Hespos S J, Baillargeon R
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, M.I.T. NE20-423, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2001 Mar;12(2):141-7. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.00324.
The present research examined whether infants acquire general principles or more specific rules when learning about physical events. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated 4.5-month-old infants' ability to judge how much of a tall object should be hidden when lowered behind an occluder versus inside a container. The results indicated that at this age infants are able to reason about height in occlusion but not containment events. Experiment 3 showed that this latter ability does not emerge until about 7.5 months of age. The marked discrepancy in infants' reasoning about height in occlusion and containment events suggests that infants sort events into distinct categories, and acquire separate rules for each category.
本研究探讨了婴儿在学习物理事件时是获取一般原则还是更具体的规则。实验1和实验2调查了4.5个月大婴儿判断当一个高物体被降低到遮挡物后面与放入容器内时应该被隐藏多少的能力。结果表明，在这个年龄，婴儿能够对遮挡事件中的高度进行推理，但不能对包含事件进行推理。实验3表明，后一种能力直到大约7.5个月大时才出现。婴儿在遮挡事件和包含事件中对高度的推理存在明显差异，这表明婴儿将事件分类为不同的类别，并为每个类别获取单独的规则。
