Apfelbaum Evan P, Pauker Kristin, Ambady Nalini, Sommers Samuel R, Norton Michael I
Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA.
Dev Psychol. 2008 Sep;44(5):1513-8. doi: 10.1037/a0012835.
The present research identifies an anomaly in sociocognitive development, whereby younger children (8 and 9 years) outperform their older counterparts (10 and 11 years) in a basic categorization task in which the acknowledgment of racial difference facilitates performance. Though older children exhibit superior performance on a race-neutral version of the task, their tendency to avoid acknowledging race hinders objective success when race is a relevant category. That these findings emerge in late childhood, in a pattern counter to the normal developmental trajectory of increased cognitive expertise in categorization, suggests that this anomaly indicates the onset of a critical transition in human social development.
本研究发现了社会认知发展中的一种异常现象，即年幼儿童（8岁和9岁）在一项基本分类任务中表现优于年龄较大的儿童（10岁和11岁），在该任务中，承认种族差异有助于提高表现。尽管年龄较大的儿童在该任务的种族中立版本中表现出色，但当种族是一个相关类别时，他们避免承认种族的倾向会阻碍客观上的成功。这些发现在童年晚期出现，其模式与分类中认知专业知识增加的正常发展轨迹相反，这表明这种异常现象表明人类社会发展中一个关键转变的开始。
