Sim Zi L, Xu Fei
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley.
Dev Psychol. 2017 Apr;53(4):642-651. doi: 10.1037/dev0000278.
Constructivist views of cognitive development often converge on 2 key points: (a) the child's goal is to build large conceptual structures for understanding the world, and (b) the child plays an active role in developing these structures. While previous research has demonstrated that young children show a precocious capacity for concept and theory building when they are provided with helpful data within training settings, and that they explore their environment in ways that may promote learning, it remains an open question whether young children are able to build larger conceptual structures using self-generated evidence, a form of active learning. In the current study, we examined whether children can learn high-order generalizations (which form the basis for larger conceptual structures) through free play, and whether they can do so as effectively as when provided with relevant data. Results with 2- and 3-year-old children over 4 experiments indicate robust learning through free play, and generalization performance was comparable between free play and didactic conditions. Therefore, young children's self-directed learning supports the development of higher-order generalizations, laying the foundation for building larger conceptual structures and intuitive theories. (PsycINFO Database Record
（a）儿童的目标是构建用于理解世界的大型概念结构，以及（b）儿童在发展这些结构中发挥积极作用。虽然先前的研究表明，当在训练环境中为幼儿提供有用的数据时，他们表现出早熟的概念和理论构建能力，并且他们以可能促进学习的方式探索环境，但幼儿是否能够使用自我生成的证据（一种主动学习形式）构建更大的概念结构仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。在当前的研究中，我们研究了儿童是否可以通过自由玩耍学习高阶概括（构成更大概念结构的基础），以及他们是否能够像在提供相关数据时一样有效地做到这一点。在4个实验中对2岁和3岁儿童进行的研究结果表明，通过自由玩耍可以进行有力的学习，并且自由玩耍和教学条件下的概括表现相当。因此，幼儿的自主学习支持高阶概括的发展，为构建更大的概念结构和直观理论奠定了基础。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
