Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2013 Apr;114(4):522-36. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2012.10.001. Epub 2012 Dec 4.
The ability to detect dangerous animals rapidly in complex landscapes has been historically important during human evolution. Previous research has shown that snake images are more readily detected than images of benign animals. To provide a stringent test of superior snake detection in preschool children and adults, Experiment 1 consisted of two parts using a touch-screen visual search task. Reaction times to detect different target snakes embedded in matrices of lizards were compared with reaction times to detect target lizards embedded in matrices of snakes. Experiment 2 compared the visual salience of lions with that of similarly colored antelopes. This experiment tested the prediction that historically dangerous felid predators would also engender rapid detection. Results from the two experiments revealed that both preschool children and adults located snakes and lions more quickly than their nonthreatening counterparts. Experiment 3 examined the ability of children and adults to distinguish between similar appearing cows and horses. Preschool children and adult men exhibited no reliable differences in detecting the two animal types. Adult women located horses reliably faster than cows, suggesting that visual biases for some animals can be acquired after childhood.
快速检测复杂环境中危险动物的能力在人类进化史上一直很重要。先前的研究表明，蛇的图像比良性动物的图像更容易被发现。为了严格测试学龄前儿童和成年人对蛇的优越检测能力，实验 1 使用触摸屏视觉搜索任务分为两部分进行。比较了在蜥蜴矩阵中嵌入不同目标蛇的反应时间与在蛇矩阵中嵌入目标蜥蜴的反应时间。实验 2 比较了狮子和类似颜色羚羊的视觉显著性。该实验检验了这样一种预测，即历史上危险的猫科捕食者也会迅速被发现。这两个实验的结果表明，学龄前儿童和成年人比非威胁性的同类更快地定位到蛇和狮子。实验 3 检验了儿童和成人区分相似外观的牛和马的能力。学龄前儿童和成年男性在检测两种动物类型时没有可靠的差异。成年女性可靠地更快地定位到马，这表明对某些动物的视觉偏见可以在儿童期后获得。
