Poulin-Dubois D, Shultz T R
Department of Psychology/CRDH, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
J Genet Psychol. 1990 Mar;151(1):77-90. doi: 10.1080/00221325.1990.9914645.
The primary purpose of this study was to examine young infants' discrimination between the abilities of social and nonsocial objects to serve as agents. Thirty-one infants between 8 months and 8 days old and 14 months and 19 days old were studied. The children's communicative skills were evaluated through frustration episodes in which a toy was taken away in order to elicit communicative behaviors toward the mother. Visual fixation time was compared for events in which an inanimate object moved independently and events in which a human being was the agent. Analysis of the magnitude of decrease of attending responses revealed that the older infants took longer to process anomalous events, whereas the younger infants manifested more interest for events in which an animate being played the role of agent. The findings suggest that infants can distinguish between the causal powers of social and nonsocial objects by the end of the first year.
本研究的主要目的是考察婴儿对社交和非社交物体作为施动者能力的辨别。研究对象为31名年龄在8个月零8天至14个月零19天之间的婴儿。通过创设挫折情境来评估儿童的沟通技巧，在该情境中拿走玩具以引发儿童对母亲的沟通行为。比较无生命物体自主移动事件和人类作为施动者事件的视觉注视时间。对注意力反应下降幅度的分析表明，年龄较大的婴儿处理异常事件的时间更长，而年龄较小的婴儿对有生命物体作为施动者的事件表现出更大兴趣。研究结果表明，婴儿在第一年末就能区分社交和非社交物体的因果能力。
