Conservation of Physical Attributes of Animate and Inanimate Objects

Children's (N = 83 boys and girls in kindergarten and first grade) responses to a series of conservation tasks (number, length, mass, weight) which had animate and inanimate referent objects, in two experiments, showed significant differences in the proportions of conservation between animate and inanimate objects. Physical attributes were conserved more easily with inanimate objects than with animate objects, and significant conservation differences between various animate objects were found also.