Institute of Human Development, Department of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley, Tolman Hall, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2012 Aug 5;367(1599):2202-12. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2012.0122.
We argue for a theoretical link between the development of an extended period of immaturity in human evolution and the emergence of powerful and wide-ranging causal learning mechanisms, specifically the use of causal models and Bayesian learning. We suggest that exploratory childhood learning, childhood play in particular, and causal cognition are closely connected. We report an empirical study demonstrating one such connection--a link between pretend play and counterfactual causal reasoning. Preschool children given new information about a causal system made very similar inferences both when they considered counterfactuals about the system and when they engaged in pretend play about it. Counterfactual cognition and causally coherent pretence were also significantly correlated even when age, general cognitive development and executive function were controlled for. These findings link a distinctive human form of childhood play and an equally distinctive human form of causal inference. We speculate that, during human evolution, computations that were initially reserved for solving particularly important ecological problems came to be used much more widely and extensively during the long period of protected immaturity.
我们认为，在人类进化过程中，延长不成熟期与强大而广泛的因果学习机制的出现之间存在理论联系，特别是因果模型和贝叶斯学习的使用。我们认为，探索性的儿童学习，特别是儿童游戏，与因果认知密切相关。我们报告了一项实证研究，证明了其中一种联系——假装游戏和反事实因果推理之间的联系。当儿童考虑有关系统的反事实情况和进行有关系统的假装游戏时，他们对因果系统的新信息做出了非常相似的推断。即使在控制了年龄、一般认知发展和执行功能之后，反事实认知和因果一致的假装也具有显著相关性。这些发现将一种独特的人类形式的儿童游戏和一种同样独特的人类形式的因果推理联系起来。我们推测，在人类进化过程中，最初专门用于解决特别重要的生态问题的计算，在漫长的受保护的不成熟期内，开始更广泛地被使用。
