Rostad Kristin, Pexman Penny M
Language Processing Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of Calgary , Calgary, AB, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2015 Apr 10;6:425. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00425. eCollection 2015.
We examined the ability of preschool-aged children to identify conflicting, or ambivalent, desire states (e.g., "I want to go to the birthday party because there will be cake, but I also don't want to go because I'm having fun playing at home"). Participants were 4- and 5-year-old children, and a group of undergraduate students (n = 20 in each age group). They were presented with 14 scenarios involving both "single desire" and "dual desire" states, including both approach (i.e., "want") and avoidance (i.e., "not want") desires. Our primary interest was children's ability to identify concurrent conflicting "dual desire" states, and this ability was found in most of the 5-year-old age group tested and in about half of the 4-year-old age group. As such, these results provide evidence that children can identify ambivalence at earlier ages than previously reported. In addition, results showed that the challenge in recognizing ambivalence is the presence of desires of opposite valence directed at the same target.
我们考察了学龄前儿童识别冲突或矛盾欲望状态的能力（例如，“我想去参加生日派对，因为会有蛋糕，但我也不想去，因为我在家玩得很开心”）。参与者为4岁和5岁的儿童以及一组本科生（每个年龄组各20人）。他们被呈现了14个场景，涉及“单一欲望”和“双重欲望”状态，包括趋近（即“想要”）和回避（即“不想要”）欲望。我们主要感兴趣的是儿童识别同时存在的冲突“双重欲望”状态的能力，在大多数接受测试的5岁年龄组儿童以及约一半的4岁年龄组儿童中发现了这种能力。因此，这些结果提供了证据，表明儿童能够在比之前报道更早的年龄识别矛盾情绪。此外，结果表明，识别矛盾情绪的挑战在于针对同一目标存在相反效价的欲望。
