CONCEPTS AND THEORIES IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

人类发展的概念和理论

• 批准号: 6387906
• 负责人: Susan A. Gelman
• 金额: $ 15.3万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-09-30 至 2003-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6387906
• 关键词: belief; child psychology; clinical research; concept; human subject; language; middle childhood (6-11); perception; preschool child (1-5); psycholinguistics; semantics; speech

DESCRIPTION: How do children organize their knowledge about the world? Recently there has been a shift in the treatment of concepts, from traditional views assuming that concepts can be characterized by superficial features, to theory views treating concepts as embedded in common-sense explanatory frameworks. The finding that children's concepts are tied to theories is especially striking, as it runs counter to a previously widely accepted view of children's concepts as perceptually bound. In contrast, preschoolers expect category members to share nonobvious similarities, even in the face of salient perceptual dissimilarities, and judge non-visible internal parts to be especially crucial to the identity and functioning of an item. In a sense, very young children acts as if members of a category share an underlying essence. However, little is known regarding: the developmental course if essentialist beliefs below age 4; what role language plays in transmitting essentialism to children; what implications essentialism has for causal reasoning; or how to reconcile essentialism with traditional views of children as focused on salient appearances. The proposed research uses naturalistic language analyses and experimental studies with children 2 to 10 years of age to address these questions. Specifically, the proposal has three aims: 1) To examine how essentialist beliefs are expressed in natural language by children (age 2-4 years), and how natural language expressions of essentialism are interpreted by children. The studies of natural language expression will reveal the scope of essentialist beliefs early in development; the studies of natural language interpretation will reveal a mechanism whereby essentialist beliefs are transmitted; 2) To examine the developmental incorporation of non-obvious features (causes, ontologies, and internal properties) into children's categories; and 3) To reconcile essentialism with the traditional view of children as focused on perceptual aspects of the world, by clarifying the conditions that lead to different profiles of performance. This work will allow researchers to go beyond simple models that posit dichotomous shifts over development, to build more subtle and informed understandings of the conditions that lead to flexibility in performance -- and why. Altogether, these studies will provide converging and precise evidence regarding the links among concepts, language, and theory construction in early childhood.

描述：孩子如何组织他们对世界的知识？ 最近，概念的处理情况发生了转变 传统观点假设概念可以以表面为特征 特征，理论视为将概念视为嵌入在常识中的概念 解释性框架。 孩子的概念与 理论特别令人惊讶，因为它与以前广泛的相反 公认的对儿童概念的看法是感知束缚的。 相比之下， 学龄前儿童期望类别成员分享非明显的相似性，甚至 面对明显的感知差异，并判断不可访问的 内部部件对于身份和功能特别至关重要 一个项目。 从某种意义上说，很小的孩子的举止好像是类别的成员 分享基本的本质。 但是，关于： 发展过程，如果本质主义的信念低于4岁；什么角色语言 发挥向儿童传播本质主义的作用；什么含义 本质主义对因果推理具有；或如何与本质主义和解 儿童的传统观点集中在显着外表上。 这 拟议的研究使用自然语言分析和实验 与2至10岁的儿童进行研究以解决这些问题。 具体而言，该提案具有三个目的：1）检查本质主义的方式 信念用儿童（2-4岁）以自然语言表达，并且 本质主义的自然语言表达如何由 孩子们。 自然语言表达的研究将揭示范围 在发展初期的本质主义信念；自然研究 语言解释将揭示一种机制，使本质主义信念具有 传输； 2）检查 非明显特征（原因，本体和内部属性） 儿童类别； 3）将本质主义与传统主义调和 通过 阐明导致表现不同的条件。 这项工作将使研究人员能够超越简单的模型 二分法转变在开发方面，建立更多微妙和知情 对导致绩效灵活性的条件的理解 - 为什么。 总之，这些研究将提供融合和精确的 关于概念，语言和理论之间联系的证据 幼儿时期的建设。