Holland V M, Rohrman N L
J Psycholinguist Res. 1979 Jul;8(4):367-78. doi: 10.1007/BF01067140.
Piaget suggests that animistic thinking is a pervasive feature of children's cognition. To test this notion, 4- to 8-year-old children were shown several inanimate objects and asked to pick those which perform activities characteristic of living organisms. These activities were typified by six verbs: "ear," "sleep," "breathe," "grow," "die," and "be alive." Fifty percent of the younger children responded animistically, by misattributing life processes to inanimate objects, but only 18% of their total responses were animistic. Twenty percent of the older children responded animistically, but only 20% of their responses were animistic. In Experiment II, children were shown drawings singly and asked if the object could perform activities named by one of the six verbs. Results were similar to those of Experiment I but with somewhat less animism. Experiment III required children to spontaneously name things that are alive. There were no animistic responses. It was concluded that animistic thinking is not a genuine phenomenon but linguistic confusion elicited by novel objects and unfamiliar words.
皮亚杰认为泛灵论思维是儿童认知的一个普遍特征。为了验证这一观点，研究人员向4至8岁的儿童展示了几个无生命的物体，并要求他们挑选出那些表现出生物体特征活动的物体。这些活动由六个动词来代表：“听”“睡觉”“呼吸”“生长”“死亡”和“活着”。50%的年幼儿童做出了泛灵论的反应，即将生命过程错误地归因于无生命的物体，但他们的所有反应中只有18%是泛灵论的。20%的年长儿童做出了泛灵论的反应，但他们的反应中只有20%是泛灵论的。在实验二中，研究人员单独向儿童展示图画，并询问物体是否能进行由六个动词之一所命名的活动。结果与实验一相似，但泛灵论的程度略低。实验三要求儿童自发说出有生命的事物。没有出现泛灵论的反应。研究得出的结论是，泛灵论思维不是一种真实的现象，而是由新奇物体和不熟悉的词汇引发的语言混淆。
