살아 있는 것과 살아 있지 않은 것에 대한 만 3-5세 유아들의 인식

Abstract

Objectives This study aims to understand children’s conception of aliveness through their descriptions of biotic and abiotic objects and the cues that led them to think this way. Methods To this end, 35 children each at 2 different Choongchung province educational institutions were randomly sampled by age for a total of 105 children, who participated in two rounds of interviews including activities. In the first round, the children were given sufficient individual time to draw one or more of the following categories: animals, plants, cars, and houses. Afterwards, each child went through an individual discussion about whether each of their drawings of animals/plants/abiotic objects show an object that is living or not, whether it needs water, whether it needs food, whether it matures and grows, and whether it breathes. In the second stage, 3 picture cards for each category — animals, plants, animate abiotic objects, and inanimate abiotic objects — 12 cards total, were used to ask each child whether they thought the objects drawn on the cards need water, mature and grow, breathe, and are alive, and additionally were requested to share why they believed so. Results The results showed that for children between the ages 3-5, types of conceptualization of aliveness can be categorized into: “movement that proves the object is living,” “vitality that can be discovered in animals and plants: living,” “houses and cars are alive: the flow of breath from the symptoms of life that children discover in abiotic objects,” “naturally created or produced: concepts of synthetic production,” “because it moves when I use it: self-centered concept of life,” “I just feel it: the power of “intuition” in detecting life.” Upon taking a closer look at the comprehension tendencies of children ages 3~5 regarding whether an object is alive or not, most recognize animals are living (age 3 96.2%, age 4 98.1%, age 5 99.0%); however, subjects showed a lower rate of recognition for plants (age 3 83.8%, age 4 68.6%, age 5 82.9%). Conclusions According to the findings, there is a tendency for children’s conception of whether something is living or not to be formed based on cues from the characteristic of mobility, signs of life such as vitality and respiration, the concept of nature versus synthetic production, mixing with self-centered conception, and intuition. This shows that the conceptual understanding children have cannot be separated from characteristics of their developmental stage and that unique features of infancy cannot be excluded from consideration. Thus, the innate biological intuition children have has a non-negligible influence on their biological judgment. However, it was evident that preceding experiences at home or at educational institutions cant alter those judgments to an extent. This suggests that the quality of social knowledge impacts children’s biological judgment.