CHILDREN'S CONCEPT OF LIFE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CUES FOR IT

Problem:<BR>Piaget (1926) has identified an aspect of child's thought which he called animism. It is the tendency to attribute life and consciousness to certain inanimate objects. Russell (1939-40), Mead (1932), Huang (1943), Klingensmith (1953) and others did some follow up studies. Some have found consiberable agreement with Piagetian observation while others have not. The inconsistencies appear to be partly, due to the methods employed and to the definitions used.<BR>The purpose of the present study is to investigate the childs cognition of life in relation to the cue attributes for differentiating live and inanimate objects.<BR>Method:<BR>Fifty two children of 4 to 8 years of age were interviewed individually. Each was asked the following nine questions regarding seven objects. The seven objects were sun, plant, stone, bicycle, desk, dog and goldfish. Each question asks whether each of these seven objects possess a given property or attribute., They are:<BR>1. sensation “Would feel pain if I stick a pin on it?” “Would feel any other sensation?”<BR>2. growth “Does become old?” “Does grow in size?”<BR>3. breathing “Does breathe?”<BR>4. motion “Can move?”<BR>5. emotion “Does laugh and cry?” “Would feel sorrow and joy?”<BR>6. need “Would feel hungry?” “Does want to play?”<BR>7. thinking “Does think?”<BR>8. communication “Can talk with people?”“Can talk each other?”<BR>9. life “Is it alive?”<BR>From 1 through 8 ask about possible cue attributes for calling something alive, and question 9 is about the criterion attribute. After each question, the child was asked to mention the reason why he thinks so.<BR>Results:<BR>Taele 1 presents the number of positive responses for various cue attributes, and Figure I presents the percentage of positive responses to the criterion question “Is it alive?”<BR>The data show that substantial percentage of 4 year-old children thought inanimate objects alive while after age 5 this tendency decreased remarkably, except for the responses with regard to the sun. Most of our subjects insisted that the sun was alive up to age 6.<BR>Table 2 shows the correlation coefficients between responses to various cue attributes and those to the criterion “alive” response. They represents criterialities as defined by Bruner et al. and functional validities in Brunswikian sense.<BR>All correlations are low for age 4, showing that as a group their judgment as to whether something is alive or not is less reliably anchored on relevant cue attributes.<BR>At 5 years-old, all attributes show higher correlation with the criterion, marking a stage where cues are better utilized.<BR>For ages 7 and 8, most of the cues attain very high criterialities showing successful utilization of appropriate cues.<BR>A couple of cues have lower maximum because being positive with these cues are conceived as sufficient but not necessary condition for life. Those with higher 4 s and maximum s are interpreted as cues which are conceived as both necessary and sufficient. Table 2 shows that the older children do differentiate necessary and unnecessary cues better.<BR>Table 3 shows the reasons why children thought those objects were alive (or not alive). The physical appearance, such as having eyes and nose etc., was predominant in early years while the internal physical side, such as having certain organs, nerves etc., emerged in later years. At all age levels, there were given quite a variety of reasons for thinking some thing to be alive.<BR>Discussion:<BR>Our results have suggested that in early childhood children conceive of life rather independently of attributes like moving, breathing etc. which commonly consist as cues for judging something alive. In the later childhood, cues are more stably utilized and better diffentiated.