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Updated: Jun 23, 2026

A Comparative Approach for Quantitative Cell Counting Studies in Widely Different Mammalian Brains
Published on: January 16, 2026
Developmental "roots" in mature biological knowledge
Robert F Goldberg1, Sharon L Thompson-Schill
1Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, USA. grob@mit.edu
Abstract:
Young children tend to claim that moving artifacts and nonliving natural kinds are alive, but neglect to ascribe life to plants. This research tested whether adults exhibit similar confusions when verifying life status in a speeded classification task. Experiment 1 showed that undergraduates encounter greater difficulty (reduced accuracy and increased response times) in determining life status for plants, relative to animals, and for natural and moving nonliving things, relative to artifacts and non-moving things. Experiment 2 replicated these effects in university biology professors. The professors showed a significantly reduced effect size for living things, as compared with the students, but still showed greater difficulty for plants than animals, even as no differences from the students were apparent in their responses to nonliving things. These results suggest that mature biological knowledge relies on a developmental foundation that is not radically overwritten or erased with the profound conceptual changes that accompany mastery of the domain.
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