Rosengren K S, Gelman S A, Kalish C W, McCormick M
Developmental Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-1027.
Child Dev. 1991 Dec;62(6):1302-20.
Beliefs about naturally occurring transformations were examined in children aged 3 to 6 years in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 tested children's understanding that animals (but not artifacts) predictably get larger over time. Experiment 1a examined whether the results obtained in the first experiment could be attributed to an added memory component on the artifact task. Experiment 2 further examined beliefs about the aging of artifacts. In Experiment 3, color and shape (metamorphosis) changes of animals were investigated. At all ages, children appeared to understand that animals get larger and not smaller with age. While older children and adults allowed for rather dramatic changes in the size and shape of animals over the life span if the alternative involved decreasing in size with age, preschool children were less willing to accept these changes. Taken together, the results of these studies suggest that even young preschool children have 2 conceptual insights about natural transformations: that they are lawful and nonrandom, and that they are domain and mechanism specific. Further, children as young as age 3 are able to go beyond the perceptual appearance of animals in making judgments about transformations caused by growth. Implications for children's understanding of personal and species identity are discussed.
在4项实验中，对3至6岁儿童关于自然发生的转变的信念进行了研究。实验1测试了儿童是否理解动物（而非人工制品）会随着时间的推移而可预测地长大。实验1a考察了在第一个实验中获得的结果是否可归因于人工制品任务中增加的记忆成分。实验2进一步研究了关于人工制品老化的信念。在实验3中，研究了动物的颜色和形状（变形）变化。在所有年龄段，儿童似乎都理解动物会随着年龄增长而变大，而非变小。如果另一种情况是随着年龄增长而变小，那么年龄较大的儿童和成年人会认可动物在寿命期间大小和形状有相当大的变化，而学龄前儿童则不太愿意接受这些变化。综合来看，这些研究结果表明，即使是年幼的学龄前儿童对自然转变也有两种概念性的理解：即它们是有规律且非随机的，并且它们是特定领域和特定机制的。此外，年仅3岁的儿童在对生长引起的转变进行判断时，能够超越动物的感知外观。文中还讨论了这些研究结果对儿童理解个人身份和物种身份的意义。
