COMPARATIVE COGNITIVE STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT OF OTHER'S MIND CONCEPT

在这个项目中，我调查了婴儿是如何发展他人思想概念的。我针对这个课题做了几项实验研究。主要发现如下：1)在机器人错误信念任务中，儿童似乎将错误信念归因于机器人，但他们没有将心理动词（如思考）归因于机器人。在这方面，机器人和人似乎有区别。2)需要双重表征来为孩子代表他人的思想。我用比例模型任务研究了幼儿对偶表征的发展。结果表明，幼儿在2岁半至3岁之间对二元表征的理解发展较快。3)孩子们如何在现场事件和电视上播放的事件之间进行对应。从比较的角度来看，我试图弄清楚非人类灵长类动物，长臂猿，在对象选择任务中发生了什么。在一种情况下，长臂猿可以直接看到进食过程，而在另一种情况下，受试者只能在电视显示器上看到进食过程。结果表明，在这两种条件下没有差异。现在我们正在继续收集同样情况下人类儿童的数据。4)我们调查了人类婴儿是否将心理状态归因于电脑屏幕上的动画对象。婴儿更喜欢似乎对另一个物体有帮助的物体。

In this project, I investigated how infants develop the concept of others' mind. I conducted several experimental studies concern to this topic. The main findings are summarized as follows: 1) in the false belief task with robot, children seemed to attribute false belief to the robot, but they did not attribute mental verb (e.g. think) to the robot. There seems to be differentiation between robot and human in this area. 2) dual representation is needed to represent others' mind for children. I investigated the development of dual representation by using scale-model task in young children. The result shows that they develop understanding dual representation rapidly between 2and half years old and 3 years old. 3) How the children correspond between live events and events which were shown in TV. From the comparative perspective, I tried to figure out what happens in nonhuman primate, gibbon, in object-choice task. In one condition, gibbon could see bating procedure directly, and in the other condition, the subject could see it in only TV monitor. The results show that there is no difference in these two conditions. Now we are continuing to collect data in human children in the same situations. 4) We investigated whether human infants attribute mental state to animation object on the computer screen. Infants prefer the object which seems to help another object.