Wang Su-Hua, Baillargeon Renée, Brueckner Laura
Department of Psychology, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
Cognition. 2004 Oct;93(3):167-98. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.012.
The present research examined alternative accounts of prior violation-of-expectation (VOE) reports that young infants can represent and reason about hidden objects. According to these accounts, young infants' apparent success in these VOE tasks reflects only novelty and familiarity preferences induced by the habituation or familiarization trials in the tasks. In two experiments, 4-month-old infants were tested in VOE tasks with test trials only. The infants still gave evidence that they could represent and reason about hidden objects: they were surprised, as indicated by greater attention, when a wide object became fully hidden behind a narrow occluder (Experiment 1) or inside a narrow container (Experiment 2). These and control results demonstrate that young infants can succeed at VOE tasks involving hidden objects even when given no habituation or familiarization trials. The present research thus provides additional support for the conclusion that young infants possess expectations about hidden objects. Methodological issues concerning the use of habituation or familiarization trials in VOE tasks are also discussed.
本研究考察了关于先前违反预期(VOE)报告的其他解释,即年幼婴儿能够对隐藏物体进行表征和推理。根据这些解释,年幼婴儿在这些VOE任务中的明显成功仅反映了任务中习惯化或熟悉化试验所引发的新奇和熟悉偏好。在两项实验中,仅对4个月大的婴儿进行了VOE任务测试。婴儿们仍然给出了证据,表明他们能够对隐藏物体进行表征和推理:当一个宽物体完全隐藏在一个窄遮挡物后面(实验1)或一个窄容器里面(实验2)时,他们会像通过更多关注所表明的那样感到惊讶。这些结果以及对照结果表明,即使没有给予习惯化或熟悉化试验,年幼婴儿在涉及隐藏物体的VOE任务中也能成功。因此,本研究为年幼婴儿对隐藏物体有预期这一结论提供了额外支持。还讨论了VOE任务中使用习惯化或熟悉化试验的方法学问题。