Turkish researchers have found that people who had imaginary companions in childhood are more likely to experience the illusion of an unseen presence nearby in adulthood, infohub.kz reports.
Specialists at Izmir University of Economics in Turkey have established an unexpected link between childhood play with imaginary characters and a specific sensation of someone else being present nearby in adult life. The findings of the study were published in the specialized journal "Consciousness and Cognition." According to the authors, both phenomena reflect how the human brain perceives its own body and the surrounding space.
The study involved 185 adult volunteers with no neurological or psychiatric conditions. Of these, 45 people clearly remembered having imaginary companions in childhood. All participants completed a standardized questionnaire assessing how often they had felt a stranger's presence in a room without any clear visual or auditory stimuli over the past month. It turned out that people with experience of imaginary friends scored an average of 25.51 points on a scale of 15 to 75, compared with 20.07 points in the control group.
An analysis of childhood memories revealed a clear spatial pattern. About two-thirds of respondents remembered that their invisible friends were in front of them or to the side at a distance of up to 70 centimeters. That distance falls within the boundaries of so-called peripersonal space — the zone of interaction with the surrounding world. Whereas children place characters within their field of view for dialogue, adults more often sense an invisible presence behind them. The authors stress that this is not about the mystical but about glitches in the brain's processing of body signals.