Pretend companions (imaginary playmates): the emergence of a field.

Over the last century, investigation of pretend companions has developed as an emerging field. Although pretend companions are a commonplace childhood phenomenon and perhaps an epitome of children's imagination, that topic received little attention before the end of the 19th century. Only since the last decade has attention to it truly begun to burgeon. Broad developments in the history of thought and research on pretend companions fall into 6 stages: (a) early history, (b) early theory, (c) earliest empirical research, (d) midcentury lull, (e) a renewal of empirical attention, and (f) emergence into a significant field whose investigators are committed to reliable, increasingly sophisticated methods and to the examination of pretend companions within the broader context of pretend play. Following depictions of the field's past and current status, the authors present future directions for its progress.