Huntley-Fenner Gavin, Carey Susan, Solimando Andrea
Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
Cognition. 2002 Oct;85(3):203-21. doi: 10.1016/s0010-0277(02)00088-4.
Young infants construct models of the world composed of objects tracked through time and occlusion. To date little is known about the degree to which these models are sensitive to the material make-up of the represented individuals. Two experiments probed 8-month-olds' ability to represent different kinds of entities: rigid, cohesive objects, flexible, cohesive objects, and non-rigid, non-cohesive portions of sand. In Experiment 1, infants represented an array of two rigid, cohesive objects hidden behind a single screen, but failed to represent hidden arrays of two flexible objects or two portions of sand. In Experiment 2, entities were hidden behind two screens instead of one, thereby reducing the information processing demands of the task. In that case, infants succeeded in representing arrays of both types of object stimuli, but again failed to represent the portions of sand. It is argued that (1) the processes by which infants individuate and track entities are sensitive to material kind, (2) rigid cohesive objects occupy a privileged status in this system, and (3) early knowledge about objects and substances has a quantificational aspect.
年幼的婴儿构建了由随时间推移和遮挡而被追踪的物体组成的世界模型。迄今为止，对于这些模型对所表征个体的物质构成的敏感程度知之甚少。两项实验探究了8个月大婴儿表征不同种类实体的能力：刚性、有粘性的物体、柔性、有粘性的物体以及非刚性、无粘性的沙子部分。在实验1中，婴儿能够表征隐藏在单个屏幕后面的两个刚性、有粘性物体的阵列，但无法表征隐藏的两个柔性物体或两部分沙子的阵列。在实验2中，实体被隐藏在两个屏幕后面而不是一个屏幕后面，从而降低了任务的信息处理要求。在这种情况下，婴儿成功地表征了两种类型物体刺激的阵列，但再次未能表征沙子部分。有人认为：（1）婴儿对实体进行个体化和追踪的过程对物质种类敏感；（2）刚性有粘性物体在这个系统中占据特殊地位；（3）关于物体和物质的早期知识具有量化方面。
