Barrett J L, Richert R A, Driesenga A
Department of Psychology, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI 49546, USA.
Child Dev. 2001 Jan-Feb;72(1):50-65. doi: 10.1111/1467-8624.00265.
Little research exists on how children understand the actions of nonhuman agents. Researchers often assume that children overgeneralize and attribute human properties such as false beliefs to nonhuman agents. In this study, three experiments were conducted to test this assumption. The experiments used 24 children in New York (aged 2,11-6,11 years), 52 children in Michigan (aged 3,5-6,11 years), and a second group of 45 children in Michigan (3,4-8,5 years) from Christian backgrounds. In the first two experiments, children participated in false-belief tests in which they were asked about human and various nonhuman agents including animals and God. Experiment 3 consisted of a modified perspective-taking task, also including nonhuman agents. The results of the study suggest that children do not consistently use human agent concepts but instead can use different agent concepts for some nonhuman agents like God and special animals. Children are not bound to anthropomorphize, but they often do.
关于儿童如何理解非人类主体的行为，现有研究较少。研究人员通常认为，儿童会过度泛化，将诸如错误信念等人类属性归因于非人类主体。在本研究中，进行了三项实验来检验这一假设。实验采用了来自纽约的24名儿童（年龄在2岁11个月至6岁11个月之间）、来自密歇根的52名儿童（年龄在3岁5个月至6岁11个月之间）以及来自密歇根的另一组45名儿童（年龄在3岁4个月至8岁5个月之间），他们都有基督教背景。在前两项实验中，儿童参与了错误信念测试，在测试中他们被问及人类以及包括动物和上帝在内的各种非人类主体。实验3包括一个经过修改的观点采择任务，同样也涉及非人类主体。研究结果表明，儿童并非始终使用人类主体概念，而是能够针对某些非人类主体（比如上帝和特殊动物）使用不同的主体概念。儿童并非必然会拟人化，但他们常常会这样做。
