with the negative one, we've already mentioned research
Speaker 3: documenting how some Christian parents and teachers have regarded imaginary
Speaker 3: friends and companions as dangerous, not just because they are
Speaker 3: an unwelcome fantasy, but maybe because of the religious beliefs
Speaker 3: of the adults. They think this imaginary friend might be
Speaker 3: a demon. So the adult says the imaginary friend. So
Speaker 3: maybe the child thinks the imaginary friend is just pretend,
Speaker 3: but the adult says, no, the imaginary friend is real
Speaker 3: and is dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, Obviously you can imagine that the opos
Speaker 2: scenario as well, where it's thought of as an angel
Speaker 2: or more some sort of just you know, other harmless
Speaker 2: sort of like I don't know, Victorian notion of a fairy.
Speaker 3: Yes, in fact, I had an example of that. So
Speaker 3: the author here also mentioned studies documenting and I think
Speaker 3: you actually mentioned this in your section on imaginary companions
Speaker 3: in part two, But it's been documented in some East
Speaker 3: Indian households that children's imaginary friends or pretend to play
Speaker 3: are sometimes thought to be interactions with other worldly beings
Speaker 3: generally benign. It is generally not thought of as like
Speaker 3: this is a demon that's dangerous, but like a benign
Speaker 3: positive entity or memory from a past life. So in
Speaker 3: this case, the adult may say the imaginary friend could
Speaker 3: be real, but that's fine. I feel like these kinds
Speaker 3: of situations really complicate the question of looking into do
Speaker 3: children know what is real versus what is pretend because
Speaker 3: surely their frame of reference for that has to be
Speaker 3: taken largely from the cues given by the adults around them, Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is a fascinating area to sort
Speaker 2: of like dip our toes into, like where you have
Speaker 2: one hand, childhood understanding of the unseen world and creation
Speaker 2: of the unseen world, and then adult and larger cultural
Speaker 2: concepts of the unseen world. What happens when these two meet?
Speaker 2: Where do they coalesce? Where did they Where are they
Speaker 2: at odds with each other? You know? And it's I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a it's a weird area because a
Speaker 2: lot of what is going on there's like one idea
Speaker 2: of adulthood is that you and parenthood is that you
Speaker 2: are telling children what is real. You're preparing them for
Speaker 2: the real world, the mundane world, the physical world, and
Speaker 2: often in very broad strokes, you know, when they're young,
Speaker 2: the idea of like, I want to keep you from dying.
Speaker 2: I need to keep you safe. But then you begin
Speaker 2: to if you begin doing introduce these other concepts of
Speaker 2: an unseen world of spiritual entities and deities like you know,
Speaker 2: that that adds this entirely other complex layer. Like one.
Speaker 2: One example that comes to mind is the idea of
Speaker 2: you know, of children saying, you know, talking about prayer
Speaker 2: to God and speaking to God, and when the idea
Speaker 2: is eventually introduced that God will speak back, you know what.
Speaker 2: And depending on what kind of emphasis is put on that,
Speaker 2: and how that is explained or not explained to a
Speaker 2: child like that can create all sorts of of questions,
Speaker 2: you know, like well, why am I not hearing a
Speaker 2: voice back? Or what if I do hear a voice back?
Speaker 2: And then how does that get folded? Up into everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this really ties into a question. Actually,
Speaker 3: this I think is probably going to be a major
Speaker 3: thing I want to talk about in the next part.
Speaker 3: If you're willing, Robbie willing to go to another part, un.
Speaker 2: Particularly with me. Yeah, I think so. We're already getting
Speaker 2: some great feedback from listeners, so I think we should
Speaker 2: definitely move.
Speaker 3: Forward, absolutely, keep it coming. Contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com. But anyway, I was going to say,
Speaker 3: it's the question of what, if anything, do children learn
Speaker 3: about the real world from engaging with pretend scenarios. But yeah,
Speaker 3: more to come in part four and who knows what
Speaker 3: lies beyond. But I think that does it for today.
Speaker 2: I think, so we'll go ahead and close it out here.
Speaker 2: But yeah, again, we'd love to hear from everyone out there,
Speaker 2: just to remind it that Stuff to Go to Your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a signed some culture podcast with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we run a
Speaker 2: short form episode. The one last week was had to
Speaker 2: do with something from Stephen King's Children of the Corn.
Speaker 2: I think that was largely an accident that if we'd
Speaker 2: covered the Children of the Corn and imaginary friends and
Speaker 2: so forth in such close proximity to one another, and
Speaker 2: then on Fridays we just set aside time to just
Speaker 2: talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other to send
Speaker 3: us your thoughts about childhood, pretend to play paracosms, and
Speaker 3: any of the rest, you can email us at contact
Speaker 3: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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