INFANTS' USE OF PHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE

最近关于婴儿对物理世界的理解的研究表明， 婴儿和成年人对物体的看法是一样的。 例如，在一个示例中， 现在有充分的证据表明，即使是年幼的婴儿也会意识到， 物体在没有支撑的情况下不能保持稳定。 拟议的研究建立 这些发现。 它探索了婴儿使用身体的能力， 知识，以做出关于（a）哪些表面属于同一个 对象和（B）哪些对象属于同一类别。 隔离和 分类是两个任务，显示出明确的知识效应的成年人。 初步的研究结果表明，年幼的婴儿可以利用他们的直觉 关于支持隔离和分类对象。 拟议 实验将试图通过考虑其他因素来扩展这些发现。 幼儿的物理知识。 此外，拟议的 实验将开始探索婴儿如何整合他们的 知识与信息相冲突的物理知识，尤指知觉知识 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，婴儿都经历了 在这些阶段中，他们更重视感知而不是 物理知识信息。 实验计划。测试 这些阶段的一般性，并详细说明使 孩子们会经历这些阶段。

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.