What Preschoolers know about Animate and Inanimate Objects

Abstract

The world we live in contains animate and inanimate objects, and adults think about these classes of objects in different ways. Consider one clear case from each class: a cat and a chair. We expect a young kitten to grow and change shape over time, but do not expect a newly made chair to do this. If one used instruments to alter the shape of the chair, we might not accept the result as the same object? under the same transformation, the kitten would still be considered the same animal. Additionally, we expect a cat to respond to another animal’s actions, to have life-supporting internal organs and external parts, to be governed by an underlying set of psychological functions and states, and above all, to have an endogenous ability to move. We expect a chair to have none of these characteristics.