MINE! That word appears early in life. Toddlers have an idea of ownership. They also have an idea of what can be owned, and what can't.

Children as young as three believe human-made objects are owned but naturally occurring things like pinecones are not.

In one experiment 3-year olds looked at pictures of a fork, teddy bear, truck, and other human-made objects. They also looked at pictures of a leaf, shell, or rock. The researchers asked: Does this belong to anyone?

The kids classified human-made objects as owned 89 percent of the time and naturally occurring objects as owned only 28 percent of the time.

In another experiment scientists tested children with less familiar objects like a grenade versus coral. This time children under 6 did not tend to name the manufactured object as owned. But when the unfamiliar, artificial objects were referred to as “human-made,” the younger children tended to classify them as owned. The work appears in the journal Developmental Psychology(PDF.)

It is apparently only much later in life, when individuals have reached a seasoned maturity, that they can conceive of ownership of natural objects. “You kids get off of MY lawn!”

“是我的！” 這個詞幼兒就會說出口。學步的幼兒已經有了“擁有”這個想法。他們也對什么能夠被擁有和什么不能夠有著一定的想法。

三歲大的小孩相信人造的物品是被擁有的，而天然的物品，例如松果，卻不是。
在一項實驗中，三歲的小孩被安排觀看叉，泰迪熊，貨車或其他人造物品的圖片。他們也觀看樹葉，貝殼或石頭的圖片。然后研究人員會問：這個東西是不是屬于其他人的？

過程中，小孩們把人造物品歸類為“被擁有的”比例占了89%，而把自然物品被歸類為“被擁有的”比例卻只占了28%。

在另一項實驗中，科學家用小孩不那么熟悉的物品，例如手榴彈對應珊瑚，來做測試。這次，六歲以下的小孩并不傾向于把人造物品歸類為“被擁有的”。但當提及到這些不熟悉的人工物品是“人類制造的”時，較年輕的小孩傾向于把它們歸類為“被擁有的”。（該篇文章刊登在期刊Developmental Psychology(PDF)上。）

明顯地，只有在多年以后，當這些個體老練成熟時，他們就會有了擁有自然事物的想法。“你們這些屁孩快滾出我的草地！”
—Christie Nicholson