Springer K
Southern Methodist University, Department of Psychology, Dallas, TX 75275-0442.
Child Dev. 1992 Aug;63(4):950-9.
Preschoolers' thinking about kinship was explored by means of a simple induction task. A target animal was described as possessing a property, and children were asked whether each of 2 other animals shares the property or not. When no information about kinship was given, children in Experiment 1 based their inductions of biological properties on physical similarity. However, when kinship relations were specified, children judged that dissimilar-looking kin share more biological properties than similar-looking but unrelated members of the same species. In Experiment 2, describing the similar animals as socially related did not change the basic pattern of inductions obtained in the first experiment. Moreover, subjects in Experiment 3 did not induce more acquired physical and psychological properties among families than among unrelated animals. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 illustrate one case where young children favor a nonperceptible relation (kinship) over a perceptible one (similarity) as a basis for judgment. The overall pattern of data suggest that young children distinguish to some extent between the biological and social domains.
通过一项简单的归纳任务探究了学龄前儿童对亲属关系的认知。描述一种目标动物具有某种特性，然后询问另外两种动物是否也具有该特性。在实验1中，当未给出亲属关系信息时，儿童基于身体相似性对生物特性进行归纳。然而，当明确了亲属关系时，儿童判断长相不同的亲属比长相相似但无亲属关系的同物种成员具有更多的生物特性。在实验2中，将相似动物描述为具有社会关系，并没有改变在第一个实验中得到的基本归纳模式。此外，实验3中的受试者在亲属之间归纳出的后天身体和心理特性并不比无亲属关系的动物之间更多。实验1和2的结果说明了一种情况，即幼儿在判断时更倾向于基于一种不可感知的关系（亲属关系）而非可感知的关系（相似性）。数据的总体模式表明，幼儿在一定程度上能够区分生物领域和社会领域。
