CONCEPTS AND THEORIES IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

人类发展的概念和理论

• 批准号: 6182415
• 负责人: Susan A. Gelman
• 金额: $ 14.86万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-09-30 至 2002-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6182415
• 关键词: belief; child psychology; clinical research; concept; human subject; language; middle childhood (6-11); perception; preschool child (1-5); psycholinguistics; semantics; speech

DESCRIPTION: How do children organize their knowledge about the world? Recently there has been a shift in the treatment of concepts, from traditional views assuming that concepts can be characterized by superficial features, to theory views treating concepts as embedded in common-sense explanatory frameworks. The finding that children's concepts are tied to theories is especially striking, as it runs counter to a previously widely accepted view of children's concepts as perceptually bound. In contrast, preschoolers expect category members to share nonobvious similarities, even in the face of salient perceptual dissimilarities, and judge non-visible internal parts to be especially crucial to the identity and functioning of an item. In a sense, very young children acts as if members of a category share an underlying essence. However, little is known regarding: the developmental course if essentialist beliefs below age 4; what role language plays in transmitting essentialism to children; what implications essentialism has for causal reasoning; or how to reconcile essentialism with traditional views of children as focused on salient appearances. The proposed research uses naturalistic language analyses and experimental studies with children 2 to 10 years of age to address these questions. Specifically, the proposal has three aims: 1) To examine how essentialist beliefs are expressed in natural language by children (age 2-4 years), and how natural language expressions of essentialism are interpreted by children. The studies of natural language expression will reveal the scope of essentialist beliefs early in development; the studies of natural language interpretation will reveal a mechanism whereby essentialist beliefs are transmitted; 2) To examine the developmental incorporation of non-obvious features (causes, ontologies, and internal properties) into children's categories; and 3) To reconcile essentialism with the traditional view of children as focused on perceptual aspects of the world, by clarifying the conditions that lead to different profiles of performance. This work will allow researchers to go beyond simple models that posit dichotomous shifts over development, to build more subtle and informed understandings of the conditions that lead to flexibility in performance -- and why. Altogether, these studies will provide converging and precise evidence regarding the links among concepts, language, and theory construction in early childhood.

描述：孩子们如何组织他们关于世界的知识？ 最近，概念的处理发生了转变，从 传统观点认为概念的特征是肤浅的 特征，到将概念视为嵌入常识的理论观点 解释性框架。 研究发现儿童的概念与 这些理论尤其引人注目，因为它与之前广泛传播的观点背道而驰。 公认的儿童概念受知觉束缚的观点。 相比之下， 学龄前儿童期望类别成员具有不明显的相似之处，甚至 面对显着的感知差异，并判断不可见的 内部零件对于其身份和功能尤其重要 一个项目。 从某种意义上说，非常年幼的孩子的行为就像一个类别的成员 共享一个基本本质。 然而，人们对以下方面知之甚少： 4岁以下信仰本质主义的发展过程；什么角色语言 游戏向儿童传递本质主义；有什么影响 本质主义有因果推理；或者如何调和本质主义 传统观点认为儿童注重显着的外表。 这 拟议的研究使用自然主义语言分析和实验 针对 2 至 10 岁儿童的研究来解决这些问题。 具体来说，该提案有三个目标：1）研究本质主义如何 儿童（2-4 岁）以自然语言表达信念，并且 本质主义的自然语言表达是如何解释的 孩子们。 自然语言表达的研究将揭示其范围 发展早期的本质主义信仰；自然的研究 语言解释将揭示本质主义信念的机制 被传送； 2）检查发展整合 非显而易见的特征（原因、本体论和内部属性） 儿童类别； 3）调和本质主义与传统 认为儿童关注世界的感知方面 澄清导致不同绩效的条件。 这项工作将使研究人员能够超越假设的简单模型 发展上的二分法转变，以建立更微妙和更明智的 对导致绩效灵活性的条件的理解—— 以及为什么。 总而言之，这些研究将提供收敛和精确的 关于概念、语言和理论之间联系的证据 幼儿时期的建筑。