HUMANS PERCEPTIONS OF ANIMAL MENTALITY - ASCRIPTIONS OF THINKING

On rating scales, 294 students indicated whether it was reasonable to say that a dog. cat, bird, fish. and school-age child had the capacity for 12 commonplace human mental operations or experiences. Factor ana lysis of responses identified 2 levels of attributions, simple thinkin g and complex thinking. The child and all animals were credited with s imple thinking. but respondents were much more likely to ascribe compl ex thinking to the child. (A pilot study with 8 animal-behavior profes sionals generally replicated these results.) Certain mental categories (e.g., emotion) were judged by students to be simple for all target t ypes; others (e.g., conservation) were judged to be universally comple x. Further factoring revealed articulate ascriptions for key mental ca tegories. Play and imagine was seen as simple in the animals but compl ex for the child, but enumeration and sorting and dream were seen as s imple in the child but complex for the animals.