Sobel David M, Yoachim Caroline M, Gopnik Alison, Meltzoff Andrew N, Blumenthal Emily J
Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University.
J Cogn Dev. 2007;8(2):159-182. doi: 10.1080/15248370701202356.
Four experiments examined children's inferences about the relation between objects' internal parts and their causal properties. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds recognized that objects with different internal parts had different causal properties, and those causal properties transferred if the internal part moved to another object. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds made inferences from an object's internal parts to its causal properties without being given verbal labels for objects or being shown that insides and causal properties covaried. Experiment 3 found that 4-year-olds chose an object with the same internal part over one with the same external property when asked which object had the same causal property as the target (which had both the internal part and external property). Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that 4-year-olds made similar inferences from causal properties to internal parts, but 3-year-olds relied more on objects' external perceptual appearance. These results suggest that by the age of 4, children have developed an understanding of a relation between an artifact's internal parts and its causal properties.
四项实验研究了儿童对物体内部部件与其因果属性之间关系的推理。在实验1中，4岁的儿童认识到具有不同内部部件的物体具有不同的因果属性，并且如果内部部件移动到另一个物体上，那些因果属性也会转移。在实验2中，4岁的儿童在没有被告知物体的语言标签或没有看到内部部件和因果属性协变的情况下，从物体的内部部件推断出其因果属性。实验3发现，当被问及哪个物体与目标物体（既有内部部件又有外部属性）具有相同的因果属性时，4岁的儿童选择具有相同内部部件的物体而不是具有相同外部属性的物体。最后，实验4表明，4岁的儿童从因果属性到内部部件也能做出类似的推理，但3岁的儿童更多地依赖物体的外部感知外观。这些结果表明，到4岁时，儿童已经发展出对人工制品内部部件与其因果属性之间关系的理解。
