自闭症儿童的心理理论与中心信息整合的关系探讨

自闭症儿童的心理理论一直是儿童心理理论研究的重要领域,自闭症儿童身上心理理论缺失这一领域特殊性的加工缺损与弱的中心信息整合这一领域一般性的加工异常之问的关系研究逐渐受到了广泛关注。在阐述自闭症领域的心理理论研究,并介绍弱的中心信息整合理论的基本观点和实验证据之后,在此探讨了两者之间的关系,包括两者相互独立的观点、相互关联的观点以及其他的不同观点,并对今后的研究方向做出了展望。     

The Biological Basis of Social Interaction

The fact that brain disorder can impair social interactions in different ways suggests that social competence has multiple components that have foundations in brain systems. The physiological basis of one aspect of social cognition, theory of mind, is just beginning to be understood. Brain-imaging studies suggest that a network of areas linking medial prefrontal and temporal cortex forms the neural substrate of mentalizing, that is, representing one's own and other people's mental states. The medial prefrontal areas are prominent also in tasks that involve self-monitoring, whereas the temporal regions are prominent also in tasks that involve the representation of goals of actions. We speculate that the precursors of mentalizing ability derive from a brain system that evolved for representing agents and actions, and the relationships between them.     

A study on the theory of “returning to the original” and “recovering nature” in Chinese philosophy

The approach of returning to the original and recovering nature is a typical characteristic of Chinese philosophy. It was founded by the Daoist School and followed by both Daoist and Confucian schools. The precondition of returning to the original and recovering nature is the stillness and goodness within nature integrated into a whole afterwards. Its implementation includes not only returning to the original root so as to achieve the philosophical aim but also restoration to the original nature after it is injured by man’s physical nature and desire. The realization of human nature depends on the work making up for the loss of the original nature. Although there are different methods of realization concerning the return to the original nature, such as returning to the root, seeking the lost mind, extinguishing desire, being good at return, and the self-consciousness of intuitive knowledge, all of these aim at returning to the original nature of stillness and purity. The philosophical value consists in the unceasing pursuit of returning to the original nature.     

Preschoolers’ understanding of multiple orientations to reality: The adjectives task

Preschoolers’ understanding that an object can be accurately described using two different non-synonymous words was investigated using a task in which children (N = 36) had to judge which of two animals had provided correct adjectival labels for a series of pictures. For some pictures, only one animal provided a correct adjective, for some both animals were correct, and for some neither was correct. For all types of judgement, 4-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds. Children in both age groups performed worst on trials where both animals were correct. Children's performance on the adjectives task related to concurrent understanding of the appearance–reality distinction, but not to false-belief task performance. Implications for children's mentalizing development are discussed.     

Children's understanding of human and super-natural mind

Barrett, Richert, and Driesenga [Barrett, J. L., Richert, R. A., & Driesenga, A. (2001). God's beliefs versus mother's: The development of nonhuman agents concepts. Child Development, 72(1), 50–65] have suggested that children are able to conceptualize the representational properties held by certain super-natural entities, such as God, before they achieve representational understanding of the human mind. The two experimental conditions of the present study aimed at cross-checking the above suggestion. One hundred and twenty children aged from 3 to 7 years were involved in both conditions. In the first, a modified perspective-taking and appearance-reality task, similar to that adopted in Barrett et al.'s study, was used. The task in the second addressed another aspect of representational understanding of the human mind, that is, the early emerging of the rule that knowledge is constrained by perception. The results of the study showed that younger children systematically treat God as a human protagonist regarding the representational properties they possess. Moreover, it was found that children are able to reason, accurately, about God's representational properties, only upon reaching their 5th year of age, when their representational understanding of the human mind becomes stable and robust.     

The executive demands of strategic reasoning are modified by the way in which children are prompted to think about the task: Evidence from 3- to 4-year-olds

We investigated a test of strategic reasoning (the Windows task) that in different studies has yielded contrasting pictures of young children's executive abilities [Russell, J., Mauthner, N., Sharpe, S., & Tidswell, T. (1991). The “windows task” as a measure of strategic deception in preschoolers and autistic subjects. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9, 331–349; Samuels, M. C., Brooks, P. J., & Frye, D. (1996). Strategic game playing through the windows task. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 14, 159–172]. An experiment with 52 three- to four-year-olds showed robust effects of different wordings for the prompts used to ask children to respond, and found that a single exposure to the facilitating wording led to improved performance on subsequent trials where the standard wording was used. This suggests that the effect of the wording was to help children infer an appropriate basis for responding, and not to reduce the trial-by-trial working memory or inhibitory demands of the task.     

认知科学——新千年的前沿领域

认知科学是研究人类心智奥秘的高度交叉的综合性学科,它探讨影响人类未来发展命运的重大前沿科学问题,并且受到了社会各界的广泛关注和重视。基于大量翔实的资料,文章介绍了国内外认知科学研究现状,分析了认知科学的研究趋势,探讨了认知科学的应用前景,并指出未来研究者所面临的挑战。     

成年个体的心理理论与执行功能

为了说明成年个体心理理论与执行功能的发展及两者的关系,在匹配了智商和教育水平条件下,采用心理理论故事理解任务、失言理解任务和威斯康星卡片分类任务分别探察了30名62~77岁的老年人和30名19~25岁青年人的心理理论和执行功能。结果表明,老年人和青年人在2种心理理论任务上的得分与卡片分类任务的得分都不存在显著相关,老年人在失言任务上的得分显著低于青年人,在心理理论故事理解任务上和威斯康星卡片分类任务上,老年人的表现与青年人没有显著差异。结合已有的研究结果提示：心理理论与执行功能的相关模式在成年和学前阶段是不同的。     

从心理理论与执行功能的关系看孤独症

孤独症是一种病因未明的广泛性发展障碍,它的诊断主要基于患者的行为表现。针对这些行为特点,研究者们提出了心理理论缺失说和执行功能障碍说。但是,有研究表明孤独症患者并不是在所有的心理理论任务和执行功能任务上都存在障碍。所以,单纯地采用心理理论缺失说或执行功能障碍说都不能完整解释孤独症症状。一般来说,心理理论缺失的孤独症个体,同时也伴有执行功能障碍。近年来,大量的研究结果发现,心理理论与执行功能确实存在紧密联系。然而,目前对它们关系的考察主要集中在学龄前儿童的错误信念理解和抑制控制上。心理理论与执行功能都分别包含许多成分,它们彼此的关系可能会在不同年龄段发生变化。因此,研究者需要进一步探查不同年龄段,不同心理理论任务与执行功能不同成分与范式之间的关系,并将这种关系应用于临床实践,帮助诊断和培训孤独症个体。     

对心理理论两成分认知模型的验证

Tager-Flusberg 和 Sullivan（2000）从主体信息加工的角度出发首次提出了一个心理理论模型,认为心理理论包括两个成分：一个是社会知觉成分,一个是社会认知成分。本研究设计了一个适合儿童特点的测查社会知觉成分的任务,将对心理理论两成分模型作进一步的验证,并对语言和心理理论两个成分的关系进行了初步探讨。被试为90名3~5岁的儿童,男女各半。结果表明心理理论的认知成分同语言相关密切,而知觉成分同语言没有表现出明显的相关。这个结果为该认知模型提供了进一步的证据