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