[randomstudent]

Regarding the study they mention(the one that shows that children recognize Pokemon better than real animals and plants).

There is an important aspect of this finding that the article doesn't discuss. They don't link to the study, so I can't check for myself.

All the Pokemon names they mention are first generation. There are only 150 first generation Pokemon. It's a relatively small closed corpus. They also have bright colors and are very easy to distinguish. How many species of animals or plants does England have? Way more than 150, of course. How large was the sample from which the ones used in the study were chosen? It wouldn't surprise me if there were more than 150 relevant species that are needed to be knowledgeable in "nature stuff" in England.

Of course kids in urban environments don't know much about naming animal or plant species, that's just common sense. My beef with the study is that it doesn't seem to go beyond the common-sense notion because of the problems above... Knowing a small limited corpus of highly distinct entities will always be easier than knowing the very large (although still finite) corpus of animal and plant species that might be quite similar on the surface (e.g. cork oak vs holm oak, bee vs wasp, cat vs lynx, etc)

[zimpenfish]

If you only wanted "highlight" animals and plants, you could probably get away with a list of 150 (or less - I'm struggling to think of 150 off the top of my head) but they definitely wouldn't be as easily distinguished as the Pokemon.

Found the study - they used 100 common species.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477...

[randomstudent]

Cool, thanks. That definitely answers my questions. They really should link the study!

The part about distinguishing the animals from one another is still a problem, but I think that if Pokemon were actually real animals kids would distinguish them just fine anyway.

[zimpenfish]

I'd also venture that Pokemon are almost certainly deliberately designed and focus tested to be recognisable and distinguishable because, well, that's how you market stuff and that makes this a bit of a dumb study.

Mother Nature, alas, does not have this luxury.

[lucozade]

> that makes this a bit of a dumb study

Only if you assume no intent on the part of the study's authors. For example, I wonder if they would have had quite a different result if they'd used, say, 14 year olds. Or a mix of ages.

I wasn't overly encouraged that two of their citations were for the Biophilia Hypothesis. An interesting book, for sure, but not exactly rigorous science.

I was left with the definite impression that this study was as much about politics as science. To that end, maybe not dumb just not particularly impartial.

[zimpenfish]

> I was left with the definite impression that this study was as much about politics as science.

I suppose if they were trying to force a conversation about (say) getting children to zoos, it wasn't dumb.

But in the sense of extending the human race's knowledge, it was dumb.

[nkrisc]

That's a great point. Pokemon were designed to be distinguishable from one another, that's good game design. However many birds and plants look similar with minute differences to distinguish them.

[482794793792894]

Also, Pokémon tend to have their species' name written somewhere on them. If instead you see a cool plant or animal outside, then good luck trying to look that up.