Astuti Rita, Solomon Gregg E A, Carey Susan
London School of Economics and Political Science.
Monogr Soc Res Child Dev. 2004;69(3):1-135, vii-viii; discussion 136-61. doi: 10.1111/j.0037-976X.2004.00296.x.
How different are the concepts held by children who grow up in a North American middle class neighborhood and by children who grow up in a rural Malagasy fishing village? By probing Malagasy children's and adults' conceptual representations of human and animal kind, biological inheritance, innate potential and family relations, the studies presented in this Monograph address current debates about the acquisition and the nature of concepts in the domains of folkbiology and folksociology. Cross-cultural and developmental studies of this kind bear on the hypothesis that conceptual development in these domains is supported and constrained by innate conceptual content. If so, one would expect cross-cultural universality in the relevant adult concepts and their early emergence in childhood regardless of widely different input conditions. We chose to conduct these studies among the Vezo of Madagascar because the ethnographic literature has attributed to them folkbiological and folksociological theories that are radically different, even in commensurable, with those of North American adults. Vezo therefore provide a challenging test for the innate conceptual constraints hypothesis.Four studies probed aspects of biological and sociological reasoning of Vezo children, adolescents and adults through a number of adoption scenarios. Despite ethnographic reports to the contrary, we found cross-cultural convergence in adult concepts of biological inheritance, but the pattern of development of this concept differed greatly from that seen in North America. Moreover, in agreement with the ethnographic literature, we found that Vezo adults have constructed a distinctive theory of social group identity. However, we found that children's reasoning in this domain is under the influence of endogenous constraints that are overturned in the course of development. Finally, we found cross-cultural convergence in adults' concept of species kind, as well as evidence for the early emergence of this concept. In light of these findings, we discuss the nature of the constraints on children's conceptual representations, the developmental process through which the adults' concepts are constructed, and relations between Vezotheories of folkbiology and folksociology.
在北美中产阶级社区长大的孩子和在马达加斯加农村渔村长大的孩子所秉持的观念有多大差异呢？通过探究马达加斯加儿童和成人对于人类、动物种类、生物遗传、先天潜力及家庭关系的概念表征，本专著中呈现的研究探讨了当前关于民间生物学和民间社会学领域概念的习得与本质的争论。此类跨文化和发展研究与如下假设相关：这些领域的概念发展受到先天概念内容的支持与限制。如果是这样的话，那么人们会预期相关成人概念具有跨文化普遍性，并且无论输入条件差异多大，这些概念都会在童年早期出现。我们选择在马达加斯加的维佐人中开展这些研究，因为人种志文献认为他们的民间生物学和民间社会学理论与北美成年人的理论截然不同，甚至不可通约。因此，维佐人对先天概念限制假设构成了一项具有挑战性的检验。四项研究通过一系列收养情境探究了维佐儿童、青少年和成人在生物学和社会学推理方面的情况。尽管人种志报告与此相反，但我们发现成人在生物遗传概念上存在跨文化趋同现象，不过这一概念的发展模式与北美所见的模式有很大不同。此外，与人种志文献一致的是，我们发现维佐成年人构建了一种独特的社会群体认同理论。然而，我们发现儿童在这一领域的推理受到内源性限制的影响，而这些限制在发展过程中会被推翻。最后，我们发现成人在物种种类概念上存在跨文化趋同现象，以及该概念早期出现的证据。鉴于这些发现，我们讨论了对儿童概念表征的限制的本质、成人概念构建所经历的发展过程，以及维佐人的民间生物学和民间社会学理论之间的关系。
