Wagner Laura, Carey Susan
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA.
Cognition. 2003 Dec;90(2):163-91. doi: 10.1016/s0010-0277(03)00143-4.
This study investigates children's ability to use language to guide their choice of individuation criterion in the domains of objects and events. Previous work (Shipley, E. F., & Shepperson, B. (1990). Countable entities: developmental changes. Cognition, 34, 109-136.) has shown that children have a strong bias to use a spatio-temporal individuation strategy when counting objects and that children will ignore a conflicting linguistic description in favor of this spatio-temporal bias. Experiment 1 asked children (3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) and adults to count objects and events under different linguistic descriptions. In the object task, subjects counted pictures of familiar objects split into multiple pieces (as in Shipley, E. F., & Shepperson, B. (1990). Countable entities: developmental changes. Cognition, 34, 109-136.) and described either using an appropriate kind label (e.g. "car") or the general term "thing". In the event task, subjects watched short animated movies consisting of a goal-oriented event achieved via multiple, temporally separated steps. The events were described either with an appropriate telic predicate targeting the goal (e.g. "paint a flower") or with an atelic predicate targeting the steps in the process (e.g. "paint") and the subjects' task was to count the events. Relative to adults, children preferred a spatio-temporal counting strategy in both tasks; there was no difference among the three groups of children. However, children were able to significantly change their counting strategy to follow the linguistic description in the event but not the object task. Experiment 2 extended the object task to include counting of other types of non-spatio-temporal units such as sub-parts of objects and collections. Results showed that children could use the linguistic descriptions to guide their counting strategy for these new items, though they continued to show a bias for a spatio-temporal individuation strategy with the collections. We suggest potential cognitive origins for the spatio-temporal individuation bias and how it interacts with children's developing linguistic knowledge.
本研究调查儿童运用语言来指导其在物体和事件领域中个体化标准选择的能力。先前的研究（希普利，E.F.，& 谢泼森，B.（1990）。可数实体：发展变化。《认知》，34，109 - 136）表明，儿童在数物体时强烈倾向于使用时空个体化策略，并且儿童会忽视与之冲突的语言描述而倾向于这种时空偏向。实验1要求儿童（3岁、4岁和5岁）及成人在不同语言描述下对数物体和事件进行计数。在物体任务中，受试者对数张被分成多块的熟悉物体图片（如希普利，E.F.，& 谢泼森，B.（1990）。可数实体：发展变化。《认知》，34，109 - 136中所示）进行计数，并使用合适的类别标签（如“汽车”）或通用术语“东西”来描述。在事件任务中，受试者观看简短的动画电影，这些电影由通过多个时间上分开的步骤实现的目标导向事件组成。事件要么用针对目标的合适的有终点谓词（如“画一朵花”）来描述，要么用针对过程中步骤的无终点谓词（如“画”）来描述，受试者的任务是对事件进行计数。相对于成人，儿童在两项任务中都更倾向于时空计数策略；三组儿童之间没有差异。然而，儿童能够显著改变其计数策略以遵循事件任务中的语言描述，但在物体任务中却不能。实验2扩展了物体任务，包括对其他类型的非时空单位进行计数，如物体的子部分和集合。结果表明，儿童能够运用语言描述来指导他们对这些新项目的计数策略，尽管他们在对集合进行计数时仍然表现出对时空个体化策略的偏向。我们提出了时空个体化偏向的潜在认知根源，以及它如何与儿童不断发展的语言知识相互作用。
