Vallotton C D, Harper L V
University of California, Davis, USA.
Infant Behav Dev. 2006 Jul;29(3):373-85. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2006.01.003. Epub 2006 Mar 3.
Discrepancies between what children expect about physical causality (indexed by looking time) and how they act on that knowledge have led to criticisms of claims about what infants "know." Baillargeon [Baillargeon, R. (1999). Young infants' expectations about hidden objects: A reply to three challenges. Developmental Science, 2, 115-163] advocates examining more tasks before revising views of early cognitive development. We report another discrepancy which suggests an additional indicator of what is salient for preverbal infants. While examining the Uzgiris-Hunt test performances of 40 children (26 females), 7.6-26.9-months-old, infants appeared captivated by the bouncing of a small rubber ball. However, most infants reproduced the motion of the bounce event itself, repeatedly hitting the ball against the table, rather than the experimenter's action (dropping). Comparing performances of those who did and did not imitate the drop, two possibly interrelated interpretations remained consistent with the data: infants perform goal-directed imitation of interesting phenomena, perhaps because they believe they must apply force to make them happen.
儿童对物理因果关系的期望（通过注视时间来衡量）与他们基于该知识的行为之间的差异，引发了对婴儿“所知”内容相关论断的批评。贝拉吉恩[贝拉吉恩，R.（1999年）。婴儿对隐藏物体的期望：对三个挑战的回应。《发展科学》，2，115 - 163]主张在修正早期认知发展观点之前，先考察更多任务。我们报告了另一种差异，这表明了前语言婴儿所关注事物的一个额外指标。在考察40名年龄在7.6至26.9个月的儿童（26名女性）的乌兹吉里斯 - 亨特测试表现时，婴儿似乎被一个小橡皮球的弹跳所吸引。然而，大多数婴儿重现的是弹跳事件本身的动作，即反复将球撞击桌子，而不是实验者的动作（掉落）。比较那些模仿掉落和未模仿掉落的婴儿的表现，两种可能相互关联的解释与数据相符：婴儿对有趣现象进行目标导向的模仿，可能是因为他们认为必须施加力才能使这些现象发生。
