Woolley J D, Wellman H M
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-0406.
Child Dev. 1990 Aug;61(4):946-61.
In 2 studies we uncover some of children's earliest conceptions of various realities, nonrealities, and appearances. In the first study, we investigated children's early understanding by examining their use of the words real and really in spontaneous speech. These natural language data consisted of longitudinal samples of 6 children's speech between the ages of 1 and 6 from the Childes database. Analyses of these samples showed that by age 3 children clearly distinguished between reality and a variety of nonreal contrasts in their everyday speech. For example, young children distinguished between toys, pictures, and pretend actions versus their real natures. We claim that, in making these distinctions, children often are considering appearances, broadly construed. To confirm this, we conducted a second experimental study with 3-year-olds, in which we questioned children about the reality and appearance of a variety of items. Results from this study confirm and clarify our findings from the natural language data. We discuss the implications of these studies for current descriptions of young children's understanding of realities and nonrealities, including their understanding of the distinction between reality and appearance.
在两项研究中，我们揭示了儿童对各种现实、非现实和表象的一些最早概念。在第一项研究中，我们通过考察儿童在自发言语中对“真实的”和“真正地”这两个词的使用，来探究他们的早期理解。这些自然语言数据由来自儿童语言数据交换系统（Childes）数据库的6名1至6岁儿童言语的纵向样本组成。对这些样本的分析表明，到3岁时，儿童在日常言语中能够清晰地区分现实与各种非现实的对比。例如，幼儿能够区分玩具、图片、假装行为与其真实本质。我们认为，在做出这些区分时，儿童通常会从广义上考虑表象。为了证实这一点，我们对3岁儿童进行了第二项实验研究，在该研究中，我们询问儿童各种物品的现实情况和表象。这项研究的结果证实并澄清了我们从自然语言数据中得出的发现。我们讨论了这些研究对于当前对幼儿对现实和非现实理解的描述的意义，包括他们对现实与表象之间区别的理解。
