5岁儿童能够理解假装的心理表征:对Moe任务的质疑

本研究通过三个实验对Lillard的Moe假装任务进行了重复与改进,旨在探讨儿童对假装行为中知识状态作用的理解,进而讨论儿童对假装的心理本质的理解。实验一表明,“是否”问题使得5岁儿童在该任务上表现出肯定回答倾向;实验二表明．当改变提问方式,在问题中提供选择项目后,5岁儿童在该任务上的通过率有显著提高．肯定回答倾向明显减弱;实验三表明,当减少指导语中相互矛盾的信息、明确指出主人公知道某物而不知道另一物以及减弱对未知状态和知道状态的强调的情况下．5岁儿童能根据主人公所知道的事物来推断出其行为是在假装成该事物,能理解到知识状态在假装行为中的作用。这一结果表明5岁儿童能够理解到假装中所隐含的心理表征,Lillard所提出的Moe任务范式低估了儿童对假装的心理本质的理解能力。

5-year-old Children Can Understand the Mental Representation of Pretense: Questioning the Moe Task

To investigate children's understanding of the role of knowledge state in pretending behavior and to discuss children's understanding of pretense's mental nature,this research replicated and revised the Moe pretending task through three experiments.Experiment 1 showed that "yes-no" questions made 5-year-old children tend to answer "yes" in this task.Experiment 2 showed that changing the way of asking questions and offering an alternative object in the test questions could significantly improve children's performance and reduce the tendency of answering "yes" in the task.Experiment 3 showed that reducing the conflict information in the story,telling children the character in the story knew one entity but didn't know another,and reducing the salience of the character's ignorance and knowing states could facilitate 5-year-old children to infer that the character was pretending the entity according to what the character knew,and they could understand the role of knowledge state in pretense.These results showed that 5-year-old children understood the mental representation in pretence and the Moe task might underestimate children's ability to understand the mental nature of pretense.