Reality status and museum worthy judgments in museums of natural history Louise Bunce Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia, PA, 19th – 21st March 2015
Introduction
Results The mean number of real and museum worthy judgments are shown in Figures 1a and 1b. There was in increase in the number of real and museum worthy judgments with age and in the toy condition. Performance in the touchable and encased conditions was similar.
Museum curators believe that encounters with real, authentic objects create ‘awe-inspiring’ reactions, which promote curiosity, engagement and critical reflection beyond that offered by a replica (Evans, Mull & Poling, 2002). Young children have a nascent understanding of museum-worthiness (Frazier & Gelman, 2009; Gelman et al., 2015) and can distinguish real items from fakes, such as toys, especially when they are presented sideby-side (Bunce & Harris, 2013). However, little is known about the development of understanding the nature of natural history biofacts such as taxidermy: Are they perceived as ‘real’ and museum worthy? If not, curators fear that the aesthetic and educational experience of a museum visit may be lost.
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0 4-5-yrs
Aims: • To what extent do children and adults judge taxidermy as real and museum worthy? • Does the presence or absence of a display case affect these judgments? • Does comparison with a toy animal increase these judgments?
Participants were visitors at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, UK. There were four age groups: 4-5-year-olds (n=66), 6-7-year-olds (n=67), 8-10-year-olds (n=61), Adults (n=34) Similar numbers took part in one of three independent conditions:
1) Touchable
2) Encased
3) Toy comparison
Procedure: Visitors to the museum were asked two questions about the taxidermy (and toy rabbit) in a random order: 1) Is this rabbit real? Why? 2) Does this rabbit belong in a museum? Why?
8-10-yrs
Adults
4-5-yrs
Fig 1a: Mean no. of 'real' responses by age and condition
A 9-year-old participating in the encased condition
Discussion
Method
6-7-yrs
Taxidermy was judged as museum worthy more often than real (78% vs. 54%) but there was a developmental increase in the number of these judgments between preschoolers and 8-10-year-olds, and between children and adults. Judgments of ‘real’ were followed by authentic property justifications whereas judgments of not real were followed by non-living justifications. This pattern became more exaggerated with age. Museum worthy judgments were increasingly followed by learning justifications with age. Performance was similar in the touchable and encased conditions, but a toy rabbit helped preschoolers to understand the real and museum worthy nature of the taxidermy rabbit. This was the case both in their judgments and justifications (similar to the context effect found in Bunce and Harris, 2013). These results have implications for museum curators who want their visitors to appreciate the real, authentic nature of their collections. Discussing taxidermy in contrast to toy animals may be an effective way maximise young children’s educational experience.
6-7-yrs
8-10-yrs
Adults
Fig 1b: Mean no. of museum worthy responses by age and condition
Three categories of justification emerged (see Table 1). There was an increase with age in the number of property and learning justifications and a decrease in the number of living/non-living justifications. However, 4-5-year-olds were affected by condition, producing more property justifications in the toy condition than the other conditions. Table 1: Example justifications. Property and Living justifications were produced for both questions. Learning justifications were only produced for the museum worthy question
Authentic Property It has real fur and real actual ears (5yr) It’s got spikey claws and bunnies are supposed to have spikey claws (4yr). It’s realistic – it probably is real fur (Adult)
Living/non-living
Learning
It was alive before it died (7yr) It’s not moving all about and it’s stuck to this (6yr) It’s stuffed and not alive now (Adult)
You can have a look at it if you don’t know and see what they’re like (7yr) Some people may not know about rabbits and it could help them learn (8yr)
References .
• Bunce, L. & Harris, M. (2013). “He hasn’t got the real toolkit!” Young children’s reasoning about real/not-real status. Developmental Psychology, 49, 1494-1504. • Evans, E. M., Mull, M. & Poling, D. (2002). The authentic object? A child’s-eye view. In S. G. Paris (Ed,) Perspectives on object-centered learning in museums, pp 55-77. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. • Frazier, B. & Gelman, S. (2009). Developmental changes in judgments of authentic objects. Cognitive Development, 24(3), 284-292. • Gelman et al., (2015). How much are Harry Potter's glasses worth? Children's monetary evaluation of authentic objects. Journal of Cognition and Development, 16(1), 97-117.
[email protected] @L_Bunce
Further research could explore to what extent authenticity matters to visitors.
Touchable Encased Toy
