Abstract

We examined how 5-year-olds and adults projected animal properties to animals. Subjects were asked to project animal properties from person, monkey or bee to person, mammals, birds, fishes, insects, and worms. Three kinds of animal properties were used ; Properties of all animals (e.g.eating), property of specific animals (thinking, making honey, etc.), and unknown property (having an internal organ called "popo" inside). Both 5-year-olds and adults projected eating to many animals, but they did not project the properties of specific animals to other animals. This suggests that both age groups of subjects know the difference between these two kinds of animal properties. In contrast, subjects projected the unknown property according to the similarity to the animal which were told to have the property. In addition, when the person was told to have the unknown property, 5-year-olds did not project the property to other animals. However they projected the property to other animals much more when the monkey were told to have the property. This suggests that for 5-year-olds, the monkey is the prototypical member of the animals and the person is a somewhat differentiated kind from other animals.