Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Child Dev. 2012 May-Jun;83(3):992-1006. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01751.x. Epub 2012 Mar 30.
Category-based induction requires selective use of different relations to guide inferences; this article examines the development of inferences based on ecological relations among living things. Three hundred and forty-six 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children from rural, suburban, and urban communities projected novel diseases or insides from one species to an ecologically or taxonomically related species; they were also surveyed about hobbies and activities. Frequency of ecological inferences increased with age and with reports of informal exploration of nature, and decreased with population density. By age 10, children preferred taxonomic inferences for insides and ecological inferences for disease, but this pattern emerged earlier among rural children. These results underscore the importance of context by demonstrating effects of both domain-relevant experience and environment on biological reasoning.
基于类别归纳需要有选择地使用不同的关系来指导推理；本文考察了基于生物之间生态关系的推理发展。346 名来自农村、郊区和城市社区的 6、8 和 10 岁儿童将一种物种的新疾病或内部器官投射到具有生态或分类学关系的物种上；他们还被调查了业余爱好和活动。生态推理的频率随着年龄的增长和对自然的非正式探索的增加而增加，随着人口密度的增加而减少。到 10 岁时，儿童更喜欢内部器官的分类推理和疾病的生态推理，但这种模式在农村儿童中更早出现。这些结果强调了背景的重要性，表明了领域相关经验和环境对生物推理的影响。
