Matsui Tomoko, Rakoczy Hannes, Miura Yui, Tomasello Michael
Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Aichi 484-8506, Japan.
Dev Sci. 2009 Jul;12(4):602-13. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00812.x.
It has been repeatedly shown that when asked to identify a protagonist's false belief on the basis of his false statement, English-speaking 3-year-olds dismiss the statement and fail to attribute to him a false belief. In the present studies, we tested 3-year-old Japanese children in a similar task, using false statements accompanied by grammaticalized particles of speaker (un)certainty, as in everyday Japanese utterances. The Japanese children were directly compared with same-aged German children, whose native language does not have grammaticalized epistemic concepts. Japanese children profited from the explicit statement of the protagonist's false belief when it was marked with the attitude of certainty in a way that German children did not - presumably because Japanese but not German children must process such marking routinely in their daily discourse. These results are discussed in the broader context of linguistic and theory of mind development.
反复的研究表明，当被要求根据主人公的错误陈述来识别其错误信念时，说英语的3岁儿童会忽视该陈述，并且无法将错误信念归属于主人公。在本研究中，我们使用类似于日常日语话语中带有表示说话者（不）确定的语法化助词的错误陈述，对3岁的日本儿童进行了一项类似任务的测试。日本儿童与同龄的德国儿童进行了直接比较，德国儿童的母语中没有语法化的认知概念。当主人公的错误信念以一种德国儿童无法做到的确定态度被明确陈述时，日本儿童从中受益——大概是因为日本儿童而非德国儿童在日常话语中必须经常处理这种标记。我们在语言和心理理论发展的更广泛背景下讨论了这些结果。
