Herold Katherine, Akhtar Nameera
Center for Early Education and Development, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2014 Sep;32(3):262-75. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12037. Epub 2014 Mar 3.
This study investigated 48 2.5-year-olds' ability to map from their own body to a two-dimensional self-representation and also examined relations between parents' talk about body representations and their children's understanding of self-symbols. Children participated in two dual-representation tasks in which they were asked to match body parts between a symbol and its referent. In one task, they used a self-symbol and in the other they used a symbol for a doll. Participants were also read a book about body parts by a parent. As a group, children found the self-symbol task more difficult than the doll-task; however, those whose parents explicitly pointed out the relation between their children's bodies and the symbols in the book performed better on the self-symbol task. The findings demonstrate that 2-year-old children have difficulty comprehending a self-symbol, even when it is two-dimensional and approximately the same size as them, and suggest that parents' talk about self-symbols may facilitate their understanding.
本研究调查了48名2.5岁儿童将自身身体映射到二维自我表征的能力，并考察了父母关于身体表征的谈话与孩子对自我符号理解之间的关系。儿童参与了两项双重表征任务，在任务中他们被要求匹配符号与其所指对象之间的身体部位。在一项任务中，他们使用自我符号，在另一项任务中，他们使用玩偶符号。参与者还由一位家长给他们读一本关于身体部位的书。总体而言，孩子们发现自我符号任务比玩偶任务更难；然而，那些父母明确指出孩子身体与书中符号之间关系的孩子在自我符号任务上表现更好。研究结果表明，即使自我符号是二维的且与孩子大小相近，2岁儿童理解自我符号仍有困难，并表明父母关于自我符号的谈话可能有助于他们的理解。
