INFANTS' USE OF PHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE

最近关于婴儿对物质世界的理解的研究表明 婴儿与成年人对物体的看法有很多相似之处。 例如， 现在有大量证据表明，即使是年幼的婴儿也意识到 没有支撑，物体就无法保持稳定。 拟议的研究构建 关于这些发现。 它探索婴儿运用身体的能力 做出关于 (a) 哪些表面属于同一表面的决定的知识 对象以及 (b) 哪些对象属于同一类别。 隔离和 分类这两项任务都对成年人显示出明显的知识效应。 初步研究结果表明，小婴儿可以运用他们的直觉 关于对对象的隔离和分类的支持。 拟议的 实验将尝试通过考虑其他因素来扩展这些发现 婴儿身体知识的各个方面。 此外，拟议的 实验将开始探索婴儿如何整合他们的 具有冲突信息的物理知识，尤其是感知信息 信息，对表面或对象进行分组。 初步结果表明 在隔离和分类任务中，婴儿都会经历 他们更重视感知而不是 物理知识信息。 实验已计划进行。测试 这些阶段的一般性，并具体说明能够实现的经验 婴儿要经历这些阶段。

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.