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1.
2 experiments evaluated whether young children understand that kinship implies, but does not guarantee, physical resemblance among family members. In Experiment 1, preschoolers expected adopted babies to share physical properties, but not beliefs and preferences, with their biological parents rather than with their adoptive ones. However, preschoolers in Experiment 2 recognized that shared properties per se do not guarantee kinship: a baby who looks like and lives with a woman is not her biological baby if he or she initially grew inside someone else, whereas a baby may neither resemble nor live with its biological parents. Overall, the results suggest that children expect parents and offspring to share physical properties, but understand that shared properties do not necessarily entail kinship. In both experiments, the extent of this understanding increased with age. However, preschoolers' overall performance supports the claim that some children at this age have a naive theory of biology. The results further suggest that the critical development in an understanding of kinship is acquisition of factual knowledge rather than structural change.  相似文献   

2.
5 experiments investigated children's intuitions about genetic transmission of features. After parent animals possessing an abnormal feature were described, children were asked whether their baby would be born with that feature in abnormal or normal form. Features were either internal or external, inborn or acquired after birth, and had functional or nonfunctional consequences for the parents. Among preschoolers, features with functional consequences were considered inherited much more frequently than any other type, but only when the functional consequences were biological rather than social or psychological. Older children demonstrated more awareness of the inheritance of inborn traits. Overall, the results suggest young children have principled, specifically biological notions of inheritance.  相似文献   

3.
Young children's beliefs about the relationship between gender and aggression were examined across 3 studies (N=121). In Study 1, preschoolers (ages 3 to 5) described relational aggression as the most common form of aggression among girls and physical aggression as the most common form among boys. In Study 2, preschoolers and a comparison group of 7- to 8-year-olds were likely to infer that relationally aggressive characters are female and physically aggressive characters are male. Study 3 revealed that preschoolers show systematic memory distortions when recalling stories that conflict with these gender schemas. These findings suggest that even before children reach school age, they have organized patterns of beliefs about gender that affect the way they process social information.  相似文献   

4.
4 experiments explored adult and grade school children's beliefs about inheritability of identity, particularly the "one-drop rule" that defines children of mixed-race parents as belonging to the racial category of the minority parent. In Study 1, 8- and 12-year-olds ( N = 32) and adults ( N = 43) were asked the category membership of mixed-race children and the degree to which they resembled each parent. Study 2 investigated whether the same-aged children ( N = 36) and adults ( N = 18) expected mixed-race children to have white, black, or intermediate features. Study 3 explored children's ( N = 46) expectations about the inheritability of the same properties in animals. Older children, like adults, were found to believe that mixed-race children have black racial features. Adults additionally believe that such children inherit the categorical identity of the minority parent. Study 4 repeated the same tasks with black and white children ( N = 39) attending an integrated school. Unlike children attending a predominantly white school, children in the integrated school (regardless of race) expect mixed-race children to have intermediate racial features.  相似文献   

5.
Beethoven   总被引:3,自引:0,他引:3  
Beethoven was a famous pianist. He was born on December 16, 1770. He grew up in Germany. When he was young, his father taught him to play the piano. He was a very clever boy.In 1787, he went to school and became a music teacher. In 1802, he could hear nothing, but he wrote some pieces of music.Once, Beethoven was walking in a street. Suddenly, he stopped, because he heard some-  相似文献   

6.
Young Children's Differentiation of Hypothetical Beliefs from Evidence   总被引:3,自引:0,他引:3  
The claim that preadolescent children fail to differentiate between hypothetical beliefs and evidence is investigated in 2 studies. First-and second-grade children were presented with 2 conflicting hypotheses and asked to choose an empirical test to decide between them. In Study 1, the majority of first graders and almost all second graders correctly chose a conclusive test. They elaborated the logic of such a test and distinguished it from an inconclusive test. There was no evidence that children of this age misinterpret the task of hypothesis testing as one of generating a desirable effect. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings; in a task that posed a genuine scientific problem, first and second graders spontaneously generated empirical procedures for gathering indirect evidence to decide between alternative hypotheses. Our results indicate that young elementary school children distinguish between the notions of "hypothetical belief" and "evidence." These findings are discussed in light of their failure on other scientific thinking tasks.  相似文献   

7.
2 studies examined children's beliefs about the origins of gender differences and addressed 2 main questions: (a) What age-related changes are there in children's beliefs about the contributions of nature and nurture to the development of gender roles? and (b) Do children differentiate between aspects of gender roles that adults believe to be more biologically determined and those they believe to be more socially influenced? 160 4- to 10-year-olds and 32 adults participated in Study 1. Participants were told about a child raised with only opposite-sex individuals and were asked whether the child would grow up to possess a series of gender-stereotyped, biological, and control properties. Until age 9 or 10, children believed that gender-stereotyped properties would develop in an infant regardless of the social context of upbringing. Study 2 provides evidence that children were not merely reporting stereotypical category associations. These studies suggest that young children may have an early bias to view gender categories as predictive of essential, underlying similarities between members, but later come to acknowledge the role of other causal mechanisms (e.g., the social environment) in shaping how category members develop.  相似文献   

8.
A large literature has shown that children's beliefs and aspirations about occupations reflect cultural gender stereotypes. One channel that may create or sustain occupational stereotypes is language. Two studies were designed to examine whether children interpret occupational titles as gender specific or gender neutral. In Study 1, children (6- to 11-year-olds, N = 64) were asked directly if various job titles could be used for both men and women doing the job. In Study 2, children (6- to 10-year-olds, N = 51) were shown pictures of men and women engaged in job activities and asked which one(s) showed someone who could be called a(n)__. Titles were linguistically unmarked for gender (e.g., doctor), strongly marked (e.g., policeman), or weakly marked (e.g., postmaster). Marked titles were given in masculine and feminine forms. Findings reinforced past work showing that marked titles are exclusionary, revealed that some children harbor confusions about even unmarked titles, and demonstrated the mediating role of individual differences in attitudes. Implications for the changing lexicon and for educational programs are discussed.  相似文献   

9.
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   

10.
Prior research has demonstrated individual differences in children's beliefs about the stability of traits, but this focus on individuals may have masked important developmental differences. In a series of four studies, younger children (5-6 years old, Ns = 53, 32, 16, and 16, respectively) were more optimistic in their beliefs about traits than were older children (7-10 years old, Ns = 60, 32, 16, and 16, respectively) and adults (Ns = 130, 100, 48, and 48, respectively). Younger children were more likely to believe that negative traits would change in an extreme positive direction over time (Study 1) and that they could control the expression of a trait (Study 3). This was true not only for psychological traits, but also for biological traits such as missing a finger and having poor eyesight. Young children also optimistically believed that extreme positive traits would be retained over development (Study 2). Study 4 extended these findings to groups, and showed that young children believed that a majority of people can have above average future outcomes. All age groups made clear distinctions between the malleability of biological and psychological traits, believing negative biological traits to be less malleable than negative psychological traits and less subject to a person's control. Hybrid traits (such as intelligence and body weight) fell midway between these two with respect to malleability. The sources of young children's optimism and implications of this optimism for age differences in the incidence of depression are discussed.  相似文献   

11.
12.
Two studies examined the effects of using a formal assessment instrument on preschool teachers’ beliefs concerning the importance of various developmental skills and abilities. In Study 1, users of a formal assessment instrument rated skills and abilities assessed by the instrument as more important for preschoolers to develop than non-users. In Study 2, teachers who newly adopted the instrument rated skills and abilities assessed by it as more important after using the instrument for several months than they did prior to use, while non-users showed no change in their ratings of the same skills and abilities over time. The results indicate that using a formal assessment instrument can change teachers’ beliefs concerning which skills and abilities are important for children to learn.  相似文献   

13.
A growing body of research indicates that children do not understand mental representation until around age 4. However, children engage in pretend play by age 2, and pretending seems to require understanding mental representation. This apparent contradiction has been reconciled by the claim that in pretense there is precocious understanding of mental representation. 4 studies tested this claim by presenting children with protagonists who were not mentally representing something (i.e., an animal), either because they did not know about the animal or simply because they were not thinking about being the animal. However, the protagonists were acting in ways that could be consistent with pretending to be that animal. Children were then asked whether the protagonists were pretending to be that animal, and children tended to answer in the affirmative. The results suggest that 4-year-olds do not understand that pretending requires mental representation. Children appear to misconstrue pretense as its common external manifestations, such as actions, until at least the sixth year.  相似文献   

14.
This research examined children’s questions and the reactions to the answers they receive in conversations with adults. If children actively seek explanatory knowledge, they should react differently depending on whether they receive a causal explanation. Study 1 examined conversations following 6 preschoolers’ (ages 2–4 years) causal questions in naturalistic situations (using the Child Language Data Exchange System [CHILDES] database). Children more often agreed and asked follow‐up questions following adult explanations and, conversely, more often reasked their original question and provided their own explanation following nonexplanations. Study 2 replicated these patterns within an experimental task in 42 children ages 3–5 years. Children’s reactions following explanatory versus nonexplanatory information confirm that young children are motivated to seek causal information actively and use specific conversational strategies to obtain it.  相似文献   

15.
The purpose of this investigation was to see whether children's understandings of different types of beliefs develop concurrently. Children of 3, 4, and 5 years of age were told or shown that child story characters held beliefs different from their own or from one another, not only concerning matters of physical fact ("false beliefs"), but also concerning morality, social convention, value, and ownership of property. In contrast to the older subjects, most 3-year-olds had difficulty in attributing to others deviant beliefs of all types, except perhaps ownership, sometimes even after having been told repeatedly what the other child believed. In addition, intercorrelations among different belief tasks were positive and substantial. It was suggested that an emerging representational conception of the mind is what enables older preschoolers to understand the possibility of belief differences of all these types.  相似文献   

16.
Ryan RM 《Child development》2012,83(3):1085-1101
Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, the present study tested whether the benefits of a marital birth for early child development diminish as parents' risk of having a nonmarital birth increases (N = 2,285). It was hypothesized that a child's likelihood of being born to unmarried parents is partly a function of father characteristics that predict his capacity to promote child development. Results partially supported hypothesis. A positive association emerged between parental marriage and cognitive outcomes at age 3 only for children whose parents were likely to be married at the child's birth, suggesting average differences between children in married and unmarried families may overestimate the benefit of marriage in subpopulations most impacted by nonmarital birth.  相似文献   

17.
Describing behaviors as reflecting categories (e.g., asking children to “be helpers”) has been found to increase pro-social behavior. The present studies (= 139, ages 4–5) tested whether such effects backfire if children experience setbacks while performing category-relevant actions. In Study 1, children were asked either to “be helpers” or “to help,” and then pretended to complete a series of successful scenarios (e.g., pouring milk) and unsuccessful scenarios (e.g., spilling milk while trying to pour). After the unsuccessful trials, children asked to “be helpers” had more negative attitudes. In Study 2, asking children to “be helpers” impeded children's helping behavior after they experienced difficulties while trying to help. Implications for how category labels shape beliefs and behavior are discussed.  相似文献   

18.
Children's magical explanations and beliefs were investigated in 2 studies. In Study 1, we first asked 4- and 5-year-old children to judge the possibility of certain object transformations and to suggest mechanisms that might accomplish them. We then presented several commonplace transformations (e.g., cutting a string) and impossible events (magic tricks). Prior to viewing these transformations, children suggested predominantly physical mechanisms for the events and judged the magical ones to be impossible. After seeing the impossible events, many 4-year-olds explained them as "magic," whereas 5-year-olds explained them as "tricks." In Study 2, we replaced the magic tricks with "extraordinary" events brought about by physical or chemical reactions (e.g., heat causing paint on a toy car to change color). Prior to viewing the "extraordinary" transformations, children judged them to be impossible. After viewing these events, 4-year-olds gave more magical and fewer physical explanations than did 5-year-olds. Follow-up interviews revealed that most 4-year-olds viewed magic as possible under the control of an agent (magician) with special powers, whereas most 5-year-olds viewed magic as tricks that anyone can learn. In a third study, we surveyed parents to assess their perceptions and conceptions of children's beliefs in magic and fantasy figures. Parents perceived their children as believing in a number of magic and fantasy figures and reported encouraging such beliefs to some degree. Taken together, these findings suggest that many 4-year-olds view magic as a plausible mechanism, yet reserve magical explanations for certain real world events which violate their causal expectations.  相似文献   

19.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to identify factors that predict recidivism among families in which the father is the perpetrator of physical abuse and to compare these factors to the factors that investigators believe are related to higher risk. METHOD: A case-comparison design was used to understand risk among 137 predominantly Caucasian families in which a father had injured a child. RESULTS: The multivariate analysis showed that families in which the father was unemployed (greater time at risk), had younger children, was not the biological father of all of the children, did not take responsibility for his behavior, seriously injured a child, and maltreated a child in the past were more likely to re-abuse. These factors, along with whether the mother had a criminal history, correctly predicted recurrence for 83% of the families. The investigators correctly predicted recurrence for 70% of the families. CONCLUSIONS: The investigators placed too much emphasis on some variables that were not related to recurrence, such as the mother's mental health and whether she tried to protect her children. These results may be useful in adapting assessment systems that do not take into consideration the gender of the perpetrator.  相似文献   

20.
It is widely believed that exploration is a mechanism for young children's learning. The present investigation examines preschoolers’ beliefs about how learning occurs. We asked 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds to articulate how characters in a set of stories learned about a new toy. Younger preschoolers were more likely to overemphasize the role of characters’ actions in learning than older children were (Experiment 1, N = 53). Overall performance improved when the stories explicitly stated that characters were originally ignorant and clarified the characters’ actions, but general developmental trends remained (Experiment 2, N = 48). These data suggest that explicit metacognitive understanding of the relation between actions and learning is developing during the preschool years, which might have implications for how children learn from exploration.  相似文献   

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