Palmquist Carolyn M, Keen Rachel, Jaswal Vikram K
Department of Psychology, Amherst College, Massachusetts, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2018 Mar;36(1):37-46. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12205. Epub 2017 Sep 11.
This study explores whether verbal instructions to visualize an event can improve children's ability to make predictions about a difficult spatial problem. Three-year-olds (N = 48) were introduced to two intertwined tubes, and prior to predicting how a ball would travel through a given tube, one group of children was told to imagine the ball rolling down the tube, one group was told an explicit rule about where the ball would land, and a third group was given no instructions. Children were prevented from interacting with the apparatus to investigate the effect of the different verbal instructions alone on their problem-solving. Children in the imagine condition made more correct predictions than both children who received no instructions and those who were told an explicit rule (but were not told to visualize). These results suggest that verbal instructions to imagine an event are enough to help children solve difficult spatial problems, likely by visualizing the outcome prior to making a prediction. Statement of Contribution What is already known on this subject? Preschoolers exhibit a gravity bias when predicting how objects will travel through several intertwined tubes (Hood, 1995, Cogn. Dev., 10, 577). Preschoolers can overcome this gravity bias when they are first told to look at (Bascandziev & Harris, , Cogn. Dev., 25, 233) or visualize (Joh et al., 2011, Child Dev., 82, 744) the tubes. This work emphasized the role of visualization in improving children's ability to solve this difficult spatial problem. What does this study add? Previous work typically allowed children to interact directly with the apparatus during familiarization or while making predictions. Previous work did not consider whether a synergy between physical interaction and visualization instructions improved predictions. The current study shows that visualization instructions alone can improve children's ability to overcome the gravity bias.
本研究探讨了关于想象某一事件的言语指导是否能够提高儿童对复杂空间问题进行预测的能力。研究人员向48名三岁儿童展示了两根相互缠绕的管道，在预测球将如何通过给定管道之前，一组儿童被告知想象球在管道中滚动，一组儿童被告知关于球将落在哪里的明确规则，第三组儿童则未得到任何指导。为了单独研究不同言语指导对儿童解决问题的影响，研究人员阻止儿童与实验装置进行互动。结果发现，处于想象条件下的儿童做出的正确预测比未得到任何指导的儿童以及被告知明确规则（但未被告知进行想象）的儿童都要多。这些结果表明，关于想象某一事件的言语指导足以帮助儿童解决复杂的空间问题，这可能是通过在做出预测之前想象结果来实现的。贡献声明关于该主题已知的信息有哪些？学龄前儿童在预测物体如何通过几根相互缠绕的管道时表现出重力偏向（胡德，1995年，《认知发展》，第10卷，第577页）。当学龄前儿童首先被告知观察（巴斯坎齐耶夫和哈里斯，《认知发展》，第25卷，第233页）或想象（乔等人，2011年，《儿童发展》，第82卷，第744页）管道时，他们可以克服这种重力偏向。这项工作强调了想象在提高儿童解决这一复杂空间问题能力方面的作用。本研究增加了什么内容？以往的研究通常允许儿童在熟悉过程中或做出预测时直接与实验装置进行互动。以往的研究没有考虑身体互动和想象指导之间的协同作用是否能改善预测。当前的研究表明，仅想象指导就能提高儿童克服重力偏向的能力。
