Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2012 Feb;111(2):197-211. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2011.08.008. Epub 2011 Sep 23.
Previous studies failed to find evidence for rational action selection in children under 2 years of age. The current study investigated whether younger children required more training to encode the relevant causal relationships. Children between 1½ and 3 years of age were trained over two sessions to perform actions on a touch-sensitive screen to obtain video clips as outcomes. Subsequently, a visual habituation procedure was employed to devalue one of the training outcomes. As in previous studies, 2- and 3-year-olds chose actions associated with an expected valued outcome significantly more often during a subsequent choice test. Moreover, analysis of children's first responses in the post-devaluation test revealed evidence of rational action selection even in the youngest age group (18-23 months). Consistent with dual-process accounts of action control, the findings support the view that the ability to make rational action choices develops gradually.
先前的研究未能在 2 岁以下的儿童中找到理性行为选择的证据。本研究探讨了年幼的儿童是否需要更多的训练来编码相关的因果关系。1 岁半到 3 岁的儿童在两个阶段的训练中，通过触摸屏幕执行动作，以获得视频片段作为结果。随后，采用视觉习惯化程序来降低一种训练结果的价值。与之前的研究一样，2 岁和 3 岁的儿童在随后的选择测试中，选择与预期有价值的结果相关的行为的次数明显更多。此外，对儿童在去价值化测试后的第一反应的分析表明，即使在最小的年龄组（18-23 个月），也存在理性行为选择的证据。与行为控制的双重过程解释一致，这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即做出理性行为选择的能力是逐渐发展的。
