


Researchers also found that young readers are more likely to attribute and emotions to when exposed to with anthropomorphized animals than books depicting animals realistically.

"Books that portray animals realistically lead to more learning and more accurate biological understanding," says lead author Patricia Ganea, Assistant Professor with the University of Toronto's Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development. "We were surprised to find that even the older children in our study were sensitive to the anthropocentric portrayals of animals in the books and attributed more characteristics to animals after being exposed to fantastical books than after being exposed to realistic books."



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More information: journal.frontiersin.org/Journa … .2014.00283/abstract
Journal information: Frontiers in Psychology

Citation: Kids' books featuring animals with human traits lead to less learning of the natural world (2014, March 25) retrieved 20 August 2019 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-03-kids-featuring-animals-human-traits.html

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