Beyond control of variables: What needs to develop to achieve skilled scientific thinking?

We identify three aspects of scientific thinking beyond the control-of-variables strategy that we claim are essential for students to master as a foundation for skilled scientific thinking. The first is strategic and involves the ability to coordinate effects of multiple causal influences on an outcome. The second is a mature understanding of the epistemological foundations of science, recognizing scientific knowledge as constructed by humans rather than simply discovered in the world. The third is the ability to engage in skilled argumentation in the scientific domain, with an appreciation of argumentation as entailing the coordination of theory and evidence. We present new empirical data with respect to the first two of these competencies, supporting the claim that they are not well developed by early adolescence and warrant attention and provision of effective kinds of scaffolding.     

儿童混合情绪的发展研究述评

混合情绪是指同一情境中同时存在两种不同或者矛盾的情绪状态,主要包括混合情绪理解和混合情绪体验两个方面,其发展模式表现为从单一情绪理解到多种情绪理解、从继时性混合到同时性混合的特点,但在具体的发展年龄特征上研究结果存在分歧。混合情绪的发展研究主要采用临床访谈法,其基本研究范式一致,但在材料的制作、刺激的呈现、被试的反应方式以及结果的处理等方面存在差异。未来,在研究范式上需要有所突破,内隐测量、认知神经科学方法等对揭示混合情绪发展规律都有其独特的优势。同时,应扩大研究对象的年龄范围,从发展水平和模式两个方面系统考察儿童混合情绪的发展特点及其影响与作用。     

Was it designed to do that? Children's focus on intended function in their conceptualization of artifacts

Do young children who seek the conceptual kind of an artifact weigh the plausibility that a current function constitutes the function intended by the object designer? Three- and four-year-olds were encouraged to question adults about novel artifacts. After inquiring about what an object was, some children were shown a function that plausibly accounted for the structural features of the object; others were shown a possible, but implausible function. Children given implausible functions were less satisfied with these responses than those given plausible functions, as shown by their more persistent attempts to ask follow-up questions about function. Accordingly, preschoolers appear to take into account matters of intentional design when assigning artifacts to conceptual kinds.     

Crime and punishment: distinguishing the roles of causal and intentional analyses in moral judgment

Recent research in moral psychology has attempted to characterize patterns of moral judgments of actions in terms of the causal and intentional properties of those actions. The present study directly compares the roles of consequence, causation, belief and desire in determining moral judgments. Judgments of the wrongness or permissibility of action were found to rely principally on the mental states of an agent, while judgments of blame and punishment are found to rely jointly on mental states and the causal connection of an agent to a harmful consequence. Also, selectively for judgments of punishment and blame, people who attempt but fail to cause harm more are judged more leniently if the harm occurs by independent means than if the harm does not occur at all. An account of these phenomena is proposed that distinguishes two processes of moral judgment: one which begins with harmful consequences and seeks a causally responsible agent, and the other which begins with an action and analyzes the mental states responsible for that action.     

Can children resist making interpretations when uncertain?

In two experiments, we examined young children's ability to delay a response to ambiguous input. In Experiment 1, 5- and 6-year-olds performed as poorly when they needed to choose between basing an interpretation on ambiguous input and delaying an interpretation as when making explicit evaluations of knowledge, whereas 7- and 8-year-olds found the former task easy. In Experiment 2, 5- and 6-year-olds performed well on a task that required delaying a response but removed the need to decide between strategies. We discuss children's difficulty with ambiguity in terms of the decision-making demands made by different procedures. These demands appear to cause particular problems for young children.     

The dispensability of (merely) intentional objects

The ontology of (merely) intentional objects is a can of worms. If we can avoid ontological commitment to such entities, we should. In this paper, I offer a strategy for accomplishing that. This is to reject the traditional act-object account of intentionality in favor of an adverbial account. According to adverbialism about intentionality, having a dragon thought is not a matter of bearing the thinking-about relation to dragons, but of engaging in the activity of thinking dragon-wise.

正确理解知情同意

知情同意最初由美国于18世纪末19世纪初提出,随着社会不断进步,医学科学的不断发展,人们权力意识的不断增强,知情同意作为患者享有的一项权力,医务人员在医疗过程中应遵循的一条原则已日益到人们的关注。然而在现实的医疗实践中人们对这一的理解和认识还存在一定的偏差。正确理解,践行知情同意既是尊重患者的权利,贯彻“以病人为中心”的原则的保证,也能有效地保护医务人员的合法权益。     

You Can Lead An Ape To A Tool But...: A Review Of Povinelli’s Folk Physics For Apes: The Chimpanzee’s Theory Of How The World Works.

We reviewed Daniel Povinelli's book, Folk physics for apes: The chimpanzee's theory of how the world works. After a summary of the book's contents, we analyzed two sets of experiments on chimpanzees' folk psychology: one that explored whether chimpanzees understand that others see (i.e., that apes have internal visual experiences) and another that examined whether chimpanzees can distinguish intended from unintended actions. The conceptual scaffolding on which these studies were conceived was sufficiently faulty that their outcomes were virtually assured a priori. We then analyzed two sets of experiments on chimpanzees' folk physics, reinforcing our view that conceptual confusion guaranteed that certain key predictions about the outcome of these studies could not be supported. A unifying reason for this conceptual confusion is that the author devalues understanding that results from programmatic conditioning. We closed the review by relating Povinelli's findings and conclusions to behavior analysis and by explaining why behavior analysts should read this book     

儿童心理理论能力中的情绪理解

情绪理解是儿童心理理论能力中的一个重要组成部分,它在人们的社会交往中具有不容忽视的作用。按Tager-Flusber和Sullivan提出的心理理论两成分模型,它属于心理理论的社会知觉成分,先于社会认知成分出现;但是随着儿童年龄的增长,社会知觉成分与社会认知成分越来越难以分离。情绪理解可分为几个不同的层次：简单情绪的理解;和愿望、信念有关的情绪理解;复杂情绪的理解;情绪调节。该文综述了近20年来心理理论中有关儿童情绪理解的研究,对该领域的研究在方法上和内容上提出了可能的发展方向。     

中小学生惯用语理解发展的研究

对惯用语理解的发展 ,是儿童语言发展的重要方面。本研究结果表明 ,在无语境条件下 ,中小学生对惯用语的理解年级差异显著 ,小学生和中学生差异较大 ,而小学和中学各年级内部差异不显著。学生对惯用语是先理解字面意义 ,再理解比喻意义。在有语境条件下 ,不同年级学生对惯用语的理解差异显著 ,惯用语语义倾向性的影响不显著 ,但语境对学生惯用语理解有重要影响 ,高年级学生能更好地利用语境。