Department of Psychology, Cornell University, G62B MVR, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2010 Aug;21(8):1134-40. doi: 10.1177/0956797610376652. Epub 2010 Jul 9.
Psychological scientists use statistical information to determine the workings of human behavior. We argue that young children do so as well. Over the course of a few years, children progress from viewing human actions as intentional and goal directed to reasoning about the psychological causes underlying such actions. Here, we show that preschoolers and 20-month-old infants can use statistical information-namely, a violation of random sampling-to infer that an agent is expressing a preference for one type of toy instead of another type of toy. Children saw a person remove five toys of one type from a container of toys. Preschoolers and infants inferred that the person had a preference for that type of toy when there was a mismatch between the sampled toys and the population of toys in the box. Mere outcome consistency, time spent with the toys, and positive attention toward the toys did not lead children to infer a preference. These findings provide an important demonstration of how statistical learning could underpin the rapid acquisition of early psychological knowledge.
心理科学家利用统计信息来确定人类行为的运作方式。我们认为，幼儿也是如此。在几年的时间里，儿童从将人类行为视为有意图和有目的的，发展到推理出导致这些行为的心理原因。在这里，我们表明，学龄前儿童和 20 个月大的婴儿可以使用统计信息——即违反随机抽样——来推断代理人更喜欢一种类型的玩具而不是另一种类型的玩具。孩子们看到一个人从一个装满玩具的容器中取出五个同一类型的玩具。当抽样玩具与盒子里的玩具总数不匹配时，学龄前儿童和婴儿推断出这个人更喜欢那种类型的玩具。仅仅是结果的一致性、与玩具相处的时间和对玩具的积极关注，都不会让孩子们推断出偏好。这些发现为统计学习如何为早期心理知识的快速获取提供支持提供了一个重要的例证。
