The development of category-based reasoning during early childhood

幼儿时期基于类别的推理的发展

• 批准号: RGPIN-2019-05310
• 负责人: Graham, Susan
• 金额: $ 4.74万
• 依托单位: University of Calgary
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=738188
• 关键词: development; category; based; reasoning; during

Category-based inductive reasoning is a fundamental aspect of human learning and reasoning that involves inferring a general rule or principle from a specific case. When making inductive inferences, we first observe a property of a given entity (e.g., carrots are good for you), decide that two entities belong to the same category (e.g., carrots and cucumbers are both vegetables), and then infer that the second entity also possesses the property (e.g., therefore, cucumbers are also good for you). This type of reasoning allows us to go beyond the information that we are given and form more global concepts. Inductive reasoning is especially critical in early childhood when children must make sense of a vast amount of new information. Inductive reasoning can help them organize their world, as their acquired knowledge can be applied in new contexts. At the same time, the ability to categorize objects and generalize properties from one category member to another allows children to store and retrieve information more efficiently, thereby reducing the demands of learning. In other words, children do not need to keep track of all the individual items that they encounter; instead, they can incorporate new information into existing categories and generalize properties accordingly. The long-term objective of my NSERC research program is to characterize the development and nature of inductive reasoning, with the ultimate goal of developing a comprehensive framework that captures young children's inferences about categories and properties. During this grant cycle, my students and I will conduct an ambitious series of studies to address the following objectives: 1) to characterize the origins of category-based inductive reasoning during infancy; 2) to examine the cognitive processes that support infants' category-based inductive reasoning; and 3) to examine how linguistic information guides young children's inductive inferences. These objectives will be met in three sets of studies. In the first set, we will examine the emergence of a critical precursor of inductive reasoning, namely, the ability to form associations between categories and their respective properties, between 7- and 9-months of age. In the second set, we will conduct a longitudinal study with infants 14- to 20-months of age to characterize the cognitive processes that support inductive reasoning during the second year of life. In the third set, we will assess how language can be used to help 2-year-olds determine which properties of an object should be generalized to a broader category and which should not. Together, the results of these experiments will significantly advance our understanding of the development of a fundamental cognitive ability during the early childhood years.

基于类别的归纳推理是人类学习和推理的一个基本方面，涉及从特定案例中推断一般规则或原则。当进行归纳推理时，我们首先观察给定实体的属性（例如，胡萝卜对你有好处），决定两个实体属于同一类别（例如，胡萝卜和黄瓜都是蔬菜），然后推断第二实体也拥有该属性（例如，所以黄瓜也对你有好处）。这种类型的推理使我们能够超越我们所得到的信息，形成更全面的概念。 归纳推理在儿童早期尤其重要，因为儿童必须理解大量的新信息。归纳推理可以帮助他们组织他们的世界，因为他们获得的知识可以应用于新的环境。与此同时，对对象进行分类并将属性从一个类别成员归纳到另一个类别成员的能力使儿童能够更有效地存储和检索信息，从而减少学习的需求。换句话说，孩子们不需要跟踪他们遇到的所有单个项目;相反，他们可以将新信息纳入现有类别并相应地概括属性。 我的NSERC研究计划的长期目标是表征归纳推理的发展和性质，最终目标是开发一个全面的框架，捕捉幼儿对类别和属性的推断。在这个资助周期中，我和我的学生将进行一系列雄心勃勃的研究，以解决以下目标：1）描述婴儿期基于类别的归纳推理的起源; 2）检查支持婴儿基于类别的归纳推理的认知过程; 3）检查语言信息如何指导幼儿的归纳推理。 这些目标将通过三组研究来实现。在第一组中，我们将研究归纳推理的一个重要先驱的出现，即在7- 9个月大的孩子之间形成类别及其各自属性之间的关联的能力。在第二组中，我们将对14至20个月大的婴儿进行纵向研究，以描述生命第二年期间支持归纳推理的认知过程。在第三组中，我们将评估如何使用语言来帮助2岁的孩子确定物体的哪些属性应该推广到更广泛的类别，哪些不应该。总之，这些实验的结果将大大促进我们对幼儿期基本认知能力发展的理解。