PIAGET'S QUESTIONS APPLIED TO ZUNT CHILDREN1

Abstract

It is of utmost interest to determine whether the thought tendencies which have been investigated by Piaget are characteristic of children universally, or whether these tendencies are exhibited only in certain milieu, we are particularly concerned with the ideas which Plaget discussed in Child's Conception of the World (3), namely, animism, realism and artificialism. Up to the present time the questions which Piaget reported in this important publication have been asked only of European and American white children. Mead's (2) report concerning the apparent lack of animism in Manus children of the Admiralty Islands does not constitute an exception to the above statement, since Mead did not employ Piaget's methods. It remains to be shown that Mead's techniques are adequate to reveal animistic tendencies in children. For this reason, we cannot agree with Mead that her results are at variance with those of the Genevan investigator. In the summers of 1937, 1938 and 1940 we employed certain of Piaget's methods with some children who were attending the government day school in the farming village of Nutria on the Zuni Indian Reservation. The investigations of the first two summers were conducted by the senior author; those of the summer of 1940 were carried out by the junior author. The questioning was conducted in English, which is, of course, the language used in the school. Since the native language is spoken in the children's homes, and English is learned chiefly at school, no child was questioned unless he had been in attendance for at least two years and unless he showed an ability to name the objects about which our questions were asked.