An experimental study was conducted to examine the impact of exposure to anthropomorphism in storybooks on children's knowledge about real animals. Previous research suggested that anthropomorphism -- the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman entities –may have a strong, negative impact on children developing factual information about real animals.
An alternative possibility guided this research project – that is, that anthropomorphic storybooks could foster children's attention and learning without increasing anthropomorphic reasoning. To examine this possibility, forty-eight preschool children (age 3-5) were randomly assigned to participate in one of four different experimental conditions, with an equal number of boys and girls in each condition. The experimental conditions involved reading of children's books about camouflage as a protective factor for animals. An additional twelve children were randomly assigned to a control group who were not exposed to the storybooks about camouflage but were administered the same posttest measures. The control group's posttest scores were used as baseline levels of knowledge of animals and camouflage for all the children in the sample.
The four experimental conditions involved the reading of storybooks with different depictions of animals: (a) realistic pictures with factual language, (b) realistic pictures with anthropomorphic language, (c) anthropomorphic pictures with factual language, and (d) anthropomorphic pictures with anthropomorphic language. Both the anthropomorphic and realistic books presented the same factual level of information about camouflage and focused on the same three animals (frog, butterfly, and bird).
Posttest assessment included story comprehension measures and a property attribution task. The comprehension measure included both a story recall and a camouflage knowledge task. The property attribution task measured children's application of both biological properties (such as eating and sleeping) and psychological properties (such as thinking and feeling happy) to humans, animals, and inanimate objects.
Contrary to previous research, findings of this study indicated that anthropomorphic language and pictures in storybooks did not interfere with factual learning about real animals and did not lead children to hold unrealistic beliefs about the psychological properties of real animals. Some evidence suggested that the anthropomorphic storybooks used for this study -- especially those with anthropomorphic pictures -- increased children's learning of factual, biological information about the animals. These findings suggest that anthropomorphism might actually support children's learning about animals and that anthropomorphic storybooks could be used as an educational tool.
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