Animistic Thought in Children: Effects of Two Response Modes

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Abstract
To ascertain the possible effects of testing variations on children's demonstration of their understanding of the concept of life, first-grade children (26 boys, 32 girls) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a verbal condition in which children were asked questions about 16 objects (8 living, 8 nonliving) in the usual Piagetian interview format and a nonverbal condition in which Ss were asked to sort a series of pictures of the same 16 objects into categories of living things and nonliving things. Ss in general were quite nonanimistic, and there was no difference in performance between the two conditions. It was suggested that the objects used in the study were all quite familiar to the children's experience, and thus, consistent with findings from other research, they responded to them naturalistically.

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