INFANTS' USE OF PHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE

最近关于婴儿对物理世界的理解的研究表明 婴儿与成年人对物品的许多看法相同。例如, 现在有大量证据表明，即使是年幼的婴儿也意识到 如果没有支持，对象就不能保持稳定。拟议的研究建立了 基于这些发现。它探索婴儿使用他们的身体的能力 关于(A)哪些表面属于同一表面的决策的知识 对象和(B)哪些对象属于同一类别。隔离和 归类这两项任务在成人中都表现出明显的知识效应。 初步研究结果表明，小婴儿可以利用他们的直觉 关于对分离和分类对象的支持。建议数 实验将尝试通过考虑其他方法来扩展这些发现 婴儿身体知识的方方面面。此外，建议的 实验将开始探索婴儿如何整合他们的 具有相互冲突的信息的物理知识，尤其是感性的 信息，用于对曲面或对象进行分组。初步结果表明 在隔离和分类任务中，婴儿都要经历 他们更重视知觉而不是 物理知识信息。实验已经计划好了。要测试 这些阶段的概括性，并具体说明实现 婴儿要经过这些阶段才能进步。

Recent research on infants' understanding of the physical world indicates that infants share many of adults' beliefs about objects. For example, there is now substantial evidence that even young infants appreciate that objects cannot remain stable without support. The proposed research builds on these findings. It explores infants' ability to use their physical knowledge to make decisions about (a) which surfaces belong to the same object and (b) which objects belong to the same category. Segregation and categorization are both tasks that show clear knowledge effects in adults. Preliminary findings indicate that young infants can use their intuitions about support to segregate and categorize objects. The proposed experiments will attempt to extend these findings by considering other facets of infants' physical knowledge. In addition, the proposed experiments will begin to explore how infants come to integrate their physical knowledge with conflicting information, especially perceptual information, in grouping surfaces or objects. Preliminary results suggest that, in both segregation and categorization tasks, infants go through phases in which they attach greater importance to perceptual than to physical knowledge information. Experiments are planned. to test the generality of these phases, and to specify the experiences that enable infants to progress past these phases.