Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60218-2710, USA.
Child Dev. 2011 Jul-Aug;82(4):1173-88. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01599.x. Epub 2011 May 11.
Learning relational categories--whose membership is defined not by intrinsic properties but by extrinsic relations with other entities--poses a challenge to young children. The current work showed 3-, 4- to 5-, and 6-year-olds pairs of cards exemplifying familiar relations (e.g., a nest and a bird exemplifying home for) and then tested whether they could extend the relational concept to another category (e.g., choose the barn as a home for a horse). It found that children benefited from (a) hearing a (novel) category name in a relational construction and (b) comparing category members. The youngest group--3-year-olds--learned the category only when given a combination of relational language and a series of comparisons in a progressive alignment sequence.
学习关系类别——其成员身份不是由内在属性定义的，而是由与其他实体的外在关系定义的——对幼儿来说是一个挑战。目前的研究向 3 岁、4 岁至 5 岁和 6 岁的儿童展示了一对卡片，这些卡片例示了熟悉的关系（例如，鸟巢和鸟例示了家对于），然后测试他们是否能够将关系概念扩展到另一个类别（例如，选择谷仓作为马的家）。研究发现，儿童受益于 (a) 在关系结构中听到（新的）类别名称和 (b) 比较类别成员。最年轻的一组——3 岁儿童——只有在给予关系语言和一系列比较的组合，并且按照逐步对齐的顺序进行比较时，才会学习到这个类别。
