Meet the authors
Marjorie Taylor, PhD
Marjorie Taylor is Professor Emerit of Psychology at the University of Oregon. She is a leading expert on children's imaginary friendships, including the development of imagination and creativity, older children who create imaginary worlds and adult fiction writers who develop relationships with the characters in their novels. Taylor is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination (2013), author of Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them (1999) and co-author (with Naomi Aguiar) of Imaginary Friends and the People Who Create Them (2024), an expanded 2nd edition of her 1999 book.
Naomi R. Aguiar, PhD
Naomi Aguiar is an expert in how children and adults think about and form relationships with AI chatbots, and how these relationships can impact real world learning learning and behavior. She also has expertise in the imaginary relationships children and adults create for themselves- either totally on their own, or with help from media. Naomi currently serves as the Associate Director of Research at Oregon State University Ecampus. Her most recent publication, Imaginary Friends and the People Who Create Them, is a book co-authored with Marjorie Taylor and published by Oxford University Press.
