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1.
Young Children's Understanding of Changes in Their Mental States 总被引：4，自引：1，他引：4
3-year-old children have difficulty reporting their past false beliefs. We investigated their ability to remember and report other types of past mental state, in particular, pretenses, images, perceptions, desires, and intentions. In a series of tasks, children were placed in one mental state, that state was changed, and they were asked to report the initial state. 4-year-olds were generally able to report all their past mental states, including beliefs. 3-year-olds were able to report past pretenses, images, and perceptions extremely well. They had great difficulty reporting past beliefs. Reporting past desires and intentions was more difficult than reporting pretenses, images, and perceptions, but slightly less difficult than reporting beliefs. The evidence suggests that 3-year-olds have difficulty understanding the nature of representation. 相似文献
2.
Two experiments were conducted to examine the development of economic understanding among 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds (n = 31, 29, and 32, respectively). Most 5-year-olds exhibited understanding of the goal of acquiring desired goods but not of the goals of seeking profits, acquiring goods inexpensively, or competing successfully with other sellers. In contrast, most 7-year-olds and a large majority of 9-year-olds showed understanding of all of these concepts. The older children's understanding of these key concepts and the relations among them suggested that they had constructed an informal theory of economics, qualitatively different from the psychologically based understanding of the 5-year-olds. Increased information-processing skills appeared to be among the sources of this new understanding. 相似文献
3.
Mother- and father-reported reactions to children's negative emotions were examined as correlates of emotional understanding (Study 1, N = 55, 5- to 6-year-olds) and friendship quality (Study 2, N = 49, 3- to 5-year-olds). Mothers' and fathers' supportive reactions together contributed to greater child-friend coordinated play during a sharing task. Further, when one parent reported low support, greater support by the other parent was related to better understanding of emotions and less intense conflict with friends (for boys only). When one parent reported high support, however, greater support by the other parent was associated with less optimal functioning on these outcomes. Results partially support the notion that children benefit when parents differ in their reactions to children's emotions. 相似文献
4.
This study is concerned with the development of children's intuitive understanding of nonlinear processes. The ability to estimate linear and exponential growth was examined in 7-, 9-, 11-, and 13-year-old children and adults (N=160). Whereas linear growth was judged correctly at all ages, estimations of exponential growth were in line with mathematically correct values only in 13-year-olds and adults. However, 9-year-olds already judged the result of exponential growth as being significantly higher than that of linear growth, and even a remarkable proportion of 7-year-olds showed such discrimination between the two types of functions. Results point to the existence of an early intuitive knowledge about the characteristics of nonlinear growth, long before those functions are taught in school. 相似文献
5.
Research suggests that young children may see a direct and one-way connection between facts about the world and epistemic mental states (e.g., belief). Conventions represent instances of active constructions of the mind that change facts about the world. As such, a mature understanding of convention would seem to present a strong challenge to children's simplified notions of epistemic relations. Three experiments assessed young children's abilities to track behavioral, representational, and truth aspects of conventions. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 30) recognized that conventional stipulations would change people's behaviors. However, participants generally failed to understand how stipulations might affect representations. In Experiment 2, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old children (N = 53) were asked to reason about the truth values of statements about pretenses and conventions. The two younger groups of children often confused the two types of states, whereas older children consistently judged that conventions, but not pretenses, changed reality. In Experiment 3, the same 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 42) participated in tasks assessing their understanding of representational diversity (e.g., false belief). In general, children's performance on false-belief and "false-convention" tasks did not differ, which suggests that conventions were understood as involving truth claims (as akin to beliefs about physical reality). Children's difficulties with the idea of conventional truth seems consistent with current accounts of developing theories of mind. 相似文献
6.
When you shouldn't do what you want to do: young children's understanding of desires, rules, and emotions 总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2
Lagattuta KH 《Child development》2005,76(3):713-733
This research investigated 4- through 7-year-olds' and adults' (n = 64) concepts about the emotional consequences of desire fulfillment versus desire inhibition in situations where people's desires conflict with prohibitive rules. Results revealed developmental increases in attributing positive or mixed emotions to story characters that make willpower decisions and negative or mixed emotions to characters that transgress. These developmental changes in emotion predictions were accompanied by age-related differences in emotion explanations. Whereas 4- and 5-year-olds largely explained emotions in relation to the characters' goals, 7-year-olds and adults further explained how rules and future consequences influence emotions. Results are discussed in relation to connections among children's psychological, deontic, and future-oriented reasoning about emotions as well as the development of self-control. 相似文献
7.
This study investigated children's (3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds) and adults' (total N = 92) integration of information about intentions, acts, and outcomes in moral judgments of psychological harm. Behavioral and emotional predictions and judgments of act acceptability and punishment were made under normal and noncanonical causal conditions. Participants at all ages judged it wrong to inflict negative psychological reactions of fear or embarrassment on unwilling participants, even when these reactions were idiosyncratic or noncanonical. When assigning punishment, younger children tended to use an outcome rule, whereas older participants were more likely to use an intention rule or a conjunction rule (if outcome is negative and intention is negative, then punish). The results show that children as young as 3 years are able to take into account other people's idiosyncratic perspectives when making moral judgments of psychological harm. 相似文献
8.
Young children's attribution of action to beliefs and desires 总被引：4，自引：0，他引：4
When and how children understand beliefs and desires is central to whether they are ever childhood realists and when they evidence a theory of mind. Adults typically construe human action as resulting from an actor's beliefs and desires, a mentalistic interpretation that represents a common and fundamental form of psychological explanation. We investigated children's ability to do likewise. In Experiment 1, 60 subjects were asked to explain why story characters performed simple actions, such as looking under a piano for a kitten. Both preschoolers and adults gave predominantly psychological explanations, attributing the actions to the actor's beliefs and desires. Even 3-year-olds attributed actions to beliefs and false beliefs, demonstrating an understanding of belief not evident in previous research. In Experiment 2, 24 3-year-olds were tested further on their understanding of false belief. They were given both false belief prediction and explanation tasks. Children performed well on explanation taks, attributing an anomalous action to the actor's false belief, even when they failed to predict correctly what action would follow from a false belief. We concluded that 3-year-olds and adults share a fundamentally similar construal of human action in terms of beliefs and desires, even false beliefs. 相似文献
9.
Jennifer Amsterlaw Kristin Hansen Lagattuta and Andrew N. Meltzoff 《Child development》2009,80(1):115-133
This study assessed young children's understanding of the effects of emotional and physiological states on cognitive performance. Five, 6-, 7-year-olds, and adults ( N = 96) predicted and explained how children experiencing a variety of physiological and emotional states would perform on academic tasks. Scenarios included: (a) negative and positive emotions, (b) negative and positive physiological states, and (c) control conditions. All age groups understood the impairing effects of negative emotions and physiological states. Only 7-year-olds, however, showed adult-like reasoning about the potential enhancing effects of positive internal states and routinely cited cognitive mechanisms to explain how internal states affect performance. These results shed light on theory-of-mind development and also have significance for children's everyday school success. 相似文献
10.
The contribution of intentionality understanding to symbolic development was examined. Actors added colored dots to a map, displaying either symbolic or aesthetic intentions. In Study 1, most children (5–6 years) understood actors' intentions, but when asked which graphic would help find hidden objects, most selected the incorrect (aesthetic) one whose dot color matched referent color. On a similar task in Study 2, 5- and 6-year-olds systematically picked incorrectly, 9- and 10-year-olds picked correctly, and 7- and 8-year-olds showed mixed performance. When referent color matched neither symbolic nor aesthetic dot colors, children performed better overall, but only the oldest children universally selected the correct graphic and justified choices with intentionality. Results bear on theory of mind, symbolic understanding, and map understanding. 相似文献
11.
2 studies investigated young children's understanding that as the retention interval increases, so do the chances that one will forget. In Study 1 (24 3-year-olds and 24 4-year-olds), 4-year-olds but not 3-year-olds understood that of 2 characters who simultaneously saw an object, the character who waited longer before attempting to find it would not remember where it was. In study 2 (24 3-year-olds and 24 4-year-olds), 4-year-olds but not 3-year-olds understood that of 2 objects seen by a character, the object that was seen a "long long time ago" would be forgotten and the object seen "a little while ago" would be remembered. The findings are discussed in relation to research on young children's understanding of the acquisition, retention, and retrieval of knowledge over time. 相似文献
12.
Early understanding and production of graphic symbols 总被引：3，自引：0，他引：3
Callaghan TC 《Child development》1999,70(6):1314-1324
Young children's ability to understand and produce graphic symbols within an environment of social communication was investigated in two experiments. Children aged 2, 3, and 4 years produced graphic symbols of simple objects on their own, used them in a social communicative game, and responded to experimenter's symbols. In Experiment 1 (N = 48), 2-year-olds did not effectively produce symbols or use the experimenter's symbols in the choice task, whereas 3- and 4-year-olds improved their drawings following the game and performed above chance with the experimenter's symbols. Ability to produce an effective graphic symbol was correlated with success on a task that measured understanding of the experimenter's symbols, supporting the claim that children's ability to produce a graphic symbol rests on the understanding of the symbolic function of pictures. In Experiment 2, 32 children aged 3 and 4 years improved their third set of drawings when they received feedback that their drawings were not effective communications. The results suggest that production and understanding of graphic symbols can be facilitated by the same social factors that improve verbal symbolic abilities, thereby raising the question of domain specificity in symbolic development. 相似文献
13.
This investigation was designed to determine whether an enactment interview condition involving a doll and props, in contrast to a verbal interview, would enhance 3- and 5-year-olds' (N = 62) recall of a pediatric examination. An additional aim was to explore the influence of behavioral styles and language skills on children's performance, and the extent to which these relations varied by age and interview condition. Both 1- and 6-weeks following their check-ups, the children in the enactment condition, particularly the 3-year-olds, provided more spontaneous, elaborate reports than did those assessed with a verbal protocol. Nonetheless, enactment also resulted in increased errors by the 3-year-olds at the first interview, and by children in both age groups after the 6-week delay. The age and interview condition effects, however, were moderated by the children's behavioral characteristics. Among the younger children, a measure of manageability predicted performance in the enactment setting, whereas an indicator of persistence was associated with recall in the verbal condition. The results have implications for an understanding of children's memory of events and of their ability to provide testimony in legal settings. 相似文献
14.
Do young children appreciate the importance of access to premises when judging what another person knows? In Experiment 1, 5-year-olds (N=31) were sensitive to another person's access to premises when predicting that person's ability to point to a target after eliminating alternatives in a set of 3 cartoon characters. Experiment 2 replicated the finding when 5- to 6-year-olds (N=102) judged who the other person thought the target was, and whether the other person knew who the target was. Experiment 3 demonstrated that children aged 5-7 years (N=107) more successfully imputed inference by elimination than syllogistical inferential knowledge. Findings suggest that an early understanding of inference by elimination offers a route into understanding that people can sometimes gain knowledge without direct perceptual access. 相似文献
15.
Stepping stones to others' minds: maternal talk relates to child mental state language and emotion understanding at 15, 24, and 33 months 总被引：4，自引：0，他引：4
This continuation of a previous study (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006) examined the longitudinal relation between maternal mental state talk to 15- and 24-month-olds and their later mental state language and emotion understanding (N= 74). The previous study found that maternal talk about the child's desires to 15-month-old children uniquely predicted children's mental state language and emotion task performance at 24 months. In the present study, at 24 months of age, mothers' reference to others' thoughts and knowledge was the most consistent predictor of children's later mental state language at 33 months. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development provides a framework within which maternal talk, first, about the child's desires and then about others' thoughts and knowledge scaffolds children's social understanding. 相似文献
16.
3 studies examined young children's understanding that if one "remembers" or "forgot," one must have known at a prior time. In Study 1,4-year-olds but not 3-year-olds understood the prior knowledge component of "forgot"; both groups understood that a character with prior knowledge was "gonna remember." Study 2 controlled for the possibility that good performance on "remember" might be due to a simple association of remembering with knowledge. A significant number of 4-year-olds but not 3-year-olds understood that when 2 characters currently knew, the one with prior knowledge remembered, and that when neither character currently knew, the one with prior knowledge forgot. Study 3 made prior knowledge more salient by making the remembered or forgotten item visible to the subjects throughout. 4-year-olds performed near ceiling on both verbs, whereas 3-year-olds' performance did not differ from chance. The results are discussed in relation to children's developing understanding of the mind. 相似文献
17.
Young children often fail to generalize a novel verb based on sameness of action since they have difficulty focusing on the relational similarity across events while at the same time ignoring the objects that are involved. Study 1, with Japanese-speaking 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 28 in each group), found that similarity of objects involved in action events plays a scaffolding role in children's extraction of relational similarity across events when they extend a verb. Study 2, with 4-year-olds (N = 47), further showed that repeated experience of action-based verb extension supported by object similarity leads children to be better able to extend a novel verb based on sameness of action, even without support from object similarity. 相似文献
18.
There's More to the Picture Than Meets the Eye: Young Children's Difficulty Understanding Biased Interpretation 总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2
5 experiments investigated children's understanding that expectations based on prior experience may influence a person's interpretation of ambiguous visual information. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds were asked to infer a puppet's interpretation of a small, ambiguous portion of a line drawing after the puppet had been led to have an erroneous expectation about the drawing's identity. Children of both ages failed to ascribe to the puppet an interpretation consistent with the puppet's expectation. Instead, children attributed complete knowledge of the drawing to the puppet. In Experiment 2, the task was modified to reduce memory demands, but 4- and 5-year-olds continued to overlook the puppet's prior expectations when asked to infer the puppet's interpretation of an ambiguous scene. 6-year-olds responded correctly. In Experiment 3, 4- and 5-year-olds correctly reported that an observer who saw a restricted view would not know what was in the drawing, but children did not realize that the observer's interpretation might be mistaken. Experiments 4 and 5 explored the possibility that children's errors reflect difficulty inhibiting their own knowledge when responding. The results are taken as evidence that understanding of interpretation begins at approximately age 6 years. 相似文献
19.
Although recent research indicates that an increased sensitivity to visual appearances develops around 4 or 5 years of age, evidence from perceptual studies suggests that certain types of appearances, that is, projective size and shape, are not noticed or understood until at least 7. 4 experiments investigated preschool children's knowledge of the projective size--distance and projective shape--orientation relationships. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-olds were asked whether an object should be moved farther or nearer in order to increase or decrease its apparent size. 4-year-olds performed significantly better than chance, but 3-year-olds did not. Experiment 2 showed that 3-year-olds are able to perceive projective size changes, indicating that although they do not fully understand the projective size-distance relationship, the necessary perceptual information is potentially available to them. In Experiment 3, 3- and 4-year-olds were asked to indicate how a circular object should be rotated to make it appear either circular or elliptical. Again, 4-year-olds performed significantly better than chance, but 3-year-olds did not. Again also, the results of Experiment 4 indicate that although 3-year-olds are not aware of the projective shape-orientation relationship, they are capable of attending to changes in projective shape. Thus, the constraints on children's knowledge of the projective size-distance and projective shape-orientation relationships seem to be at least partly cognitive rather than wholly perceptual. These results are interpreted as further evidence for the acquisition of level 2 percept knowledge during early childhood. 相似文献
20.
Between Desires and Beliefs: Young Children's Action Predictions 总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2
Karen Bartsch 《Child development》1996,67(4):1671-1685
1 view of children's developing understanding of mind contends that children adopt a succession of naive psychological theories, moving from a desirefocused theory to a mature theory that attributes a greater role to beliefs. Between these, a transition theory, in which desires are primary but beliefs play an auxiliary role, is characteristic. Novel predictions arising from this view were tested in 2 experiments utilizing within participants designs. Preschool children ( N s = 20 and 24) were asked to predict the actions of story characters who believed a desired object to be in one of two containers (which were shown to actually contain the desired object, nothing, or a different object). In both experiments, children's predictions accorded with belief significantly more when objects of the type desired were in both containers than when containers held nothing or other sorts of objects, supporting a transition theory interpretation over competing interpretations. 相似文献