Ruskin E M, Kaye D B
University of California, Los Angeles.
J Exp Child Psychol. 1990 Aug;50(1):1-24. doi: 10.1016/0022-0965(90)90029-8.
The present study was an examination of two contrasting explanations for the finding that young children tend to classify objects according to similarity relations whereas adults emphasize dimensional structure. Subjects from three different age groups were given tasks that tapped different aspects of the visual process: Feature search, Conjunction search, and Restricted Classification tasks. In addition, three different stimulus objects (a highly separable, a highly integral, and an intermediate dimensional combination) were studied to explore the contribution of stimulus structure in dictating the nature of the processing mode. The results provided evidence against the view that children perceive objects according to a more primitive holistic structure. Rather, the results can be taken with past research to suggest that less efficient visual processing may lead the younger subjects to adopt a classification strategy that emphasizes similarity relations. In addition, the current research supported Garner's (1974, The processing of information and structure, Potomac, MD: Erlbaum) suggestion that the nature of the processing mode is stimulus-driven.
本研究考察了两种截然不同的解释，以说明幼儿倾向于根据相似关系对物体进行分类，而成人则强调维度结构这一发现。来自三个不同年龄组的受试者被给予了涉及视觉过程不同方面的任务：特征搜索、联合搜索和受限分类任务。此外，还研究了三种不同的刺激物体（一种高度可分离的、一种高度整合的和一种中间维度组合），以探究刺激结构在决定加工模式性质方面的作用。结果提供了证据，反对儿童根据更原始的整体结构感知物体这一观点。相反，这些结果与过去的研究共同表明，效率较低的视觉加工可能导致较年轻的受试者采用强调相似关系的分类策略。此外，当前的研究支持了加纳（1974年，《信息与结构的处理》，马里兰州波托马克：埃尔拉姆）的观点，即加工模式的性质是由刺激驱动的。
