Abstract
For the purpose of investigating the developmental aspects of the concept of “life” in children, the author interviewed (or questionnared) 154 children of age 5 through 11, and asked them questions with the intention of discovering the clues they use to identify life and how these clueschange with age. As it is a prerequisite to any such undertaking that the investigator has a fixed frameof reference to analyse data, the author employed the set of objective criteria for identifying life used in modern biology, and classified the observed subjective criteria of children (the clues) against them. The questions used wre of the following two kinds:
1.“Is a X living? Or, is it not?” After the answer,“Why do you think so?” Where X is an object running over the following 10 items: Animals: dog, chicken, grasshopper Plant: tulip Things in the sky: cloud, moon Thing on the ground: stone Manufactured object: ca ndle Machines: bicycle, watch
2. Is this rabbit (flower) living? Or, is it not?This question was repeated over a live rabbit, a toy rabbit operated by a battery, a realflower and an artificial flower. After this each Swas asked about the differences between the natural object and the artificial object (separately for the rabbit and for the flower). This second class of questions were intended to throw light into thesupposedly fuzzy distinctions in children between living vs. non-living and active vs. inactive. The major results are as follows:
1. There are more clues than just “movement” as Piaget insists which children use for identifying life. With 5-7 age olds, the three clues of thehighest frequencies are “movement,”“food and water intake” and “morphological characteristics.” At the 9th year of age, the third clue is replaced by “growth and development,” a fact that reflects the deepening of the understanding of children with age concerning the essential natures of life. This developmental tendency is apparent in the children's responses in the whole, both in quality and in quantity.
2. With younger children inadequate criteria like movement,“change” and function ften leagd them to confuse lifeless objects with living objects. As they grow older, these inadequate clues are replaced by more valid ones like.spontaneous movement, “food intake,” “morphological charac teristics” and “development.”
3. Only 35% of the children of age 5 correctly distinguish the living status of the real rabbit from the toy rabbit, even though none of them failedto call “a dog” alive. This seems to suggest not only that there are mixtures of developmental stages even within the same age group, but also that there are the correct identification of life under the correct although one or two cluse and a rather loose usage of the word “living” extended to active but non-living objects.
4. The correct identification of “tulip” and “chrysanthemum” as living is comparatively delayed, apparently for their lack of movements. Their correct recognition comes later as children learn to use the three clues: “growing,” “suction of water” and “withering.”
