Marjorie Taylor on the childhood imagination: "I have not seen a decline"

Although the inquiry at the heart of my research on imagination is framed around the idea that we are, collectively, experiencing a decline in our collective imagination, not everyone I have interviewed agrees. Marjorie Taylor is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon and author of ‘Imaginary Companions and the Children who Create Them’, and editor of the Oxford Book of the Development of Imagination. She researches the development of imagination and creativity, in particular on childhood imaginary friends, and also the relationships that adult fiction writers develop with characters in their novels. Much of her work is conducted in the beautifully-named ‘Imagination Lab’. She is on the editorial boards of the journals ‘Imagination, Cognition, and Personality’ and ‘The American Journal of Play’.