The Relationship between Children's Judgments of Animacy and Sentiency: Another Look

Abstract

The developmental relationship between children's understanding of animacy (alive/not alive) and sentiency (knowing/wanting versus not) restrictions was investigated. Sixteen 4-year-olds and sixteen 5-year-olds judged the acceptability of well-formed and anomalous sentences about four types of subject-referents: humans, plants, remote-inanimate, and familiar-inanimate. In addition, children were asked directly whether each object was alive or could know something. No evidence was found that acquisition of the animate-inanimate distinction occurs earlier and is a developmental prerequisite for acquiring the sentient-nonsentient distinction. In fact, significantly more incorrect judgments occurred with animacy sentences than with sentiency ones. Overall, the results for plants diverged from those for the other objects. Although there was a significant tendency to deny that plants are live or can grow, judgments about whether or not plants are capable of psychological states such as knowing or wanting were as accurate as comparable judgments about humans and inanimates.