Concepts and Theories in Human Development

该提案为儿童本质主义推理研究开辟了两个新方向。唯物主义是 某些类别有一个基本的现实，决定身份，并负责 类别成员之间的共性。唯物主义被认为是一种早期的认知偏见（Gelman， 2003年）。幼儿的概念反映了对本质主义的深刻承诺，这导致儿童看起来 在许多趋同的方式中超越明显的：当学习单词时，将知识概括到新的类别 成员，思考的作用，性质与培育，并构建因果关系的解释。这 因此，一个框架反对儿童是具体的或集中在明显的标准观点，而是 声称儿童有一个早期的，强大的倾向于寻找不明显的特征。唯物主义也 这与儿童完全通过联想学习来建立世界知识的说法背道而驰 战略，而不是认为，儿童的概念是嵌入在丰富的民间理论。 这种相互竞争的更新建立在过去的工作，以解决两个目标。第1部分探讨语言如何 作为一种机制，在学龄前儿童中构建和传递本质主义信念。 通用名词短语（例如，蝙蝠在夜间飞行）是传达本质主义概念的重要手段， 语言：它们在父母的输入中频繁出现，跨越广泛不同的语言，很容易被年轻人学习， 儿童，被幼儿适当地理解，并保留在长期记忆中。深入 提出了一项训练研究，将在不同的措辞条件下教会幼儿一个新的概念， 图表的影响泛型和标签的本质主义推理。本节还将研究 不同输入语言对儿童记忆和学习新信息的影响。最后， 本节中的研究将测试关于仿制药学习过程的竞争性声明， 语言影响分类和相似性判断的机制。第2部分检查一个关键 本质主义的假设发展基础：关注对象的历史路径， 体现在起源、所有权和真实性的概念中。提出了一系列的研究，以调查 这些核心概念的发展，从幼儿年龄到小学的儿童。理论 预测学龄前儿童将对历史路径表现出敏锐的敏感性，并且这种判断将成立。 即使当控制对象的材料特征时，以及当物品合意性与 此外，预计幼儿会判断起源和所有权传递特殊信息， 价值的对象，虽然这一信念的范围也预计扩大与年龄。 总而言之，这31项研究将提供关于以下方面联系的汇聚和精确证据： 概念，语言和理论建设在幼儿期，使用自然主义的语言分析和 对2至10岁儿童的实验研究。

This proposal launches two new directions in the study of essentialist reasoning in children. Essentialism is the idea that certain categories have an underlying reality that determines identity and is responsible for commonalities among category members. Essentialism is argued to be an early cognitive bias (Gelman, 2003). Young children's concepts reflect a deep commitment to essentialism, which leads children to look beyond the obvious in many converging ways: when learning words, generalizing knowledge to new category members, contemplating the role of nature versus nurture, and constructing causal explanations. This framework thus argues against the standard view of children as concrete or focused on the obvious, instead claiming that children have an early, powerful tendency to search for non-obvious features. Essentialism also runs counter to claims that children build up their knowledge of the world wholly based on associative learning strategies, arguing instead that children's concepts are embedded in rich folk theories. This competing renewal builds on past work to address two aims. Part 1 examines how language serves as a mechanism for constructing and transmitting essentialist beliefs in preschool-aged children. Generic noun phrases (e.g., Bats fly at night) are a vital means of conveying essentialist concepts in natural language: they are frequent in parental input across widely distinct languages, are readily learned by young children, are understood appropriately by young children, and are retained in long-term memory. An in-depth training study is proposed that will teach young children a new concept under varied wording conditions, to chart the effects of generics and labeling on essentialist reasoning. This section will also examine the implications of different input language for children¿s memory for and learning of new information. Finally, studies in this section will test competing claims regarding the process by which generics are learned, and the mechanisms by which language affects categorization and similarity judgments. Part 2 examines one key hypothesized developmental underpinning of essentialism: attention to the historical path of objects, as manifest in concepts of origins, ownership, and authenticity. A series of studies is proposed to investigate the development of these core concepts in children from toddler age through elementary school. The theory predicts that preschool children will display keen sensitivity to historical path, and that such judgments will hold even when controlling for material features of objects, and when item desirability is placed in conflict with historical path. Furthermore, young children are predicted to judge that origins and ownership transmit special value to objects, although the scope of this belief is also predicted to broaden with age. Altogether, these 31 studies will provide converging and precise evidence regarding the links among concepts, language, and theory construction in early childhood, using naturalistic language analyses and experimental studies with children 2 to 10 years of age.