"儿童对主观世界认识的发展"研究的热点

“儿童对主观世界认识的发展”研究经历了三次浪潮,第一次是以Piaget为代表的“自我中心主义的学说”;第二次是20世纪70年代兴起的“元记忆“的研究;第三次是20世纪80年代初兴起的“心理理论”的研究。本文分析了当前就“儿童对主观世界认识的发展”两大研究热点：元记忆和心理理论的研究。文章对元记忆和心理理论这两次研究浪潮的历史渊源、发展现状、相互之问的关系进行了剖析,特别对其分离与统合的现状进行了介绍,并对将来的研究进行了展望。     

Young children's self‐benefiting lies and their relation to executive functioning and theory of mind

It is well established that children lie in different social contexts for various purposes from the age of 2 years. Surprisingly, little is known about whether very young children will spontaneously lie for personal gain, how self‐benefiting lies emerge, and what cognitive factors affect the emergence of self‐benefiting lies. To bridge this gap in the literature, we situated children between 2 and 4 years of age in a zero‐sum game where children must lie to their opponent if they wanted to win a desirable reward. We found that the majority of young children did not lie even when they experienced personal losses repeatedly. However, some children spontaneously lied during the game; as the game progressed, more children lied. Further, we found that children's theory of mind understanding and executive functioning in terms of a combination of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility had significant positive and unique correlations with how frequently children lied for personal gain. The present results taken together with the existing findings regarding children's lies for self‐protection and politeness purposes suggest that the act of lying begins early in life. Further, its emergence and development are influenced by children's specific cognitive abilities in the domains of theory of mind understanding and executive functioning.

Highlights

• The study investigated whether very young children will spontaneously lie for personal gain.
• This study used a zero‐sum game to elicit children's self‐benefiting lies. Results showed the majority of young children did not lie, and it is related to children's theory of mind understanding and executive functioning.
• The act of lying begins early in life, and its emergence and development are influenced by children's specific cognitive abilities in the domains of theory of mind understanding and executive functioning.

     

Knowing minds: Culture and perceptions of mental state access

How does culture influence the ways in which individuals reflect upon their knowledge of others’ mental states? We addressed this question in a two‐study cross‐cultural investigation examining perceptions of mental state access in the United States and Japan. Study 1 (n = 100) revealed that American participants reported greater mental state access than did Japanese participants. Study 2 (n = 146) showed that both Americans and Japanese perceived greater access to the mental states of a close friend relative to a casual friend and that the observed cultural differences in perceived mental state access to a close friend’s mental states were mediated by how much access was considered appropriate. Overall, the results indicate that culturally variable norms specifying appropriate levels of mental state access play an important role in how individuals estimate their knowledge of other people’s minds in close relationships.     

Cognitive load on working memory both encourages and discourages reasoning bias regarding the mental states of others

Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to reason about the mental states of others. An increasing number of studies have revealed that working memory (WM) plays an important role in ToM. The present study applied WM loads to adults during a ToM task in order to investigate the impact on mental‐state reasoning performance. The task required participants to estimate the probabilities of several possible behaviours for a protagonist following the presentation of a ToM story. Participants were also required to maintain a meaningless two‐ (light WM load) or seven‐letter English alphabet string (heavy WM load) during story comprehension and mental‐state reasoning. The results show that the combination of light WM load applied during story comprehension with heavy WM load during mental‐state reasoning results in an overestimation of the probability that the protagonist's behaviour will accord with a participant's knowledge. Conversely, a heavy WM load applied during story comprehension, regardless of the type of WM load during mental‐state reasoning, did not result in this probability estimation bias. We discuss these findings from the perspective of a WM representation account.     

Young children's psychological explanations and their relationship to perception‐ and intention‐understanding

The present study examined two key aspects of young children's ability to explain human behaviour in a mentalistic way. First, we explored desires that are of a level of difficulty comparable with that of false beliefs. For this purpose, the so‐called ‘alternative desires’ were created. Second, we examined how children's psychological explanations are related to their understanding of perception and intention. A perception‐understanding task, an intention‐understanding task and a psychological‐explanation task were administered to 80 three‐year‐olds. Results offer support for the thesis that the level of difficulty of belief and desire explanations is comparable. Moreover, children's psychological explanations are related to their understanding of perception and intention. The results lend support to the idea that mentalistic explanations are an explicit manifestation of children's level of theory of mind. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

幼儿心理理论与时序记忆的关系——来自时序记忆分离的证据

研究检验了时序记忆与心理理论的关系.实验一对39个3.5～5.5岁儿童的时序记忆能力以及心理理论表现进行测查,考察了因果关系、相关关系、无因果无相关关系三类不同性质的材料测得的时序记忆与心理理论的关系;90个儿童参与了实验二,通过正叙、倒叙、预叙三种叙述方式将时序记忆分离为理解性时序记忆和机械性时序记忆,再分别考察与心理理论的关系.结果发现,在不同性质的实验材料中,时序记忆与心理理论相关均不显著;5.5岁儿童的理解性时序记忆显著高于3.5岁儿童,4.5岁、5.5岁儿童的机械性时序记忆显著高于3.5岁儿童;只有理解性时序记忆能够预测儿童的心理理论成绩.     

Knowing minds: Linking early perspective taking and later metacognitive insight

Recent metacognitive research using a partial knowledge task indicates that a firm understanding of ‘knowing about knowing’ develops surprisingly late, at around 6 years of age. To reveal the mechanisms subserving this development, the partial knowledge task was used in a longitudinal study with 67 children (33 girls) as an outcome measure at 5;9 (years;months). In addition, first- and second-order false belief was assessed at 4;2, 5;0, and 5;9. At 2;6, perspective taking and executive abilities were evaluated. Metacognition at 5;9 was correlated with earlier theory of mind and perspective taking – even when verbal intelligence and executive abilities were partialled out. This highlights the importance of perspective taking for the development of an understanding of one’s own mind.     

Self-projection in younger and older adults: a study of episodic memory,prospection, and theory of mind

Self-projection is the ability to orient the self in different places in time and space. Episodic memory, prospection, and theory of mind (ToM) are all cognitive abilities that share an element of self-projection. Previous research has posited that each of these abilities stems from the same neural network. The current study compared performance of cognitively healthy older adults and younger adults on several self-projection tasks to examine the relatedness of these constructs behaviorally. Episodic memory and prospection were measured using an episodic interview task where the participants were asked to remember or imagine events that either had happened in the past or could happen in the future and then gave ratings describing the extent to which they were mentally experiencing the event and from what perspective they viewed it. ToM was measured by asking participants to make judgments regarding the intentions of characters described in stories that involved cognitive, affective, or ironic components. Our results demonstrate that aging influences episodic memory, prospection, and ToM similarly: older adult participants showed declines on each of these measures compared to younger adults. Further, we observed correlations between performance on the measures of episodic memory and prospection as well as between episodic memory and ToM, although no correlation between prospection and ToM was observed after controlling for chronological age. We discuss these results in the light of theories suggesting that each of these abilities is governed by a common brain system.     

Relations between episodic memory, suggestibility, theory of mind, and cognitive inhibition in the preschool child

The development of episodic memory, its relation to theory of mind (ToM), executive functions (e.g., cognitive inhibition), and to suggestibility was studied. Children (n= 115) between 3 and 6 years of age saw two versions of a video film and were tested for their memory of critical elements of the videos. Results indicated similar developmental trends for all memory measures, ToM, and inhibition, but ToM and inhibition were not associated with any memory measures. Correlations involving source memory was found in relation to specific questions, whereas inhibition and ToM were significantly correlated to resistance to suggestions. A regression analysis showed that age was the main contributor to resistance to suggestions, to correct source monitoring, and to correct responses to specific questions. Inhibition was also a significant main predictor of resistance to suggestive questions, whereas the relative contribution of ToM was wiped out when an extended model was tested.     

Children's knowledge of the earth: a new methodological and statistical approach

In the field of children’s knowledge of the earth, much debate has concerned the question of whether children’s naive knowledge—that is, their knowledge before they acquire the standard scientific theory—is coherent (i.e., theory-like) or fragmented. We conducted two studies with large samples (N = 328 and N = 381) using a new paper-and-pencil test, denoted the EARTH (EArth Representation Test for cHildren), to discriminate between these two alternatives. We performed latent class analyses on the responses to the EARTH to test mental models associated with these alternatives. The naive mental models, as formulated by Vosniadou and Brewer, were not supported by the results. The results indicated that children’s knowledge of the earth becomes more consistent as children grow older. These findings support the view that children’s naive knowledge is fragmented.     

Experiencing nearby locations together in time: the role of spatiotemporal contiguity in children's memory for location

Three studies investigated how experiencing nearby locations together in time influences memory for location. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-old children and adults learned 20 object locations in a small-scale space. The space was divided into regions by lines or walls. In Study 1, participants learned the locations either region by region or in a random order. Following learning, participants replaced the objects without the aid of the dots marking the locations and the boundaries subdividing the space. They replaced the objects in any order they chose. After experiencing the locations in random orders during learning, only adults underestimated distances between locations belonging to the same group (i.e., region). Conversely, 9- and 11-year-old children and adults who had experienced the locations region by region during learning underestimated these distances. These findings suggest that experiencing nearby locations together in time increases the weight children assign to categorical information in their estimates of location. Results from Studies 2 and 3 in which participants learned the locations region by region and then replaced the objects region by region (Study 2) or in a random order (Study 3) were similar, highlighting the importance of spatiotemporal cues in memory for location. (c) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).     

Emergence of Joint Attention: Relationships Between Gaze Following,Social Referencing,Imitation, and Naming in Infancy

The authors investigated the extent to which the joint-attention behaviors of gaze following, social referencing, and object-directed imitation were related to each other and to infants' vocabulary development in a sample of 60 infants between the ages of 8 and 14 months. Joint-attention skills and vocabulary development were assessed in a laboratory setting. Split-half reliability analyses on the joint-attention measures indicated that the tasks reliably assessed infants' capabilities. In the main analysis, no significant correlations were found among the joint-attention behaviors except for a significant relationship between gaze following and the number of names in infants' productive vocabularies. The overall pattern of results did not replicate results of previous studies (e.g., M. Carpenter, K. Nagell, & M. Tomasello, 1998) that found relationships between various emerging joint-attention behaviors.     

Maternal provision of structure in a deliberate memory task in relation to their preschool children's recall

Strategic remembering emerges gradually during the preschool years. Socialization practices, specifically mother–child social interactions, might provide the foundation for the development of skills necessary for effective organization of information in memory. In the current study, 48 mothers and their 40-month-olds were engaged in the process of remembering (i.e., study and recall) categorically related picture stimuli in a laboratory context. Children’s recall was reliably predicted by the way in which mothers structured both the study and recall periods of the deliberate memory task. Specifically, maternal verbal and physical behaviors that focused on organization of items, such as sorting items into distinct groups and providing the name of a category, were most beneficial in supporting children’s memory. Moreover, some mothers employed a number of different mnemonic techniques that emphasized categorical connections among items, suggesting systematic approaches in the manner in which mothers help children to learn effective ways of remembering.     

When deception influences memory: the implication of theory of mind

When deceiving, one should remember to whom a falsified story was previously told; otherwise he or she may include inconsistencies, and the deception will probably be discovered. Bearing this in mind, we investigated the potential relationship between deception and the ability to remember to whom a piece of information was previously told (i.e., destination memory). Forty-one adults were given a destination memory task in which they had to decide to whom proverbs had previously been told. They were also given a questionnaire about deception (e.g., “I sometimes tell lies if I have to) and a cognitive theory of mind task in which they had to predict the behaviour of protagonists who hold a mistaken belief about the state of the world. Results showed a positive correlation between deception and destination memory (p <?.001), a relationship that was further mediated by cognitive theory of mind ability (p?<?.01). Deception requires monitoring and inferring what targets know, suspect, and believe. This monitoring ability (i.e., cognitive theory of mind) results in better processing of the target and consequently better destination memory. By showing the involvement of deception and theory of mind in destination memory, our findings emphasize the memory variations in social and interpersonal interactions.     

First‐hand sensory experience plays a limited role in children's early understanding of seeing and hearing as sources of knowledge: Evidence from typically hearing and deaf children

One early‐developing component of theory of mind is an understanding of the link between sensory perception and knowledge formation. We know little about the extent to which children's first‐hand sensory experiences drive the development of this understanding, as most tasks capturing this early understanding target vision, with less attention paid to the other senses. In this study, 64 typically hearing children (M_age = 4.0 years) and 21 orally educated deaf children (M_age = 5.44 years) were asked to identify which of two informants knew the identity of a toy animal when each had differing perceptual access to the animal. In the ‘seeing’ condition, one informant saw the animal and the other did not; in the ‘hearing’ condition, one informant heard the animal and the other did not. For both hearing and deaf children, there was no difference between performance on hearing and seeing trials, but deaf children were delayed in both conditions. Further, within both the hearing and deaf groups, older children outperformed younger children on these tasks, indicating that there is a developmental progression. Taken together, the pattern of results suggests that experiences other than first‐hand sensory experiences drive children's developing understanding that sensory perception is associated with knowledge.     

A longitudinal investigation of the relationship between maternal mind‐mindedness and theory of mind

Data are presented from a longitudinal investigation examining the relationship between maternal mind‐mindedness (MM) in infancy and socio‐cognitive development in childhood. We revisited children (n = 18) who had taken part in a longitudinal study as infants. MM had been assessed at 10, 12, 16, and 20 months of age. We followed up these children at 5–6 years of age to test their higher order theory of mind (ToM) (using the strange stories task). The convergent validity, temporal stability, and predictive validity of the construct of MM were examined in a longitudinal data set. The five measures of MM were not significantly correlated. Mother's production of appropriate mind‐related comments (but no other measures) showed evidence of temporal stability throughout infancy. Thus, MM (as measured by appropriate mind‐related comments) was confirmed as a stable construct. Children's ToM at 5–6 years of age was significantly predicted by their mother's MM up to 4 years earlier, with MM accounting for 40% of the variance of the strange stories task scores. These findings identify a relationship between MM across a protracted period of infancy and socio‐cognitive development at 5–6 years of age.     

Young children's moral judgments of commission and omission related to the understanding of Knowledge or Ignorance

This study examined developmental change in young children's moral judgments of commission and omission related to mental states, especially knowledge or ignorance. 4–5 and 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds (n=67) made moral judgments about the tasks related to the understanding of knowledge or ignorance. The tasks were also composed of two types of acts: commission or omission. The results showed that the both age groups understood knowledge and ignorance, but that the older group made moral judgments based on this understanding more similar to adults compared to the younger group. There was not an age difference concerning whether the acts were of commission or omission. These findings indicate that there is no difference for young children in the difficulty in moral judgments of acts of commission and omission related to mental states, whereas there is a developmental difference in using the understanding of knowledge or ignorance for making moral judgments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.