Development and Formation of Reality-Status Judgments

描述（由申请人提供）：在这个提案中，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，一直困扰着发展心理学家。在我们生活的这个媒体丰富的时代，了解儿童如何评估新信息，并将实体正确地划分为真实和非真实的类别尤为重要。年幼的孩子们被信息和图像轰炸，这些信息和图像提供了真实和幻想的混合：埃尔莫，一个怪物，教孩子们科学，哈利波特，一个人类的孩子，表演魔法咒语。在这种情况下，孩子们不断遇到新的实体和事件，并且必须将这些实体和事件分配到适当的类别（真实或不真实）。本研究的目的是探讨儿童在遇到新信息时如何做出现实状态判断。虽然以前的研究关注的是儿童在多大年龄做出各种现实与非现实的区分，但很少有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。我建议研究三大类因素的影响：(1)个体儿童的特征（例如，年龄）可能影响关于新实体的现实状态的决定，(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）。来自这些研究的信息将用于制定儿童对现实状况作出判断的过程模型。这项建议的研究将大大促进对3至7岁幼儿认知发展的认识。必须教孩子们对新信息进行批判性思考。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不真实。这些研究的结果将对学前教育、初等教育、育儿和幼儿临床实践具有潜在的重要意义。

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.