| Abstract: | Investigated the development of understanding of animate and inanimate items. 52 4–7 yr olds and 15 college students received 3 tasks, including sentence completion, oddity, and sorting tasks. In all conditions, Ss were asked to choose from among animate and inanimate items the 1 which correctly completed the task requirement. Inanimate items in all tasks had 1 perceptual feature in common with the animate item, either movement, making noise, or similarity of size. It was predicted that Ss would select items on the basis of perceptual rather than semantic similarity in those tasks which contained little contextual information. It is concluded that children were aware of the difference between animate and inanimate items in certain conditions, but that perceptual features were often more salient. If contextual restrictions were not evident, the dimension of animateness may have been overlooked in favor of visible, concrete features of the items. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
