Prior work has yielded contradicting evidence regarding the age at which children consistently and correctly categorize things as living or non-living. The present study tested children’s animacy judgments about robots with a Naïve Biology task. In the Naïve Biology task, 3- and 5-year-olds were asked if robots, animals, or artifacts possessed mechanical or biological internal parts. To gauge how much children anthropomorphize robots in comparison to animals and artifacts, children also responded to a set of interview questions. To examine the role of morphology, two robots were used: a humanoid robot (Nao) and a non-humanoid robot (Dash). To investigate the role of dynamic characteristics, children saw one robot behave in a goal-directed manner (i.e., moving towards a ball) and one robot exhibit non-goal-directed behavior (i.e., moving away from a ball). Children of both age groups correctly attributed biological insides to the animal and mechanical insides to the artifact. However, 3-year-olds seemed confused about what belonged inside both robots and assigned biological and mechanical insides equally. In contrast, 5-year-olds correctly assigned mechanical insides to both robots, regardless of the robot’s morphology or goal-directedness. Regarding the Animacy Interview, 3-year-olds performed at chance level when asked about the animacy of robots, animals, and artifacts. In contrast, 5-year-olds correctly attributed animacy to animals and accurately refrained from anthropomorphizing artifacts and the non-humanoid robot Dash. However, 5-year-olds performed at chance for Nao, suggesting they may be confused about the psychological properties of a human-looking robot. Taken together, these findings reveal a developmental transition during the preschool years in the attribution of biological and psychological properties to social robot.

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In the target article, Clark and Fischer argue that little is known about children's perceptions of social robots. By reviewing the existing literature we demonstrate that infants and young children interact with robots in the same ways they do with other social agents. Importantly, we conclude children's understanding that robots are artifacts (e.g., not alive) develops gradually during the preschool years.

In this paper, we investigated whether preschoolers prefer to learn from a competent robot over an incompetent human using a selective word-learning task (Koenig & Harris, 2004). An adapted naive biology task was administered to assess children’s perception of robots (Gottfried & Gelman, 2005). In Study 1, 50 3-year-olds and 45 5-year-olds (51 males) were tested. The sample was half Caucasian and of mostly high socio-economic status. A social, humanoid robot (Nao) first labeled familiar objects correctly while a human informant labeled them incorrectly. Both informants then labeled unfamiliar objects with novel labels. It was found that 3-year-old children equally endorsed the labels provided by the robot and the human, but 5-year-old children learned significantly more from the competent robot. Interestingly, 5-year-olds endorsed Nao’s labels even though they accurately categorized the robot as having a mechanical inside. In contrast, 3-year-old children associated Nao with biological or mechanical insides equally. In Study 2, 43 3-year-olds (26 males) were tested to determine the impact of human-like appearance on 3-year-olds’ selective trust. This sample was primarily Caucasian and with high socioeconomic status. The procedure was identical, except that a non-humanoid robot, Cozmo, replaced Nao. It was found that 3-year-old children still trusted the robot and the human equally, suggesting that morphology does not play a key role in their selective learning strategies. It is concluded that by 5 years of age, preschoolers show a robust sensitivity to epistemic characteristics, but that younger children’s decisions are equally driven by the agency characteristics of the informant.