Beaudoin-Ryan Leanne, Goldin-Meadow Susan
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, USA.
Dev Sci. 2014 Nov;17(6):984-90. doi: 10.1111/desc.12180. Epub 2014 Apr 23.
Stem-cell research. Euthanasia. Personhood. Marriage equality. School shootings. Gun control. Death penalty. Ethical dilemmas regularly spark fierce debate about the underlying moral fabric of societies. How do we prepare today's children to be fully informed and thoughtful citizens, capable of moral and ethical decisions? Current approaches to moral education are controversial, requiring adults to serve as either direct ('top-down') or indirect ('bottom-up') conduits of information about morality. A common thread weaving throughout these two educational initiatives is the ability to take multiple perspectives - increases in perspective taking ability have been found to precede advances in moral reasoning. We propose gesture as a behavior uniquely situated to augment perspective taking ability. Requiring gesture during spatial tasks has been shown to catalyze the production of more sophisticated problem-solving strategies, allowing children to profit from instruction. Our data demonstrate that requiring gesture during moral reasoning tasks has similar effects, resulting in increased perspective taking ability subsequent to instruction. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v/gAcRIClU_GY.
干细胞研究。安乐死。人格。婚姻平等。校园枪击案。枪支管制。死刑。伦理困境经常引发关于社会基本道德结构的激烈辩论。我们如何让今天的孩子们成为充分知情且有思想的公民，能够做出道德和伦理决策呢？当前的道德教育方法存在争议，需要成年人充当关于道德的直接（“自上而下”）或间接（“自下而上”）信息传递渠道。贯穿这两种教育举措的一个共同主线是采取多种视角的能力——人们发现，视角采择能力的提高先于道德推理的进步。我们提出，手势作为一种独特的行为，有助于增强视角采择能力。研究表明，在空间任务中要求使用手势能够促使人们产生更复杂的解决问题策略，使孩子们从指导中受益。我们的数据表明，在道德推理任务中要求使用手势也有类似效果，即指导后视角采择能力会增强。本文的视频摘要可在http://www.youtube.com/watch?v/gAcRIClU_GY观看。
