Centre for Policy on Ageing



The meaning of life — animism in the classificatory skills of older adults
Author(s)	Lorraine McDonald, Ian Stuart-Hamilton
Journal title	International Journal of Aging and Human Development, vol 51, no 3, 2000
Pages	pp 231-242
Keywords	Mental health [elderly] ; Social characteristics [elderly] ; Reasoning ; Performance ; Questionnaires ; Evaluation.
Annotation	75 participants aged from their teens to their seventies were measured on a battery of measures of personality, lifestyle, intelligence and educational background. These measures were gauged against performance on a measure of animism, in which participants judged 23 items as living or non-living. Although animism errors increased with age, all groups displayed animism errors, thereby contradicting Piaget (The child's conception of the world, 1965). Performance is partially explained by fluid intelligence level, but is more plausibly ascribed to progressive loss of what is essentially peripheral information to non-academic people. (KJ/RH).
Accession Number	CPA-010403216 A
Classmark	D: F: DC: 5H: 3DA: 4C
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.