School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom.
Dev Psychol. 2012 Jan;48(1):185-91. doi: 10.1037/a0025863. Epub 2011 Oct 17.
Two experiments tested 6- to 11-year-old children's and college students' use of different frames of reference when making judgments about descriptions of social and nonsocial scenes. In Experiment 1, when social and nonsocial scenes were mixed, both children and students (N = 144) showed spontaneous sensitivity to the intrinsic and the relative frame of reference for both social and nonsocial scenes. All groups over 7 years old showed a stronger effect of the intrinsic frame of reference for social stimuli. This is the first evidence of sensitivity to more than 1 frame of reference in individual judgments made by children. Experiment 2 tested a further sample of 6- to 11-year-old children and students (N = 185) with social and nonsocial scenes in separate blocks. In this study, participants were no longer sensitive to the relative frame of reference--an effect we characterize as "losing your self in space," as this frame is generated by one's own position in the world. Children showed this effect only when the stimuli were social, suggesting that spontaneous use of intrinsic frames of spatial reference may develop out of sensitivity to the perspectives of agents.
两项实验测试了 6 至 11 岁儿童和大学生在对社会和非社会场景描述进行判断时使用不同参照系的情况。在实验 1 中，当社会和非社会场景混合时，儿童和学生（N=144）都自发地对社会和非社会场景的内在和相对参照系敏感。所有 7 岁以上的群体对社会刺激的内在参照系的影响更强。这是首次在个体判断中证明对超过 1 个参照系的敏感性。实验 2 用社会和非社会场景分别在单独的块中测试了另外一组 6 至 11 岁的儿童和学生（N=185）。在这项研究中，参与者不再对相对参照系敏感——我们称之为“在空间中迷失自我”，因为这个参照系是由人在世界中的位置产生的。只有当刺激是社会性的时候，儿童才会表现出这种效果，这表明对主体视角的敏感性可能会自发地产生对内在空间参照系的使用。
