CogSci 2025

August 01, 2025

San Francisco, United States

Would you like to see your presentation here, made available to a global audience of researchers?
Add your own presentation or have us affordably record your next conference.

keywords:

language and thought

semantics of language

psychology

linguistics

Animacy is a fundamental yet difficult to define notion in cognitive science. For example, people judging whether words refer to entities that are alive are faster and more accurate for animals (e.g., tiger) than plants (e.g., petunia) and slower and less accurate for natural abiotic entities than artifacts (e.g., cave and ocean vs. slipper and bicycle). The current study demonstrates the reliability and validity of individuals’ aliveness judgments. 169 English-speaking Americans completed the aliveness study twice. Individual d-scores representing the difference in aliveness judgments between animals and plants at Session 1 predicted d-scores at Session 2 (r = .87, p < .001), as did d-scores representing the difference between natural abiotic entities and artifacts (r = .84, p < .001). These measures also predicted attitudes such as humans having the right to extract natural resources. Future research must address how differences in environment/culture contribute to differences in animacy cognition.

Downloads

Paper

Next from CogSci 2025

How the logic of bargaining shapes moral judgments about resource divisions
poster

How the logic of bargaining shapes moral judgments about resource divisions

CogSci 2025

Xavier Roberts-Gaal
Xavier Roberts-Gaal and 2 other authors

01 August 2025

Stay up to date with the latest Underline news!

Select topic of interest (you can select more than one)

PRESENTATIONS

  • All Presentations
  • For Librarians
  • Resource Center
  • Free Trial
Underline Science, Inc.
1216 Broadway, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10001, USA

© 2026 Underline - All rights reserved