Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Canada.
Cognition. 2011 Sep;120(3):403-11. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.02.003. Epub 2011 Feb 24.
A crucial task in social interaction involves understanding subjective mental states. Here we report two experiments with toddlers exploring whether they can use statistical evidence to infer the subjective nature of preferences. We found that 2-year-olds were likely to interpret another person's nonrandom sampling behavior as a cue for a preference different from their own. When there was no alternative in the population or if the sampling was random, 2-year-olds did not ascribe a preference and persisted in their initial beliefs that the person would share their own preference. We found similar but weaker patterns of responses in 16-month-olds. These results suggest that the ability to infer the subjectivity of preferences based on sampling information begins to emerge between 16 months and 2 years. Our findings provide some of the first evidence that from early in development, young children can use statistical evidence to make rational inferences about the social world.
在社交互动中，理解主观心理状态是一项关键任务。在这里，我们报告了两项针对幼儿的实验，旨在探索他们是否能够利用统计证据来推断偏好的主观性。我们发现，2 岁的幼儿更有可能将另一个人的非随机抽样行为解释为偏好与自己不同的线索。当群体中没有其他选择或抽样是随机的时，2 岁的幼儿不会将偏好归因于他人，并坚持自己最初的信念，即他人会与自己有相同的偏好。我们在 16 个月大的幼儿中发现了类似但较弱的反应模式。这些结果表明，基于抽样信息推断偏好主观性的能力在 16 个月至 2 岁之间开始出现。我们的发现提供了一些早期证据，表明幼儿从早期开始就可以利用统计证据对社会世界进行理性推断。
