证词自信度和自主探索综合影响5岁儿童的因果推理

开展两个实验探讨证词的自信度和儿童的自主探索对5岁儿童因果推理的综合影响。84名儿童(平均年龄63.7月,男50)参与实验1,探究成人证词和儿童自主探索获得的(与证词矛盾的)证据对儿童因果推理的影响;54名儿童(平均年龄63.9月,男28)参与实验2,探究更多与证词矛盾的证据是否减轻儿童对成人证词的依赖。结果显示:与探索获得2次与证词矛盾的证据相比,更多5岁儿童在探索获得4次与证词矛盾的证据后依据自主探索结果推断因果关系;证词的自信度差异并不影响儿童的因果推理表现。研究结果支持理性观点及其预测:儿童受证词影响的程度依赖于儿童观察到矛盾证据的机会。     

证据顺序和证词可信度对学前末期儿童因果推理的影响

开展两个实验探究证据顺序和证词可信度对学前末期(65～70月龄)儿童因果推理的影响。132名和127名儿童分别参与实验1和实验2。实验1发现证据顺序对儿童因果推理的影响表现为近因效应,证词可信度不影响儿童的推理结果;实验2发现如果强制要求儿童注意证词可信度信息,他们更相信可信证词而非不可信证词,证据顺序对推理结果无影响。研究结果说明学前末期儿童的因果推理受证据顺序和证词可信度的共同影响:在未被要求注意证词可信度时,受制于有限的工作记忆容量,大多数儿童依据最近接收到的证据推断因果关系;如果注意到证词可信度信息,更多儿童依据证词(可信证词条件)或观察结果(不可信证词条件)推断因果关系。     

证据顺序和证词自信度对学前末期儿童因果推理的影响

开展两个实验探究证据顺序和证词自信水平对5岁儿童因果推理的影响机制。132名和127名5岁儿童分别参与实验1和实验2。实验1发现证据顺序对儿童因果推理的影响表现为近因效应,但证词的自信水平差异不影响儿童的因果推理;实验2发现如果儿童注意到证词的自信水平信息,他们更倾向于在自信证词条件依据证词推断因果关系,证据顺序的影响力被削弱。研究结果说明证据顺序变化导致易受影响的近因效应。     

因果变化模式与因果联结强度在幼儿因果推理中的作用

对93名幼儿进行了五种因果变化模式的因果推理题目的测试。结果表明:(1)在不同的因果变化模式下,被试进行因果推理的成绩存在差异,且在对于这五类题目的掌握上具有一定的顺序。(2)被试在同样因果变化模式题目的表现之间具有较高的相似性,而在因果联结强度相同的题目之间则具有显著的差异。(3)被试对于各题目回答的正确率并不随原因与结果联结次数的增多而提高。(4)即使是在观察到的刺激完全一致的情况下,被试的回答仍会因因果变化模式的差异及主试对于题目解释的不同而存在差别。     

3~4岁儿童规则因果推理能力的训练研究

学前期是儿童多种推理能力产生和发展的重要时期。本研究(以64名3岁儿童为被试,采用Frye和Zelazo等所设计的“二进二出”装置,通过对3岁儿童的规则因果推理能力进行训练,从而探索儿童规则因果推理的内在机制。在本研究条件下,结果发现:1.年龄与训练的交互效应不显著,各年龄组儿童经过训练后,成绩的提高没有显著差异;2.规则与训练的交互效应显著,竖直规则下,儿童通过训练后提高的成绩不显著,但在交叉规则下前测后测成绩差异极其显著;3.训练效应显著,暴露因果机制,给予及时反馈和阐述规则时附加手势这些信息能促进年幼儿童对高级规则的掌握。     

推理方向与规则维度对儿童因果推理的影响

采用Frye和Zelazo等（1996）所设计的“二进二出”装置（斜面滚球装置）,设置了不同的推理方向、规则维度的因果推理任务,采用个别实验法,研究了60名3.5～4.5岁儿童因果推理能力的发展。结果发现：（1）儿童在不同方向的因果推理任务上成绩差异显著,因→果推理成绩要好于果→因推理;（2）不同维度下儿童的推理成绩有极显著的差异性,一维的因果推理更容易,三维合取规则的因果推理任务更难;（3）3.5～4岁左右是儿童因果推理能力发展的快速期。     

因果条件中儿童社会信息推理的发展

采用因果条件性逻辑推理研究的一般模式,研究了儿童社会信息因果推理发展状况。实验结果表明：(1)儿童社会信息推理能力呈年级性递增。(2)社会信息的内容会影响儿童社会信息推理的能力。(3)儿童四种逻辑形式推理能力之间的差异显著．AC、DA在年级水平上差异都十分显著,但MP和MT在年级水平上差异不显著,儿童在各个年级四种推理能力之间的差异都显著,确定型和非确定型逻辑推理能力之间的差异显著。(4)逻辑形式的难度、儿童的年龄影响儿童合理化解释的类型。     

说明文阅读中因果推理的意识性

采用独立记得-知道范式(IRK)和加工分离范式(PDP)探讨说明文阅读中因果推理的意识性。根据关系部分的描述与目标句是否存在逻辑冲突,创设推理成功和推理失败两种实验条件。实验1和2分别使用独立记得-知道范式和加工分离范式进行研究。两个实验的结果都发现推理成功和推理失败在有意识和无意识加工指标上都差异显著,表明说明文阅读中因果推理既影响有意识加工也影响无意识加工,该结果支持和完善了文本阅读双加工理论。     

儿童对因果复句的理解

本研究通过两个实验考察了小学一至五年级儿童对于涉及心理方面因果关系的几种因果复合句,其中包括单义复句、歧义复句和将原歧义句加上语境线索后变成的单义复句的理解特点和发展过程.结果发现:(1)儿童对单义因果复句的理解水平呈明显的随年级而上升的发展趋势.(2)语境线索对理解句子的确切意义具有重要作用。小学高年级儿童对语境线索有较高的敏感.(3)小学各年级儿童对实验中的歧义句基本上只能作单义理解。而且在意义的选择上表现出明显的偏向性。这种偏向性也表现在对句子结构成分较复杂的单义句的理解中。     

因果模型构建的特点和新思路

因果模型构建作为心理学研究的一项中心任务,主要包括因果关系理论模型的构建和验证、因果关系数据模型的构建和验证,理论模型和数据模型之间进行匹配的因果关系推论过程,文章讨论了因果模型构建的基本条件。因果模型构建时所面临的问题及解决的策略,包括如何确定因果模型的类型,如何在不同层次进行建模、如何进行因果模型的验证。另外,文章还讨论了一种因果建模的新思路及发展趋势。     

Perception Versus Knowledge of Cause and Effect in Children: When Seeing Is Believing

Recent research has shown that even infants have perceptual sensitivity to the causal structure of the world, and it is often claimed that causal knowledge supports many of preschoolers' impressive cognitive achievements. That older children nevertheless can encounter difficulties in causal-reasoning tasks is typically attributed to lack of domain knowledge. A different explanation, however, is that causal structure may appear at more than one level, in perception, as well as in underlying knowledge. Children may make some reasoning errors because they have difficulty coordinating these levels. This article reviews relevant evidence on physical causality: Even infants in their first year perceive the causal structure of simple collision events. This perceptual skill could support rapid causal learning without prior knowledge and thus helps us understand children's precocity preschoolers already reason with the assumption that causes and effects are linked by underlying physical mechanisms. However, what may promote early development may later become a hindrance: When perception and mechanism point to different causes, children may not realize that mechanism is superordinate. Although the components of competent causal reasoning are available early in development, much experience may be required before children learn how to integrate them.     

Sources of meaning in the acquisition of complex syntax: the sample case of causality

The study reported here is concerned with how children acquire complex sentences for expressing their beliefs about causally related events, in the transition in language development from simple to complex syntax. Subjects were three girls and four boys, observed longitudinally from 26 to 38 months of age in their homes. Data analysis began with those observations in which each child began to produce causally related propositions without syntactic connectives, and continued until the children were about 3 years old. Two broad categories of causal meaning were expressed in the children's causal statements. Objective meaning concerned means-end and consequence relations that were evidential and fixed in the physical world. Subjective meaning expressed causal connections concerned with personal, affective, or sociocultural beliefs. While most of the children's statements expressed subjective meaning overall, the acquisition of syntactic connectives was associated with objective meaning. These results are discussed in terms of the development of these children's understanding of causality and the acquisition of increasingly complex language.     

Additivity pretraining and cue competition effects: developmental evidence for a reasoning-based account of causal learning

The effect of additivity pretraining on blocking has been taken as evidence for a reasoning account of human and animal causal learning. If inferential reasoning underpins this effect, then developmental differences in the magnitude of this effect in children would be expected. Experiment 1 examined cue competition effects in children's (4- to 5-year-olds and 6- to 7-year-olds) causal learning using a new paradigm analogous to the food allergy task used in studies of human adult causal learning. Blocking was stronger in the older than the younger children, and additivity pretraining only affected blocking in the older group. Unovershadowing was not affected by age or by pretraining. In experiment 2, levels of blocking were found to be correlated with the ability to answer questions that required children to reason about additivity. Our results support an inferential reasoning explanation of cue competition effects.     

The causal asymmetry

It is hypothesized that there is a pervasive and fundamental bias in humans' understanding of physical causation: Once the roles of cause and effect are assigned to objects in interactions, people tend to overestimate the strength and importance of the causal object and underestimate that of the effect object in bringing about the outcome. This bias is termed the causal asymmetry. Evidence for this bias is reviewed in several domains, including visual impressions of causal relations, reasoning about Newton's third law in naive physics problems, concepts underlying linguistic expressions of causality, and research in causal judgment from contingency information. Although there might be an equivalent to the causal asymmetry in the domain of social causality, there are too many uncertainties in the evidence for conclusions to be drawn.     

Children can solve Bayesian problems: the role of representation in mental computation

Can children reason the Bayesian way? We argue that the answer to this question depends on how numbers are represented, because a representation can do part of the computation. We test, for the first time, whether Bayesian reasoning can be elicited in children by means of natural frequencies. We show that when information was presented to fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in terms of probabilities, their ability to estimate the Bayesian posterior probability was zero. Yet when the same information was presented in natural frequencies, Bayesian reasoning showed a steady increase from fourth to sixth grade, reaching an average level of 19, 39, and 53%, respectively, in two studies. Sixth graders' performance with natural frequencies matched the performance of adults with probabilities. But this general increase was accompanied by striking individual differences. More than half of the sixth graders solved most or all problems, whereas one third could not solve a single one. An analysis of the children's responses provides evidence for the use of three non-Bayesian strategies. These follow an overlapping wave model of development and continue to be observed in the minds of adults. More so than adults' probabilistic reasoning, children's reasoning depends on a proper representation of information.     

颜色、形状和大小相似性与变化性对儿童归纳推理的影响

设计了两个实验任务,探讨了颜色、大小和形状对68名8～10岁儿童归纳推理的影响。结果发现,在相似性任务中,当测试图片分别与两组前提图片在大小和形状(颜色)上一致时,儿童认为测试图形与大小一致图形具有相同属性;当测试图片分别与前提图片在形状和颜色上一致时,儿童倾向于选择形状一致图形具有的属性。在变化性任务中,当两组前提图片分别在大小和形状上变化,而测试图形与前提组图形不同时,儿童认为测试图形与大小变化图形具有相同属性;当两组前提图片分别在颜色和大小(形状)上变化时,儿童的选择没有显著差异;这一结果与同时变化每组前提图片的两个特征差异不显著,表明单独变化颜色、大小和形状来构成推理任务是比较合理的。