Vitalistic causality in young children's naive biology

该项目旨在说明活力因果关系的本质，这被认为是构成幼儿拥有的幼稚生物学的核心。通过个体访谈法的一系列研究，得出以下结果：两项关于环境影响的实验和关于强迫类比的实验都表明，5岁的儿童在活力论方面认识到动物和植物之间的共性；这些孩子似乎认为，生物就是那些从食物和水中获取生命能量，并以其过剩的能量促进生长的与人类相似的生物。这表明早期的生物学是围绕食物/水和生长建立起来的。要求被试做出预测和解释的实验显示，5、6岁的孩子相信从食物中摄取足够的生命力不仅能防止一个人生病，而且能帮助他/她长寿，有时甚至能治愈他/她的伤口。使用选择方法的实验表明，4-6岁的儿童认识到日常活动的生物学方面（例如，吃很少的蔬菜与吃很多的蔬菜）会影响对疾病的易感性，但儿童也认为社会/心理方面（例如，说谎与从不说谎）对疾病的易感性有一些额外的贡献。然而，当被要求在两者之间选择一个因素时，5岁的孩子选择生物因素对疾病更重要，而社会/心理因素对社会现象更重要（例如，被邀请参加生日聚会）。另一方面，4岁的孩子比5岁的孩子更重视社会/心理因素在决定对疾病的易感性方面的影响，尽管他们在推理中区分了生物现象和心理现象。

This project aimed at specifying the nature of vitalistic causality, which is supposed to constitute the core of naive biology that young children possess. The following results were found through a series of studies with individual interview methods :1.Both experiments dealing with the effect of contexts and those on forced analogies indicated that children as young as 5 years of age recognized commonalities between animals and plants in terms of vitalism ; these children seemed to believe that living things mean those beings which were similar to humans in terms of taking in vital force from food and water, with its surplus inducing growth. This suggests that early biology is established around taking food/water and growth.2.Experiments requesting subjects to give predictions and some explanations revealed that children ages of 5 and 6 years believed that a sufficient amount of vital power taken in from food not only prevents a person from becoming ill but also helps him/her live longer, and sometimes even cure his/her wound.3.Experiments using choice methods indicated that children aged 4-6 years recognized that biological aspects of daily activities (e.g., eats few vegetables vs.eats a lot of vegetables) influence the susceptibility to illness, but the children also believed that social/psychological aspects (e.g., tell a lie vs.never lie) make some additional contribution to susceptibility to illness. However, when asked to choose a factor between the two, the 5-year-olds chose biological factors as more important for illness, and social/psychological factors as more important for social phenomena (e.g., is invited a birthday party). On the other hand, the 4-year-olds weighed social/psychological factors in determining susceptibility to illness more heavily than the 5-year-olds, though they differentiated biological phenomena from psychological phenomena in their reasoning.