Zelazo P D, Sommerville J A, Nichols S
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Dev Psychol. 1999 Jul;35(4):1059-71. doi: 10.1037//0012-1649.35.4.1059.
This study explored children's use of external representations. Experiment 1 focused on representations of self: Self-recognition was assessed by a mark test as a function of age (3 vs. 4 years), delay (5 s vs. 3 min), and media (photographs vs. drawings). Four-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds; children performed better with photographs than drawings; and there was no effect of delay. In Experiment 2, 3- and 4-year-olds used a delayed video image to locate a sticker on themselves (self task) or a stuffed animal (other task). The 2 tasks were positively correlated with age and vocabulary partialed out. Experiment 3 used a search task to assess whether children have particular difficulty using external representations that conflict with their expectations: 3- and 4-year-olds were informed of an object's location verbally or through video: on half of the trials, this information conflicted with children's initial belief. Three-year-olds performed worse than 4-year-olds on conflict trials, indicating that assessments of self and other understanding may reflect children's ability to reason about conflicting external representations.
本研究探讨了儿童对外部表征的运用。实验1聚焦于自我表征：通过标记测试评估自我认知，该测试考察年龄（3岁与4岁）、延迟时间（5秒与3分钟）和媒介（照片与图画）这几个因素的作用。4岁儿童的表现优于3岁儿童；儿童对照片的运用比对图画更好；延迟时间没有影响。在实验2中，3岁和4岁儿童利用延迟视频图像在自己身上（自我任务）或填充动物玩具上（他人任务）找到贴纸。这两项任务与年龄呈正相关，且排除了词汇量的影响。实验3采用搜索任务来评估儿童在使用与他们预期相冲突的外部表征时是否存在特别的困难：告知3岁和4岁儿童物体的位置，方式为口头告知或通过视频；在一半的试验中，此信息与儿童最初的信念相冲突。在冲突试验中，3岁儿童的表现比4岁儿童差，这表明对自我和他人理解的评估可能反映了儿童对相互冲突的外部表征进行推理的能力。
