Development and Formation of Reality-Status Judgments

描述(申请人提供)：在这项提案中，我开发了一种新的方法来研究儿童对现实的发展理解，这是一个历史悠久的话题，一直吸引着发展心理学家的兴趣和困惑。在我们生活的媒体丰富的时代，关于儿童如何评估新信息并将实体适当地分配到真实和非真实类别的知识尤其重要。小孩子们被信息和图像轰炸，提供了真实和虚幻的混合：怪物埃尔莫教孩子们科学，哈利波特，一个人类的孩子，表演魔术。在这当中，儿童不断地遇到新的实体和事件，并且必须将这些实体和事件归入他们适当的(真实的或非真实的)类别。这项研究的目的是探索儿童在遇到新奇信息时如何做出现实状态判断。尽管之前的研究探讨了儿童做出各种现实-非现实区分的年龄，但关于影响儿童将实体分配到真实和非真实类别的因素的信息很少。我建议调查三大类因素的影响：(1)可能影响关于新实体的现实状态的决定的个体儿童的特征(例如，年龄)，(2)可能影响关于现实状态的决定的刺激的特征(例如，属性的内部一致性)，以及(3)环境的影响(例如，儿童遇到新实体的背景)。这些研究的信息将被用来制定一个儿童做出现实状况判断的过程模型。这项拟议的研究应该会极大地促进对3至7岁幼儿认知发展的了解。教育儿童批判性地思考新信息是当务之急。要做到这一点，研究人员和教育工作者必须首先了解儿童如何识别和区分真实与虚幻。拟议的研究结果将潜在地对学前教育和基础教育、育儿和幼儿临床实践产生重要影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this proposal, I develop a new approach for studying children's developing understanding of reality, a topic with a long history that continues to intrigue and perplex developmental psychologists. Knowledge about how children evaluate new information and make proper assignment of entities to real and not-real categories is especially critical in the media rich age in which we live. Young children are bombarded with information and images offering a mix of the real and the fantastical: Elmo, a monster, teaches children about science, and Harry Potter, a human child, performs magic spells. Amidst this, children continuously encounter novel entities and events, and must assign these entities and events to their proper (real or not real) categories. The goal of the proposed studies is to explore how children make reality status judgments when they encounter novel information. Although previous research addresses the ages at which children make various reality-nonreality distinctions, there is little information on the factors that affect children's assignment of entities to real and not-real categories. I propose to investigate the effects of three broad classes of factors: (1) characteristics of the individual child (e.g., age) that may affect decisions regarding the reality status of novel entities, (2) characteristics of the stimulus that may affect decisions about reality status (e.g. internal consistency of the attributes), and (3) effects of environment (e.g., the context in which children encounter a novel entity). Information from the studies will be used to formulate a model of the processes by which children make reality status judgments. The proposed research should greatly advance knowledge of the cognitive development of young children aged 3 to 7. It is imperative that children be taught to think critically about new information. To do this, researchers and educators must first understand how children identify and separate real from unreal. The findings of the proposed studies will potentially have important implications for preschool and elementary education, parenting, and clinical practice with young children.