Children's and adults' understanding of the impact of nutrition on biological and psychological processes

Four studies examined children's and adults' beliefs about the impact of nutrition on growth and mood states. In Studies 1 and 2, 271 participants (preschoolers through adults) judged the impact of healthy and unhealthy nutrition on height and weight. In Studies 3 and 4, 267 participants judged the impact of healthy and unhealthy nutrition on positive and negative mood states. The results suggest that young children demonstrate a co‐existence of an ontologically distinct theory of biology as well as a theory of cross‐domain interaction when reasoning about the impact of food on biological and psychological processes.     

单一因果关系因果力判断研究述评

简单因果归纳包括自下而上的材料驱动的加工和自上而下的因果知识驱动加工两个方面。简单因果归纳的多数理论模型强调自下而上的材料驱动的加工,这些模型又存在联想解释与计算解释的基本区分。最后,概述了单一因果关系因果力判断研究的基本问题：因果力判断的主要影响因素和过程机制、研究的方法问题。     

Comparative Perspectives on Solutions for the Problem of Other Minds

This paper aims to establish a dialogue between contemporary research on the problem of other minds and classical Chinese philosophical theories. It first explores the idea, inspired by the recent discovery of the mirror neuron mechanism, that a direct exchange of experience may occur between the observer and the observed. Next, it analyzes the ways in which the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi and Confucian thinkers reflected on the problem of other minds, which are quite similar to the idea inspired by the latest research on mirror neurons. In these thinkers’ views, knowledge of other minds is the result of mental activity and what it provides is, to a large extent, something related not to epistemology but rather to a situational understanding of other minds from the perspective of value theory. The author points out that this solution takes two aspects, humans’ innate nature and human experience, into consideration simultaneously. In terms of humans’ innate nature, the body of a human being is a body that represents the unity of man and nature, and it has something in common with the natural world, which lays a foundation for the perception of other minds. In terms of human experience, human beings have such actual needs as emotions, pursuits, and desires, and their behaviors need to conform to certain norms. It is in a body of this kind that the mind of human beings can be formed and enjoy the potential to develop. Effective interpersonal communication can thus be achieved.     

规则顺序与规则类型对儿童规则推理的影响

学前儿童时期是各种推理能力产生和发展的重要时期。本研究采用Frye和Zelazo等（1996）所设计的“二进二出”装置,设置了规则顺序、规则类型的规则推理任务,采用个别实验法,研究了90名3～4岁儿童规则推理能力的发展。在本研究条件下,结果发现：1．当规则呈现顺序不同时,儿童规则推理成绩差异显著,先呈现哪个规则,则利用这个规则进行推理的成绩就较好;2．不同规则类型下儿童的推理成绩差异极其显著,竖直规则下的推理任务更容易;3．3．5～4岁是儿童二维合取规则推理能力发展的快速期。     

家庭生态系统对儿童心理健康发展影响机制的研究

以生态系统理论为指导,选取中小学生746名,分健康组和问题组,利用结构方程建模(SEM)技术,就家庭生态系统对儿童心理健康发展的影响机制进行了研究。结果表明,在健康组,构成家庭生态系统的父母子系统、家庭环境子系统和儿童子系统均对心理问题的形成起抑制作用;而在问题组,除儿童子系统对心理问题的形成起抑制作用外,父母子系统和家庭环境子系统对心理问题的形成起正向作用。     

Children's reasoning about the temporal order of past and future events

Four- and five-year-olds completed two sets of tasks that involved reasoning about the temporal order in which events had occurred in the past or were to occur in the future. Four-year-olds succeeded on the tasks that involved reasoning about the order of past events but not those that involved reasoning about the order of future events, whereas 5-year-olds passed both types of tasks. Individual children who failed the past-event tasks were not particularly likely to fail the more difficult future-event tasks. However, children's performance on the reasoning tasks was predictive of their performance on a task assessing their comprehension of the terms “before” and “after.” Our results suggest that there may be a developmental change over this age range in the ability to flexibly represent and reason about the before-and-after relationships between events.     

The effects of a community-based literacy program on young children's language and conceptual development

Effects of a community-based literacy program on 1−, 2−, and 3-year-old children's language and conceptual development were assessed. University students were trained to teach Head Start parents effective methods for reading to their children. Families were randomly assigned to receive 18, 3, or 0 instructional visits. Results indicated that parents in the 18-instructional-visit program increased their participation in appropriate literacy behaviors such as reading to their children, teaching concepts to their children, and using the library, more than parents in the 0-instructional-visit groups. Children in the 18-instructional-visit program showed greater gains in language and conceptual development than children in the 0-instructional-visit group. Few differences were found between children in the 3-visti and 0-instructional-visit groups. Thus, only a high-intensity community-based intervention designed to train parents was effective in increasing emergent literacy in low-income ethnic children. Supported by Commission on National and Community Service grant 92HELOCA0039, the Dr. Seuss Foundation, Head Start, and the College of Sciences at San Diego State University. The authors gratefully acknowledge William A. Hillix, Leah K. Gensheimer, and Larry Fenson for their helpful reviews of drafts of this article, Florence Goldman for her training of tutors in techniques for developing emergent literacy, and the many students who assisted in the implementation and evaluation of this project.     

Developmental changes in probabilistic reasoning: The role of cognitive capacity,instructions, thinking styles,and relevant knowledge

In three experiments we explored developmental changes in probabilistic reasoning, taking into account the effects of cognitive capacity, thinking styles, and instructions. Normative responding increased with grade levels and cognitive capacity in all experiments, and it showed a negative relationship with superstitious thinking. The effect of instructions (in Experiments 2 and 3) was moderated by level of education and cognitive capacity. Specifically, only higher-grade students with higher cognitive capacity benefited from instructions to reason on the basis of logic. The implications of these findings for research on the development of probabilistic reasoning are also discussed.     

医学文章写作中的概念问题及应对措施

形式逻辑中的概念表达,是医学文章写作的基本方面,概念表达不明确,就不能清晰地表达出文章的内容,因此,枚举了医学文章中某些概念表达不明确的现象,并提出了应对措施,意在建议医学文章的写作者,加强医学文章写作中明确表达概念的意识,努力提高写作质量。     

Strategies in Forecasting Outcomes in Ethical Decision-Making: Identifying and Analyzing the Causes of the Problem

This study examined the role of key causal analysis strategies in forecasting and ethical decision-making. Undergraduate participants took on the role of the key actor in several ethical problems and were asked to identify and analyze the causes, forecast potential outcomes, and make a decision about each problem. Time pressure and analytic mindset were manipulated while participants worked through these problems. The results indicated that forecast quality was associated with decision ethicality, and the identification of the critical causes of the problem was associated with both higher quality forecasts and higher ethicality of decisions. Neither time pressure nor analytic mindset impacted forecasts or ethicality of decisions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

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.     

Children's Coping in the Context of Disasters and Terrorism

Disasters and terrorism present significant and often overwhelming challenges for children and families worldwide. Individual, family, and social factors influence disaster reactions and the diverse ways in which children cope. This article links conceptualizations of stress and coping to empirical knowledge of children's disaster reactions, identifies limitations in our current understanding, and suggests areas for future study of disaster coping. Coping strategies, developmental trajectories influencing coping, and the interplay between parent and child coping represent critical areas for advancing the field and for informing programs and services that benefit children's preparedness and foster resilience in the face of mass trauma.     

儿童期负研究的问题与前瞻

简要评价了儿童欺负研究的现状和不足,其中包括欺负的界定、欺负的系统发生性和互动本质、欺负的适应意义等基本理论问题和具体研究方法、被试选择、研究思路和模式等方法论问题.在此基础上,简要剖析了未来研究的发展趋向.     

The acquisition of scientific knowledge: the influence of methods of questioning and analysis on the interpretation of children's conceptions of the earth

Studies of children's knowledge of the Earth have led to very different conclusions: some appear to show that children construct their own, non‐scientific ‘theories’ (mental models) of the flat, hollow or dual Earth. Others indicate that many young children have some understanding of the spherical (scientific) Earth, and that their knowledge lacks the coherence of mental models. The reasons for these contrasting views were tested by interviewing French children (N = 178) aged 5–11 years and varying the different methods used in previous research, namely the types of questions (open and forced‐choice), the form of representation (two‐dimensional pictures and three‐dimensional models), and the method of analysis (the mental model theorists' coding scheme and a statistical test for associations using MANOVA). Forced‐choice questions resulted in higher proportions of scientific answers than open questions, and children appeared to have naïve mental models of the Earth only when the mental model theorists' coding scheme was used. These findings support the view that children tend to have ‘fragments’ of scientific knowledge, and that naïve mental models of the Earth are methodological artifacts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developmental changes in the recognition of faces and facial features

The view that, as children get older, there is a decline in the use of feature‐based forms of face processing to more configurational forms of processing was examined by asking 6‐year‐old and 9‐year‐old children to judge which of two photographs matches an identical probe photograph. The probe and test stimuli were either photographs of whole faces or photographs of isolated facial features. Within this standard method, the stimuli also systematically varied in terms of the familiarity of the faces shown and in the orientation of presentation, both factors that have been interpreted as effecting configurational encoding. A number of age‐related effects are observed: (a) older children are better at recognizing whole faces than younger children, (b) older children exhibit a clear face inversion effect with whole faces while the younger children are equally adept at identifying upright and inverted whole faces, and (c) analysis of the recognition rates associated with the individual features reveals that younger children are better than older children when asked to recognize eye regions. It is argued that the data support the view that as children get older there is a change in the forms of piecemeal encoding employed and an increase in configurational processing. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of labour on ownership decisions in two cultures: Developmental evidence from Japan and the United Kingdom

Creative labour has an effect on children's and adults' ownership decisions in Western cultures. We investigated whether preschoolers and adults from an Eastern culture (Japan) would show a similar bias. In a first‐party task (Experiment 1), in which participants created their own objects, Japanese preschoolers but not adults assigned ownership to creators. When participants watched videos of third‐party conflicts between owners of materials and creators (Experiment 2), Japanese adults, but not preschoolers, transferred ownership to creators. In a British comparison group, both preschoolers and adults showed an effect of creative labour in the third‐party task. A bias to attribute ownership on the basis of creative labour is thus not specific to Western culture.     

儿童认知发展研究的前沿与动向

近一二十年,得益于认知发展理论的进步和研究方法的新发展,儿童认知发展研究取得了长足的进步。这体现在婴儿研究方兴未艾,一些新课题的出现使一些传统的研究领域重新恢复了活力。同时．发展认知神经科学和认知行为遗传学这两个边沿交叉学科研究蓬勃发展,应用认知发展心理学研究迅速发展,对认知发展心理学研究均产生了巨大的影响。     

儿童反语理解的心理机制

反语是指使用与本意相反的字面形式表达本意的一种修辞形式,在儿童言语发展领域中是一种难度较大的认知对象。该对儿童在反语理解任务中的困难根源进行了探讨,介绍了目前关于儿童反语理解的心理机制研究的两种主要途径,一是采用成人反语识别理论去解释儿童反语理解的心理过程,二是从二阶心理理论角度开展的解释儿童反语理解的心理机制的尝试,最后在暗示假装理论和二阶心理理论的框架下对现有的研究证据进行了整合的讨论,并对未来研究提出了建议。     

儿童自传记忆形成与发展的机制研究评述

作为对个人现实生活记忆的自传记忆,其形成和发展的机制十分复杂,但它却是研究儿童认知发展和社会性发展的重要切人点。本文在生命全程视野的背景下,评析了自传记忆形成中童年期遗忘、消退的精神分析理论解释,自传记忆早期形成中的经验证据;文中从三个层面即神经机制层面、认知机制层面和社会作用机制层面,进一步揭示了自传记忆早期形成的特点和内在作用机制。