Language and children's understanding of mental states
Language and children's understanding of mental states
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DOI：
10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00337.x
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发表时间：
2005-04-01
影响因子：
7.2
通讯作者：
Pons, F
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Harris, PL;de Rosnay, M;Pons, F
孩子们在对思想和情感的理解上取得了不同的进步。他们最终明白，人们的行为、话语和情感是由他们的信仰决定的。尽管这些洞察力出现在所有正常儿童身上，但个别儿童的进步速度有所不同。四种研究表明，语言和对话在个体发展中发挥着作用：(A)具有高级语言技能的儿童比没有高级语言技能的儿童更善于理解心理状态，(B)出生在无手语家庭的聋哑儿童在心理状态理解方面落后，以及(C)接触大量提到心理状态的母亲对话促进心理状态理解，(D)基于语言的实验干预。争论的中心是语言和对话帮助儿童理解心理状态的机制。这里评估了三种相互矛盾的解释：词汇丰富(儿童从获得丰富的心理词汇中获得)，句法丰富(儿童通过获得将一种思想嵌入另一种思想的句法工具)，以及语用丰富(儿童从表达对给定主题的不同观点的对话中获得)。务实的丰富成为最有希望的候选者。
Children progress through various landmarks in their understanding of mind and emotion. They eventually understand that people's actions, utterances, and emotions are determined by their beliefs. Although these insights emerge in all normal children, individual children vary in their rates of progress. Four lines of research indicate that language and conversation play a role in individual development: (a) Children with advanced language skills are better at mental-state understanding than those without advanced language skills, (b) deaf children born into nonsigning families lag in mental-state understanding, and (c) exposure to maternal conversation rich in references to mental states promotes mental-state understanding, as do (d) experimental language-based interventions. Debate centers on the mechanism by which language and conversation help children's understanding Of mental states. Three competing interpretations are evaluated here: lexical enrichment (the child gains from acquiring a rich mental-state vocabulary), syntactic enrichment (the child gains from acquiring syntactic tools for embedding one thought in another), and pragmatic enrichment (the child gains from conversations in which varying perspectives on a given topic are articulated). pragmatic enrichment emerges as the most promising candidate.