3～5岁幼儿反事实思维的发展研究

该研究采用结果和前提反事实推理任务,选取58名3-5岁幼儿为被试,考察了其反事实思维能力的发展。结果表明:1.3岁儿童在结果反事实推理中的得分显著低于4岁和5岁儿童,而4岁和5岁儿童的得分并不存在显著差异;2.幼儿的前提反事实推理因结构和方向不同而表现出不同的年龄变化趋势;3.幼儿产生的上行和下行反事实论断之间不存在显著差异。如成人一样,幼儿较少产生减法反事实。     

儿童在错误信念任务上的知识偏差

采用3种任务考查儿童在错误信念（FB）推理中是否存在知识偏差。被试为60名3—5岁幼儿,结果表明,对于3岁及4岁儿童来说,FB任务是存在知识偏差的。知识偏差的大小与年龄呈负相关关系,3岁与4岁、4岁与5岁儿童的知识偏差的大小均有显著差异。     

动机冲突下2~4岁幼儿反事实思维理解的发展

采用故事法, 考察在3种动机冲突下幼儿反事实思维理解的发展。结果表明：(1) 2岁幼儿的加法、减法反事实思维得分显著高于替代反事实思维。(2)在加法反事实任务中, 2岁幼儿显著低于4岁幼儿;在减法反事实任务中, 3个年龄组得分有显著性差异。(3)在趋避冲突下, 加法与减法反事实得分都显著高于替代反事实。(4)在结果反事实理解任务中, 随着年龄增长, 幼儿结果反事实思维理解能力有显著提高。     

幼儿反事实推理的发展特点及影响因素

本研究以北京某幼儿园94名幼儿为被试,采用图片故事法和口语报告相结合的方式,考查了幼儿反事实堆理能力的发展特点及影响因素。结果表明：（1）4、5岁幼儿的表现明显好于3岁幼儿,但是4、5岁幼儿之间没有明显差异;（2）问题形式和因果链对反事实推理的影响上具有交互作用;（3）领域知识在各年龄阶段上对反事实推理的影响存在差异。     

学前儿童的“心理理论”在不同ToM任务中的发展特点

考察了72名3～5岁儿童在三个改造过的经典错误信念任务中的表现,结果显示,大部分4岁儿童能够正确认识自我错误信念;大部分5岁儿童能够正确认识他人错误信念;大部分3～4岁儿童的自我错误信念认识显著好于他人（真人和玩偶）错误信念认识,5岁时这两种认识才没有显著差异;学前儿童对真人与玩偶错误信念的认识没有显著差异;学前儿童对“意外地点”任务和“意外内容”任务中错误信念问题回答的一致性较高,而对“外表—真实”任务的回答与前两种任务的一致性较低。     

材料熟悉度和任务类型对幼儿心理理论发展的影响

研究选择90名3-5岁幼儿为被试,采用熟悉和不熟悉两种材料来测验幼儿在外表一事实区分任务和错误信念任务上的表现.结果表明幼儿的心理理论水平随年龄增长在3-5岁之间存在明显的发展变化.材料熟悉度和任务类型对幼儿心理理论水平的发展有影响.这些结果说明表征不可通达假设的观点似乎要优于表征缺失理论.     

从知觉分心任务看儿童类比推理能力的发展

采用四类图片类比映射任务,考察了知觉分心对90名4岁、5岁、6岁儿童类比推理能力发展的影响,并进一步阐释影响儿童类比推理能力发展的可能机制。四类图片类比映射任务分别为一种关系无分心任务、一种关系有分心任务、两种关系无分心任务和两种关系有分心任务。结果表明：（1）在具备相应知识经验的前提下,知觉分心对儿童类比推理成绩有显著影响,儿童在无分心任务中的表现明显好于知觉分心任务的表现。在无分心条件下,4岁儿童已经开始能够选择关系匹配来正确完成类比推理。错误分析发现知觉分心任务中儿童所犯错误主要是分心错误,而且分心错误随年龄增长呈下降趋势。这表明对知觉分心的抑制控制可能是儿童类比推理能力发展的一个重要影响因素。（2）随着年龄增长,儿童类比推理能力逐渐提高。总体表现为6岁组的成绩显著优于4岁、5岁组的成绩,而4岁组的成绩与5岁组的成绩没有显著差异。5岁可能是儿童能够抑制知觉分心进行类比推理的快速发展期     

幼儿前提反事实推理的发展特点和影响因素

本研究选取90名3~5岁幼儿为被试,采用图片故事法和口语报告法测查幼儿前提反事实推理的发展特点以及结果性质和领域知识的影响。结果表明:(1)幼儿前提反事实推断数量随年龄而增多;(2)幼儿产生的减法式反事实推断数显著多于加法式,但上行和下行反事实推断数之间的差异不显著;(3)对反事实推断的影响因素方面,结果性质主效应不显著,领域知识主效应显著,两者存在交互作用,当控制语言能力后交互作用不显著。     

3～6岁儿童“心理理论”的发展

“心理理论”是发展心理学的研究热点,在儿童获得心理理论的年龄和发展阶段问题上仍存在争议。该研究以3所城市幼儿园中的233名3-6岁儿童为被试,采用“意外转移”和“欺骗外表”两个错误信念测验任务考察儿童“心理理论”的获得年龄和发展阶段。研究得出如下结论:3岁之前儿童已理解外表与真实的区别,但还不能理解错误信念。 4岁儿童理解了欺骗外表任务中自己和他人的错误信念,5岁儿童理解了意外转移任务中的错误信念。4-5岁是儿童获得“心理理论”的关键年龄,但这会因测验任务的不同而有所差异。儿童的错误信念理解不存在显著的性别差异。     

特定句法提示对3－4岁儿童错误信念理解的影响

通过在错误信念任务中,为儿童提供关于错误信念表征的特定句法,考察这种句法理解对儿童的错误信念理解成绩是否有促进作用。124名3-4岁幼儿参加实验,每个年龄组幼儿随机分配到零级提示,一级提示和二级提示等三个句法提示条件组,并完成4个错误信念任务。结果发现,一级提示条件和二级提示条件下的错误信念理解成绩显著高于零级提示条件下的错误信念理解成绩,而一级和二级两种提示条件之间没有显著差异。句法提示对不同的错误信念任务的影响是相同的,对错误信念的预测问题和解释问题的影响模式是一致的。表明对错误信念表征的特定句法提示,有效促进了儿童的错误信念成绩,提示这种句法结构可能有助于儿童的错误信念理解     

Children’s causal reasoning: Counterfactual thinking occurs for ‘negative’ outcomes only

Harris, German and Mills (Children’s use of counterfactual thinking in causal reasoning. Cognition, 61 (1996), 223–259), following Mackie, argue that children make explicit use of counterfactual thinking in arriving at causal judgments. They showed that children as young as 3, in explaining simple mishap events, made reference to courses of action that a protagonist had rejected, when that course of action would have prevented the observed outcome. It is hypothesized here that such counterfactual thinking might have been invoked by the ‘negative’ mishaps rather than as part of the causal reasoning process. Although the generation of counterfactuals in explanation was replicated using mishap outcomes such as those used by Harris et al., counterfactual thinking was not evident in children’s explanations of ‘positive’ outcomes. These results undermine the view that a counterfactual thinking process, as indexed by reference to possible actions rejected by a protagonist, is necessary for causal reasoning. Alternative characterizations of the relationship between causals and counterfactuals are discussed.     

False belief understanding: The influence of person,grammatical mood,counterfactual reasoning and working memory

The present study had two major goals. The first goal was to assess the relative difficulty among different versions of the unexpected contents task by systematically varying the dimensions of grammatical mood (indicative vs. subjunctive) and person (self vs. other), and to examine the correlational pattern between these different versions of the unexpected contents task and the unexpected locations task. The second goal was to examine the specificity of the relation between false belief understanding and counterfactual reasoning after controlling for age and working memory ability. One hundred, 3‐ to 6‐year‐old, children were administered two measures of false belief understanding (two versions of the unexpected contents task and two versions of the unexpected locations task), two measures of counterfactual reasoning and a working memory measure. Results showed that performance on the unexpected contents task did not significantly differ across conditions. However, only the conditions of the unexpected contents task that concerned another person's false belief correlated significantly with the unexpected locations task. Moreover, counterfactual reasoning was found to explain a significant amount of variance in the unexpected locations task, even after controlling for age and working memory performance. Findings are discussed in the context of different accounts of the development of theory of mind, and in the context of different interpretations of the relation between false belief understanding and counterfactual reasoning.     

Are errors in false belief tasks symptomatic of a broader difficulty with counterfactuality?

When children acknowledge false belief they are handling a counterfactual situation. In three experiments 3-and 4-year-old children were given false belief tasks and physical state tasks which required similar handling of counterfactual situations but which did not require understanding about beliefs or representations: Children were asked to report what the state of the world might be now had an earlier event not occurred. The incidence of realist errors in the false belief and physical state tasks was significantly correlated independently of shared correlations with chronological age and receptive verbal ability. In a fourth experiment, children made significantly fewer realist errors when asked to infer a future hypothetical state. These results provide preliminary evidence consistent with the suggestion that pre-school children's difficulty with false belief is symptomatic of a more general difficulty entertaining counterfactual situations.     

Conditional Reasoning and Emotional Experience: A Review of the Development of Counterfactual Thinking

What do human beings use conditional reasoning for? A psychological consequence of counterfactual conditional reasoning is emotional experience, in particular, regret and relief. Adults’ thoughts about what might have been influence their evaluations of reality. We discuss recent psychological experiments that chart the relationship between children’s ability to engage in conditional reasoning and their experience of counterfactual emotions. Relative to conditional reasoning, counterfactual emotions are late developing. This suggests that children need not only competence in conditional reasoning, but also to engage in this thinking spontaneously. Developments in domain general cognitive processing (the executive functions) allow children to develop from conditional reasoning to reasoning with counterfactual content and, eventually, to experiencing counterfactual emotions.     

Information processing and reasoning with premises that are empirically false: Interference,working memory,and processing speed

In this study, we looked at the contributions of individual differences in susceptibility to interference and working memory to logical reasoning with premises that were empirically false (i.e., not necessarily true). A total of 97 university students were given a sentence completion task for which a subset of stimuli was designed to generate inappropriate semantic activation that interfered with the correct response, a measure of working memory capacity, and a series of logical reasoning tasks with premises that were not always true. The results indicate that susceptibility to interference, as measured by the error rate on the relevant subset of the sentence completion task, and working memory independently account for variation in reasoning performance. The participants who made more errors in the relevant portion of the sentence completion task also showed more empirical intrusions in the deductive reasoning task, even when the effects of working memory were partialed out. Working memory capacity was more clearly related to processes involved in generating uncertainty responses to inferences for which there was no certain conclusion. A comparison of the results of this study with studies of children's reasoning suggests that adults are capable of more selective executive processes than are children. An analysis of latency measures on the sentence completion task indicated that high working memory participants who made no errors on the sentence completion task used a strategy that involved slower processing speed, as compared with participants with similar levels of working memory who did make errors. In contrast, low working memory participants who made no errors on the sentence completion task had relatively shorter reaction times than did comparable participants who did make errors.     

Counterfactual reasoning: From childhood to adulthood

The objective of this study was to describe the developmental progression of counterfactual reasoning from childhood to adulthood. In contrast to the traditional view, it was recently reported by Rafetseder and colleagues that even a majority of 6-year-old children do not engage in counterfactual reasoning when asked counterfactual questions (Child Development, 2010, Vol. 81, pp. 376–389). By continuing to use the same method, the main result of the current Study 1 was that performance of the 9- to 11-year-olds was comparable to that of the 6-year-olds, whereas the 12- to 14-year-olds approximated adult performance. Study 2, using an intuitively simpler task based on Harris and colleagues (Cognition, 1996, Vol. 61, pp. 233–259), resulted in a similar conclusion, specifically that the ability to apply counterfactual reasoning is not fully developed in all children before 12 years of age. We conclude that children who failed our tasks seem to lack an understanding of what needs to be changed (events that are causally dependent on the counterfactual assumption) and what needs to be left unchanged and so needs to be kept as it actually happened. Alternative explanations, particularly executive functioning, are discussed in detail.     

Children's Understanding of Behavioral Consequences of Epistemic States: A Comparison of Knowledge,Ignorance, and False Belief

The author addressed the issue of the simultaneity of false belief and knowledge understanding by investigating children's ability to predict the behavioral consequences of knowledge, ignorance, and false belief. The second aim of the study was to explore the role of counterfactuals in knowledge understanding. Ninety-nine (99) children, age 3–7 years old, completed the unexpected transfer task and a newly designed task in which a protagonist experienced 1 of the following 4 situations: knowing a fact, not knowing a fact, knowing a procedure, and not knowing a procedure. The results showed that factual ignorance was as difficult as false belief for the children, whereas the other conditions were all easier than false belief, suggesting that the well-known lag between ignorance and false belief may be partly methodologically based. The results provide support for a common underlying conceptual system for both knowing and believing, and evidence of the role of counterfactual reasoning in the development of epistemic state understanding. Methodological variations of the new task are proposed for future research.