儿童中的流言：产生、发展及信任评价

流言是指以声誉信息为基础的关于不在场第三方的评价性信息。它同时也是儿童学习社会领域知识的一个重要信息源,可以影响儿童对于他人的评价及后续的行为。本文从流言在儿童中产生与发展的过程、儿童对于流言的认知发展特点、以及儿童对于流言信任评价三方面总结了儿童流言的相关研究。最后,本文提出未来可从流言发生的机制、儿童信任流言的机制以及流言对于儿童发展的影响等方面进行深入研究。     

影响儿童选择性信任的社会性线索研究新进展

选择性信任是指儿童根据不同线索对信息提供者的可信度进行判断,从而有选择性地相信其所提供的信息。研究影响儿童选择性信任的因素对于儿童社会化发展具有重要意义,已有研究表明,这些因素可分为认识性线索和社会性线索两类,近些年的研究重在社会性线索。为探讨社会性线索对儿童选择性信任的影响,研究者对选择性信任研究的基本范式作了补充和改进,本研究概括为两类:一类是用其他任务替代物品命名任务,另一类是在熟悉阶段增加信息提供者对寻找者行为结果的反馈环节。采用这些变式,近年来学者们对信息提供者的意图、可信度特质、亲社会特质和群体认同等社会性线索对儿童选择性信任的影响进行了探讨。未来关于儿童选择性信任的研究可从探寻新的研究范式或改善现有研究范式、"知""行"分离机制、群体认同与信息正确性的影响、意图与可信度特质的关系,以及选择性信任对儿童社会化进程的影响等方面进行。     

认识性信任：学龄前儿童的选择性学习

人类个体对外界知识的获取很大程度上依赖于沟通, 即他人的证言。对儿童来说尤其如此。发展心理学家最近致力于研究学龄前儿童对他人证言的信任。一方面, 学龄前儿童往往会盲目地接受他人所告知的信息, 表现为轻信偏差; 另一方面, 儿童在知识学习上又会表现出高度的胜任力, 他们会借助一系列线索保证获取更为可靠的信息, 包括知识性线索和社会性线索。正如有关婴儿是否存在心理理论尚有争论, 儿童认识性信任的潜在机制也存在两种不同的取向, 涉及儿童是否理解信息者的心理状态。尽管对儿童知识性信息的研究取得了大量的成果和发现, 未来仍有许多问题值得探讨。     

儿童在因果知识领域内的选择性学习

儿童的选择性学习是目前认知发展领域的热点问题。儿童在因果知识领域内的选择性学习(即选择性因果学习)对于回答儿童如何获取知识这个经典问题具有重要意义。儿童的选择性因果学习表现在对他人解释的辨别、评估与采纳上。他们会主动向可靠的信息提供者寻求解释, 并在接收回答后表现出选择性跟进反应。对于他人的回答, 年幼儿童不仅能根据言语线索辨别出解释性陈述, 还能依据解释的结构特征选择更好的陈述加以采纳, 年长儿童甚至可以从不同模式的解释中灵活地学习更适宜的因果知识。未来研究应深入关注解释的其它特征在儿童选择性因果学习中的作用, 进一步探讨选择性因果学习的认知机制。     

信任倾向和面孔可信度对小学儿童信任判断的影响

该研究考察了7、9、11岁小学儿童对陌生人信任判断的发展特点,以及信任方的信任倾向和被信任方的面孔可信度在儿童信任判断中的作用特点及其发展特征。结果发现：（1）7、9、11岁小学儿童基于面孔对陌生他人进行的信任判断中,9、11岁儿童的信任水平要高于7岁儿童;（2）在信任判断中,陌生交往者的面孔可信度对7、9和11岁儿童的信任判断都具有显著的影响作用,即相对于具有不可信面孔的陌生人,儿童更愿意相信具有可信面孔的陌生人;此外,信任倾向对于信任判断的影响作用则存在一定的年龄间差异,7岁儿童的信任倾向对信任判断无影响,9和11岁儿童的信任倾向正向预测儿童对陌生人的信任水平,即相对于信任倾向低的儿童,信任倾向高的儿童对陌生人的信任水平也越高;（3）被信任方的面孔可信度在小学儿童信任判断中的影响作用要大于儿童自身的信任倾向的影响作用。这些结果表明儿童对他人的信任水平随着年龄的增长而提高;对于陌生人,小学儿童主要依据被信任方相关的可信特征线索做出相应的信任判断。     

追溯儿童选择性社会学习的发展渊源

<正>儿童社会学习的研究对于我们理解人类发展至关重要。向他人学习可以让儿童高效地获取信息,但是并非所有由他人传达的信息都是准确或是值得学习的。大量研究表明,学龄前儿童是有选择地向他人学习,而不是向所有人学习。可把社会学习定义为接受他人提供的信息或互动影响的学习。社会学习在动物世界中很普遍,     

儿童推断他人知识状态的知识偏差和无知偏差

采用“看见-知道”任务考察了儿童对他人知识状态推断的特点和可能存在的偏差效应。被试为90名3-5岁儿童。结果表明,3-5岁儿童已经理解他人看见即知道的关系;5岁儿童已经能准确地推断他人的知识状态,不存在偏差;但3、4岁儿童对他人知识状态的推断受到自身知识的影响且表现出自我中心的倾向：既存在知识偏差即因为自己知道而高估他人的知识,也存在无知偏差即因为自己的无知而低估他人的知识。4岁儿童的知识偏差程度与3岁儿童无异,但无知偏差低于3岁儿童,且4岁儿童的知识偏差程度大于其无知偏差,儿童克服无知偏差的时间可能早于克服知识偏差的时间。     

听障儿童错误信念理解与谎言理解的关系：情绪理解的调节作用

目的：本研究主要探讨听障儿童自我/他人错误信念理解与谎言理解各层面的关系,以及情绪理解在其中的调节作用。方法：实验一采用错误信念理解和谎言理解来探讨自我/他人错误信念理解与谎言理解各层面的关系。实验二增加了情绪理解任务,并探讨情绪理解在错误信念理解和谎言理解之间的背后机制。结果：(1)听障儿童他人错误信念理解、谎言意图理解的正确率显著不如典型发展儿童,且他人错误信念理解越好,越容易进行真假信息辨别和谎言意图理解;(2)典型发展儿童自我/他人错误信念理解越准确,谎言意图理解越好：(3)当听障儿童情绪理解得分较高时,自我/他人错误信念理解对谎言行为判断具有正向预测作用;(4)典型发展儿童情绪理解得分较高时,自我错误信念对真假信息辨别有正向预测作用,他人错误信念理解对谎言行为判断、真假信息辨别有正向预测作用。结论：这些研究结果不仅表明听障儿童他人错误信念理解对谎言理解具有解释作用,而且推动高情绪理解在谎言理解中的促进作用,以及表明高情绪理解对错误信念理解与谎言理解中的调节作用更加显著。     

信息提供者的先前准确性对幼儿选择性信任的影响

作为社会学习的个体,幼儿从3岁起就能根据信息提供者先前准确性的差异对其可信程度进行评估。通过对以往研究效应量的整理分析发现,随年龄增长,幼儿对高先前准确性信息提供者的信任程度表现出增长趋势（3岁幼儿选择的效应量中值为d_询问=0.60,d_赞同=0.61;4岁幼儿的效应量中值为d_询问=0.80,d_赞同=0.96）。在运用先前准确性进行评估时,幼儿主要关注信息提供者是否犯错,灵活使用"整体印象"和"特质推测"两种认知策略对其未来行为进行推测。幼儿能够根据自身对材料的感知对信息提供者的可信程度进行动态调整,其心理理论发展水平和执行功能限制了他们的选择信任,而信息提供者同时具有的社会性因素对幼儿的选择也具有干扰作用（幼儿信任准确的信息提供者的效应量中值为d_询问=-0.03,d_赞同=-0.17）。未来研究可以改进实验范式,进一步探查先前准确性对幼儿选择性信任的影响,拓展信息提供者的呈现方式和其它多重特征,关注不同类别的信息提供者。     

认同整合促进流动儿童文化适应:文化框架转换的解释

采用2(认同身份启动,城市身份和农村身份)×2(认同整合,高认同整合和低认同整合)的被试间实验设计,通过行为实验法对来自北京、威海的108名流动儿童进行测试,考察其对于城市他人和农村他人的评价,进一步分析认同整合促进流动儿童心理适应的内在机制。结果表明:与低认同整合者相比较,高认同整合流动儿童对城市儿童的人际关系和学习成绩的评价更积极,表现出同化效应。揭示了文化框架转换是认同整合促进流动儿童文化适应的内在机制。     

中小学生人际信任、成就动机及其与合作倾向的关系研究

目的：旨在揭示中小学儿童的人际信任、成就动机水平及其与合作倾向之间的关系。方法：运用马基量表、人际信任量表、成就动机量表和合作倾向评价表对553名3-8年级学生进行测查。结果：1,初中男女生在人际信任水平上出现明显分化。2,男生追求成功的动机和避免失败的动机随年龄增长出现下降趋势,女生追求成功的动机下降,避免失败的动机上升。3,追求成功的动机与合作倾向有显著正相关。结论：与人际信任水平相比,成就动机在儿童合作倾向的评价中发挥了更大的作用。     

Children’s social cognition about proactive aggression

In this study, 6- and 9-year-old children (N = 258) observed two instances of proactive aggression (one relational and the other direct aggression) that were committed by members of a group toward out-group members. Participants were either members of the group or independent observers. Analyses of participants’ social cognition about the aggressor and the aggression (cause of aggression, moral judgment of aggression, attitudes toward the aggressor, and exclusion of the aggressor) indicated that, overall, group members were more positive toward aggressors than were independent observers. Although intergroup competition was perceived to be the cause of the aggression, participants disapproved of both types of aggression (especially direct aggression), disapproval increased with age, and girls disapproved of relational aggression more than did boys. Group members’ social cognition about the aggressor and the aggression comprised a coherent cognitive process for both types of aggression, but the observers’ process was simpler and differed by aggression type.     

儿童空间再定向能力发展的理论之争

空间再定向是指迷失方向的个体在空间中重新确定自己方位并找回迷失方向前丢失或被隐藏物体的能力.几何模块理论、适应性结合理论和视觉图像匹配理论都能够对儿童空间再定向做出一定解释,但三者之间互不相容,并存在局限:解释不了语言对整合几何和非几何信息的影响、环境空间大小和参照系选择对再定向的影响以及空间再定向中性别差异的现象.今后研究应注意实验的生态效应、空间条件的规则性、几何信息的直接性与间接性以及对三个理论的整合.     

Becoming irreplaceable: How comparisons to the partner’s alternatives differentially affect low and high self-esteem people

It is proposed that people are motivated to feel hard to replace in romantic relationships because feeling irreplaceable fosters trust in a partner’s continued responsiveness. By contrast, feeling replaceable motivates compensatory behavior aimed at strengthening the partner’s commitment to the relationship. A correlational study of dating couples and two experiments examined how satiating/thwarting the goal of feeling irreplaceable differentially affects relationship perception and behavior for low and high self-esteem people. The results revealed that satiating the goal of feeling irreplaceable increases trust for people low in self-esteem. In contrast, thwarting the goal of feeling irreplaceable increases compensatory behaviors meant to prove one’s indispensability for people high in self-esteem.     

To belief or not belief: Children’s theory of mind

This paper provides a minimalist framework for understanding the development of children’s theory of mind (ToM). First, I provide a critical analysis of rich interpretations of ToM tasks tapping infants’ understanding of perception, goals, intentions, and false beliefs. I argue that the current consensus that infants understand mental states is premature, and instead, that excellent statistical learning skills and attention to human faces and motion enable infants’ very good performance, and reflect an implicit understanding of behavior. Children subsequently develop an explicit understanding of mental states through talk from parents and siblings, their developing language abilities, and their developing distinction between self and other. The paper also examines corollary theories such as the idea that there are subsystems of a theory of mind (ToM), that infants use rules on false belief tasks, that minimalist theory is post hoc, and that parallel onset of success on different ToM tasks indicates an underlying ToM. The paper concludes by considering previous arguments against minimalist interpretations of infant performance.     

The role of epistemic and social characteristics in children’s selective trust: Three meta‐analyses

Over the last 15 years, researchers have been increasingly interested in understanding the nature and development of children’s selective trust. Three meta‐analyses were conducted on a total of 51 unique studies (88 experiments) to provide a quantitative overview of 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children’s selective trust in an informant based on the informant’s epistemic or social characteristics, and to examine the relation between age and children’s selective trust decisions. The first and second meta‐analyses found that children displayed medium‐to‐large pooled effects in favor of trusting the informant who was knowledgeable or the informant with positive social characteristics. Moderator analyses revealed that 4‐year‐olds were more likely to endorse knowledgeable informants than 3‐year‐olds. The third meta‐analysis examined cases where two informants simultaneously differed in their epistemic and social characteristics. The results revealed that 3‐year‐old children did not selectively endorse informants who were more knowledgeable but had negative social characteristics over informants who were less knowledgeable but had positive social characteristics. However, 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds consistently prioritized epistemic cues over social characteristics when deciding who to trust. Together, these meta‐analyses suggest that epistemic and social characteristics are both valuable to children when they evaluate the reliability of informants. Moreover, with age, children place greater value on epistemic characteristics when deciding whether to endorse an informant’s testimony. Implications for the development of epistemic trust and the design of studies of children’s selective trust are discussed.     

Children’s sequential information search is sensitive to environmental probabilities

We investigated 4th-grade children’s search strategies on sequential search tasks in which the goal is to identify an unknown target object by asking yes–no questions about its features. We used exhaustive search to identify the most efficient question strategies and evaluated the usefulness of children’s questions accordingly. Results show that children have good intuitions regarding questions’ usefulness and search adaptively, relative to the statistical structure of the task environment. Search was especially efficient in a task environment that was representative of real-world experiences. This suggests that children may use their knowledge of real-world environmental statistics to guide their search behavior. We also compared different related search tasks. We found positive transfer effects from first doing a number search task on a later person search task.     

Epistemic trust: modeling children's reasoning about others' knowledge and intent

A core assumption of many theories of development is that children can learn indirectly from other people. However, indirect experience (or testimony) is not constrained to provide veridical information. As a result, if children are to capitalize on this source of knowledge, they must be able to infer who is trustworthy and who is not. How might a learner make such inferences while at the same time learning about the world? What biases, if any, might children bring to this problem? We address these questions with a computational model of epistemic trust in which learners reason about the helpfulness and knowledgeability of an informant. We show that the model captures the competencies shown by young children in four areas: (1) using informants’ accuracy to infer how much to trust them; (2) using informants’ recent accuracy to overcome effects of familiarity; (3) inferring trust based on consensus among informants; and (4) using information about mal‐intent to decide not to trust. The model also explains developmental changes in performance between 3 and 4 years of age as a result of changing default assumptions about the helpfulness of other people.     

Children’s mapping between symbolic and nonsymbolic representations of number

When children learn to count and acquire a symbolic system for representing numbers, they map these symbols onto a preexisting system involving approximate nonsymbolic representations of quantity. Little is known about this mapping process, how it develops, and its role in the performance of formal mathematics. Using a novel task to assess children’s mapping ability, we show that children can map in both directions between symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical representations and that this ability develops between 6 and 8 years of age. Moreover, we reveal that children’s mapping ability is related to their achievement on tests of school mathematics over and above the variance accounted for by standard symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical tasks. These findings support the proposal that underlying nonsymbolic representations play a role in children’s mathematical development.     

Children’s lies and their detection: Implications for child witness testimony

The veracity of child witness testimony is central to the justice system where there are serious consequences for the child, the accused, and society. Thus, it is important to examine how children’s lie-telling abilities develop and the factors that can influence their truthfulness. The current review examines children’s lie-telling ability in relation to child witness testimony. Although research demonstrates that children develop the ability to lie at an early age, they also understand that lie-telling is morally unacceptable and do not condone most types of lies. Children’s ability to lie effectively develops with age and is related to their increasing cognitive sophistication. However, even children’s early lies can be difficult to detect. Greater lie elaboration requires greater skill and children’s ability to lie effectively improves with development and as a function of cognitive skill. Different methods of promoting children’s truthful reports as well as the social and motivational factors that affect children’s honesty will be discussed.