[qwery]

It's not just you.

- They found a higher rate ("almost half") of autistic children "creating imaginary friends" than prior research.

- A comparison is drawn between autistic children with imaginary friends versus autistic children without. Those with had "better social skills" than those without.

- Prior research has found a similar difference in the general population (non-autistic children).

[ff317]

As always, though, correlation != causation. It could well be the case that half of children (autistic or not) have some extra innate capacity for socialization, and that typical parenting choices don't provide those children as much social input as their brain wants at a certain stage of development, and hence they make up imaginary friends to interact with in order to satisfy their enhanced social needs. In other words, the imaginary friends could be an effect rather than a cause.