8─11个月婴儿迂回行为发展特点与学习能力的研究

采用程序标准化的婴儿迂回行为测验,探讨了２４４名８－１１个月婴儿的迂回行为发展特点及学习能力。结果表明：（１）８－１１个月婴儿的迂回行为水平表现出随婴儿月龄的增长而提高的趋势。（２）８－１１个月的婴儿具有从反复尝试中学会迂回行为的可能性,其中９、１０个月的婴儿的学习可能性较大,而８个月婴儿的学习可能性较小。（３）８－１１个月婴儿的学习速度随月龄增大而提高。     

BEHAVIORAL CUSPS: A DEVELOPMENTAL AND PRAGMATIC CONCEPT FOR BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

Most concepts of development explain certain behavior changes as products or markers of the invariable succession of emerging periods, stages, refinements, or achievements that define and order much of an individual's life. A different but comparable concept can be derived from the most basic mechanisms of behavior analysis, which are its environmental contingencies, and from its most basic strategy, which is to study behavior as its subject matter. From a behavior-analytic perspective, the most fundamental developmental questions are (a) whether these contingencies vary in any systematic way across the life span, and thus make behavior change in a correspondingly systematic way; and (b) whether some of these contingencies and their changes have more far-reaching consequences than others, in terms of the importance to the organism and others, of the behavior classes they change. Certain behavior changes open the door to especially broad or especially important further behavior change, leading to the concept of the behavioral cusp. A behavioral cusp, then, is any behavior change that brings the organism's behavior into contact with new contingencies that have even more far-reaching consequences. Of all the environmental contingencies that change or maintain behavior, those that accomplish cusps are developmental. Behavior change remains the fundamental phenomenon of development for a behavior-analytic view; a cusp is a special instance of behavior change, a change crucial to what can come next.     

Content variations and performance on formal operational tasks by gender,social class and ability1

The role of task content, gender, social class and cognitive ability in performance on two formal operational tasks is explored in this paper. The participants were 110 Icelandic 12-year-olds, early and late developers, males and females from all socio-economic groups. Two tasks of variable isolation (the pendulum and three content versions of the “plant” problem) and two measures of volume conservation (three traditional tasks and three tasks formally identical whose content was pictorial social play) were presented individually in a school setting. The results suggest that content variations have differential consequences for the performance of early and late developers at age 12. Both the nature of logical competence and task content affect solutions, as suggested by Overton and collaborators in 1987. Some social class and gender differences were observed on two Piagetian tasks (pendulum and volume), which was reduced by changing the task content in the case of social class but not in that of gender. As the gender difference in volume conservation was not reflected ins chool achievement nor on other cognitive tasks it was interpreted as a gender bias. The findings are discussed in view of recent literature on the development of cognitive theory with increased emphasis on context and meaning in a post-structural intellectual climate.     

Implications of college-age narcissism for psychosocial functioning at midlife: Findings from a longitudinal study of women

Positive and negative implications of two types of college-age narcissism on psychosocial functioning at midlife were studied in a longitudinal sample of women. Both types were scored with self-report measures when the women were, on the average, age 21. Throughout the first half of their adult life, high scorers on covert narcissism presented themselves as lacking in confidence and having low morale; high scorers on overt narcissism described themselves as wanting admiration, being independent, and being forceful. Positive outcomes associated with covert narcissism included the development of insight and of a differentiated sense of the self and, in the case of overt narcissism, entailed an involvement in high-status and creative work careers. At midlife, high scorers on covert narcissism experienced negative affect and feelings of being neglected, whereas high scorers on overt narcissism experienced family conflict and problems with impulse control. The personality characteristics associated with both types of narcissism remained stable from the early 20s to early 50s.     

幼儿从电视中学单词──项伴随学习的研究

对幼儿从电视中伴随学习单词的可能性及其影响因素进行了初步的探讨。４０名小班幼儿和４６名大班幼儿参加了实验,他们在接近自然的状态下观看有字幕的动画片。结果发现：幼儿在无任何指导的情况下观看有字幕的动画片,能伴随学习到汉字,这表明,电视对幼儿的词汇发展有着积极的影响;不同性别的儿童都能同等程度地从电视中伴随学习到单词;词义的伴随学习受幼儿原有的词汇水平和幼儿对目标词熟悉程度的影响;词音的伴随学习只发生在词汇水平较高的幼儿当中,并且随着幼儿对目标词熟悉程度的增加而增加;词音和词义的伴随学习存在频度效应。     

学前儿童对汉语副词的理解和运用

在汉语中,副词是一种比较独特的词类,它没有具体形象的物体可作为理解支柱,因而儿童对它的掌握较晚。在各类副词中,５、６岁儿童对范围副词的理解最佳,时间副词次之,程度副词最差。三者的差异均有非常显著性意义。即使在每一类副词中,由于儿童概念发展的不均衡性,掌握的顺序也有先后。     

Converging measures of speech segmentation in preverbal infants

Two studies using novel extensions of the conditioned head-turning method examined contributions of rhythmic and distributional properties of syllable strings to 8-month-old infants' speech segmentation. The two techniques introduced exploit fundamental, but complementary, properties of representational units. The first involved assessment of discriminative response maintenance when simple training stimuli were embedded in more complex speech contexts; the second involved measurement of infants' latencies in detecting extraneous signals superimposed on speech stimuli. A complex pattern of results is predicted if infants succeed in grouping syllables into higher-order units. Across the two studies, the predicted pattern of results emerged, indicating that rhythmic properties of speech play an important role in guiding infants toward potential linguistically relevant units and simultaneously demonstrating that the techniques proposed here provide valid, converging measures of infants' auditory representational units.     

与年龄相关的认知速度减慢及学习改善过程

该工作应用人机对话方式完成心算、符号数字、数字鉴别和计数四项作业认知速度年老减慢及学习改善过程的研究,被试３５０人,４６—７５岁。研究结果表明：四项认知作业速度随年老进行性减慢;然而,老年人经学习训练认知作业速度可明显改善。上述变化程度与作业所需时间有密切关系,提示年老过程中枢信息加工过程速度的减慢快于外周感觉─运动过程速度的减慢,学习改善作用也可能主要是中枢过程速度的提高。     

小学儿童奖赏公平性的认知发展

采用信息加工研究途径并假设故事情境探索小学儿童对奖赏公平性的社会认知发展,并将儿童的发展与成人作对比。研究结果表明,７,９岁儿童容易将＂均等＂与＂公平＂混淆,还没形成一个稳定的分配模式,而１２岁儿童已能运用＂努力＂、＂成果＂、＂能力＂等规则较为稳定地作出公平奖赏决定或评价,但还没达到对更高层次的社会准则的理解和掌握。儿童这一发展制约于他们的信息加工能力以及获得有关社会价值观的社会化过程。