Causes and symptoms in preschoolers' conceptions of illness
Causes and symptoms in preschoolers' conceptions of illness
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1467-8624.1996.tb01819.x
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发表时间：
1996-08-01
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Kalish, C
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kalish, C
儿童疾病概念的本质是健康心理学研究者和那些研究朴素生物学理论的研究者感兴趣的问题。最近关于概念发展的观点表明，儿童的概念并不总是成人概念的简单版本。相反，儿童的概念可能有各种不同的结构。两项研究调查了学龄前儿童（和成人）的疾病概念是否具有名义、集群或自然类型表征。概念结构的证据来自疾病的归因和对疾病属性的推断。对这些判断的症状和根本原因的作用进行了调查。结果表明，成人疾病概念具有属性聚类（如原型）结构。病因和症状都影响成年人对疾病的分类，但这两种类型的特征都不确定。成年人没有看到任何疾病的普遍特征或独特特征。儿童对疾病的看法大体上与成人一致。然而，儿童对某些属性的推断与疾病的判断高度相关。因此，与成年人相比，儿童可能将疾病视为更丰富的推理来源（因此更像是一种自然的推理）。在探索的推论中有传染的判断。儿童似乎将传染与一种特定类型的因果过程（感染）联系起来，而不是与疾病本身联系起来。结果是讨论在他们的影响帐户的儿童生物学知识。
The nature of children's concept of illness is of interest both to researchers in health psychology and to those studying naive theories of biology. Recent perspectives on conceptual development suggest that children's concepts are not always simpler versions of adults' concepts. Rather, children's concepts may have a variety of different structures. Two studies investigate whether preschoolers' (and adults') concept of illness has a nominal, cluster, or natural kind representation. Evidence for conceptual structure came from ascriptions of illness and from inferences about properties of illnesses. The roles of symptoms and underlying causes were investigated with respect to these judgments. Results suggest that adults' concept of illness has a property cluster (e.g., prototype) structure. Both causes and symptoms affected adults' categorization of illnesses, with neither type of feature being definitive. Adults did not see any features as universally or uniquely characteristic of illness. Children's ascriptions of illness generally matched adults'. However, children's inferences for some properties were highly correlated with judgments of illness. Thus, children may view illness as a richer source of inferences (and hence more like a natural kind) than do adults. Among the inferences explored were judgments of contagion. Children seemed to associate contagion with a particular type of causal process (infection) rather than with illness per se. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for accounts of children's biological knowledge.