Why dogs have puppies and cats have kittens: The role of birth in young children's understanding of biological origins
Why dogs have puppies and cats have kittens: The role of birth in young children's understanding of biological origins
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1467-8624.1997.tb01948.x
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发表时间：
1997-06-01
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Solomon, GEA
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Johnson, SC;Solomon, GEA
三项研究考察了幼儿对出生在决定动物特性和物种身份方面的生物因果作用的理解。在研究1和2中，向4至7岁的儿童和成年人讲述了一种动物（例如，马）但被另一物种的动物收养和饲养（例如，牛）。在第一项研究中，孩子们被要求根据一系列的身体特征和信念来判断婴儿会像父母中的哪一个。大多数孩子不能说婴儿在身体特征上会像亲生父母，但分享养父母的信仰。这些结果表明，儿童没有使用特定领域的因果理解，原因这些属性的起源。然而，在研究2中，当被要求明确预测婴儿的种类时，即使是5岁的孩子也能够可靠地判断婴儿与亲生父母而不是养父母属于同一物种。这一结果表明，儿童在某种程度上确实理解出生决定物种种类。研究3进一步探讨了出生知识在多大程度上影响了儿童对属性的推断。五奥尔兹被要求判断婴儿是否会与母亲或父亲共享一系列物理和非物理属性。结果显示，那些知道婴儿来自哪里的事实信息的孩子（即，在母亲的肚子里）更倾向于将母亲的属性归因于婴儿，而不是父亲的，不管这些属性是物理的还是非物理的。但是，只有当父母中的一方的财产并不是天生就比另一方的财产更可取或更真实时，这一发现才是正确的。总之，这3项研究的结果表明，出生知识确实在儿童的推理中发挥作用，即使是5岁的孩子，但这种作用不是特定领域的。儿童的理解生物遗传的影响进行了讨论。
Three studies examined young children's understanding of the biologically causal role of birth in determining animal properties and species kind identity. In Studies 1 and 2, 4- to 7-year-olds and adults were told stories in which a baby was born to an animal of one species (e.g., a horse) but was adopted and raised by an animal of another species (e.g., a cow). in Study 1, children were asked to judge which parent the baby would resemble on a set of physical properties and beliefs. The majority of children were unable to say that the baby would resemble the birth parent on physical properties but share the beliefs of the adoptive parent. These results indicate that children were not using domain-specific causal understandings to reason about the origins of these properties. In Study 2, however, when asked to explicitly predict the kind of the baby, even 5-year-olds were able to reliably judge that the baby would be of the same species kind as the birth parent rather than the adoptive parent. This result suggests that children do understand at some level that birth determines species kind. Study 3 examined further the extent to which knowledge about birth influenced children's inferences about properties. Five-year-olds were asked to judge whether a baby would share a set of physical and nonphysical properties with its mother or its father. The results showed that children who knew the factual information about where babies come from (i.e., inside mommies' tummies) were more likely to attribute the mother's properties to the baby than the father's, regardless of whether the properties were physical or nonphysical. But this finding was true only if the property of one of the parents was not inherently more desirable or true than that of the other parent. In sum, the results of these 3 studies indicate that knowledge of birth does play a role in children's inferential reasoning, even for 5-year-olds, but that that role is not domain-specific. The implications for children's understanding of biological inheritance are discussed.