Friedman Ori, Leslie Alan M
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Canada.
Cognition. 2007 Oct;105(1):103-24. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2006.09.007. Epub 2006 Nov 13.
The ability to engage in and recognize pretend play begins around 18 months. A major challenge for theories of pretense is explaining how children are able to engage in pretense, and how they are able to recognize pretense in others. According to one major account, the metarepresentational theory, young children possess both production and recognition abilities because they possess the mental state concept, pretend. According to a more recent rival account, the Behavioral theory, young children are behaviorists about pretense, and only produce and recognize pretense as a sort of behavior - namely, behaving 'as-if'. We review both the metarepresentational and Behavioral accounts and argue that the Behavioral theory fails to characterize very young children's abilities to produce and to recognize pretense. Among other problems, the Behavioral theory implies that children should frequently mis-recognize regular behavior as pretense, while certain regular forms of pretend play should neither be produced nor recognized. Like other mental states, pretense eludes purely behavioral description. The metarepresentational theory does not suffer these problems and provides a better account of children's pretense.
参与和识别假装游戏的能力大约在18个月大时开始出现。假装理论面临的一个主要挑战是解释儿童如何能够参与假装，以及他们如何能够识别他人的假装行为。根据一种主要的观点，即元表征理论，幼儿具备产生和识别假装行为的能力，因为他们拥有心理状态概念——假装。根据一个更新的对立观点，即行为理论，幼儿在假装方面是行为主义者，他们只是将假装行为产生和识别为一种行为——即“好像”在行事。我们回顾了元表征理论和行为理论，并认为行为理论未能准确描述幼儿产生和识别假装行为的能力。除其他问题外，行为理论意味着儿童应该经常将常规行为错误地识别为假装行为，而某些常规形式的假装游戏既不会被产生也不会被识别。与其他心理状态一样，假装行为无法通过纯粹的行为描述来解释。元表征理论不存在这些问题，并且能更好地解释儿童的假装行为。
