Rhodes Marjorie, Brickman Daniel, Gelman Susan A
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA.
Cognition. 2008 Aug;108(2):543-56. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2008.03.002. Epub 2008 Apr 23.
Evaluating whether a limited sample of evidence provides a good basis for induction is a critical cognitive task. We hypothesized that whereas adults evaluate the inductive strength of samples containing multiple pieces of evidence by attending to the relations among the exemplars (e.g., sample diversity), six-year-olds would attend to the degree to which each individual exemplar in a sample independently appears informative (e.g., premise typicality). To test these hypotheses, participants were asked to select between diverse and non-diverse samples to help them learn about basic-level animal categories. Across various between-subject conditions (N=133), we varied the typicality present in the diverse and non-diverse samples. We found that adults reliably selected to examine diverse over non-diverse samples, regardless of exemplar typicality, six-year-olds preferred to examine samples containing typical exemplars, regardless of sample diversity, and nine-year-olds were somewhat in the midst of this developmental transition.
评估有限的证据样本是否为归纳提供了良好基础是一项关键的认知任务。我们假设，成年人通过关注范例之间的关系（例如样本多样性）来评估包含多条证据的样本的归纳强度，而6岁儿童则会关注样本中每个个体范例独立呈现的信息程度（例如前提典型性）。为了检验这些假设，我们要求参与者在多样和非多样的样本之间进行选择，以帮助他们了解基本层次的动物类别。在各种被试间条件下（N = 133），我们改变了多样和非多样样本中呈现的典型性。我们发现，无论范例典型性如何，成年人都可靠地选择检查多样样本而非非多样样本；无论样本多样性如何，6岁儿童更喜欢检查包含典型范例的样本；9岁儿童则处于这种发展过渡的中间状态。
