The characteristic of preoperational thought demonstrated by a child who believes her doll is scared to be at home alone is animism. This concept refers to the tendency of children in the preoperational stage of development, as defined by Jean Piaget, to attribute human feelings and intentions to inanimate objects or non-human entities. In this scenario, the child is projecting her own emotions onto the doll, believing it can experience fear, just as a human might. This illustrates how children at this stage of cognitive development engage in imaginative play and perceive the world from a subjective viewpoint, often infusing life-like qualities into objects around them.
The other concepts, while related to preoperational thought, do not directly apply to the situation described. Egocentrism refers to the inability to see things from perspectives other than one's own, which does not specifically address the child’s belief about the doll. Centration involves focusing on one aspect of a situation while neglecting others, a cognitive limitation seen in young children, but this does not pertain to attributing emotions. Magical thinking encompasses the belief that one's thoughts or actions can influence events in ways that defy logical cause and effect, but it does not directly relate to the personification of an object in the