DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN'S TELEOLOGICAL VIEW OF ARTIFACTS

这个项目关注儿童目的论倾向的发展，将物体视为“为功能而设计的”。对于成年人来说，目的论假设为解释和推断人工制品（如椅子）和生物结构（如眼睛）提供了重要的基础（Dennett, 1987）。然而，先前的研究表明，与成年人相比，幼儿也会将无生命的自然物体（如岩石）理解为有目的的设计。本研究的主要目标是通过研究3- 6岁儿童对人工制品的设计、功能和身份之间关系的概念的发展进程，来理解为什么儿童将功能过度归因于非生物的自然种类。关注工件来探索这个问题有几个原因。首先，对于成年人来说，人工制品提供了一个功能存在的最清晰的对象实例，因为它们的出现完全是由设计师的意图来解释的，即它们实现了某些目标。其次，关于为什么孩子们用目的论的术语来解释岩石等实体的属性，一个假设是，在没有其他解释的情况下，他们把它们当作故意设计的准人工制品（Kelemen, 1998; Piaget, 1929）。本研究旨在利用多种实验方法和扩大的年龄范围，复制、扩展和澄清先前关于儿童和成人目的论思想的工作。一组研究使用行为积极的方法来检查孩子们是否把他们自己的意图看作是固定他们刚刚设计的人工制品的功能和身份。第二组研究操纵关于新人工制品的起源和当前使用的信息，以研究其对儿童对物品身份和功能判断的影响。最后一组研究探讨了幼儿容易出现“功能固着”这一经典心理现象的程度。利用这些方法来了解儿童关于人工制品的目的论信仰的现状，将为儿童关于人工世界和自然世界的直觉和科学理论的形成和发展提供必要的见解。

This project concerns the development of children's teleological tendency to view objects as "designed for a function." For adults, teleological assumptions provide a critical basis for explanation and inference about artifacts, such as chairs, and biological structures, such as eyes, (Dennett, 1987). Previous studies suggest however, that, in contrast to adults, young children also construe non-living natural objects, such as rocks, as designed for a purpose. The major goal of the current proposal is to understand why children over-attribute function to non-biological natural kinds by studying developmental progressions in 3- to 6-year-olds conception of the relationship between the design, function and identity of artifacts. There are several reasons for focusing on artifacts to explore this question. First, for adults, artifacts provide the clearest instance of objects that exist for a function because their occurrence is entirely explained by a designer's intention that they fulfill some goal. Second, one hypothesis as to why children explain the properties of entities such a rocks in teleological terms is that in the absence of alternative accounts, they treat them as intentionally-designed quasi- artifacts (Kelemen, 1998; also Piaget, 1929). The proposed studies aim to replicate, extend, and clarify prior work on children's and adult's teleological thought using a variety of experimental methods and an expanded age range. One set of studies uses behaviorally-active methods to examine whether children view their own intentions as fixing the function and identity of an artifact that they have just designed. A second set of studies manipulates information about the origin and current use of a novel artifact in order to study its influence on children's judgments of the object's identity and function. A final set of studies explores the degree to which young children fall prone to the classic psychological phenomenon of "functional fixedness." Using these methods to understand the status of children's teleological beliefs about artifacts will provide needed insight into the formation and development of children's intuitive and scientific theories about both the artificial and natural world.