Children's Attribution of Biological and Psychological Traits
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Authors
Wagner, Amanda S.
Issue Date
2002
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
The current study intended to understand children's attribution of traits to animals and
toys. Past research has shown that aliveness, capability of autonomous movement, and
presence of a face all affected children's judgment and their willingness to attribute life
traits to entities. The current study used entities that had varying degrees of these
characteristics, creating more ambiguity in aliveness than previous studies had. The
children's attribution of life traits was measured. The participants were thirty-two
mother-child pairs including a 5-year-old or a 3-year-old. An activity session and an
interview were the two components of the procedure. During the activity session the
mother and child were allotted 5 min to play with each of 6 objects. The interview probed
the child's attribution of properties to photographs of the 6 objects presented during the
activity session and a photograph of a human. Data analyzed were children's responses to
familiar property attribute questions from the interview. Results show a 3-way interaction
between age of the child, category, and object. Therefore, older participants better
understood characteristics of clearly living or clearly non-living entities. Participants had
more difficulty determining characteristics of ambiguous entities as compared with
clearly living entities and clearly non-living entities. Most importantly, across all four
categories, the data show a trend in children's attribution of traits in accordance with the
continuum from non-living to living entities. This finding may guide further research
methods in an effort to understand the essential components of objects to which children
attend when attributing life traits.
Description
vi, 56 p.
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