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ANIMISM_KIDBOTS

                                          August 31, 2022

Do the creations of human
beings have souls?

                                  Let's ask the kids.

Two hits:


    "Understanding how children understand robots:
    Perceived animism in child-- robot interaction" (2011)

    Tanya N.Beran, Alejandro Ramirez-Serrano, Roman Kuzyk, Meghann Fior, Sarah Nugent

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1071581911000498
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2011.04.003


    "Centuries ago, the existence of life was explained by the
    presence of a soul (Tylor, 1871). Known as animism, this
    term was re-defined in the 1970s by Piaget as young
    children's beliefs that inanimate objects are capable of
    actions and have life-like qualities. With the
    development of robots in the 21st century, researchers
    have begun examining whether animism is apparent in
    children's impressions of robots. The purpose of this
    study was to use a model of knowledge structures, or
    schemata, to examine whether children attribute human
    qualities of cognition, affect, and behavior to a
    robot."

    "Results from frequency and content analyses suggest
    that a significant proportion of children ascribe
    cognitive, behavioral, and especially affective,
    characteristics to robots."



   "Machine Animism in Modern Children's Literature" (1967)
   H. Joseph Schwarcz

   https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/619504?journalCode=lq


     "Literature of all times and of all peoples has always known and
     told of man-made objects that took on a magic quality and served
     their owners in miraculous ways.  But inanimate objects as
     protagonists of tales can be found, before the latter half of the
     nineteenth century, only very rarely.  In order to be the hero of
     a tale, the object has to undergo a process of animation  ..."

     "The common characteristics of the objects in the tales cited
     seem to be that, though personified, they appear in stories that
     are actually parables and that man's superiority is not
     questioned."

     "All this changed by the appearance of the first writer of modern
     fantasy, Hans Christian Andersen."





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