Jin Xinyi, Li Pengchao, He Jie, Shen Mowei
Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, People's Republic of China; Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua 321004, People's Republic of China.
Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, People's Republic of China.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2018 Dec;176:13-25. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.07.002. Epub 2018 Aug 1.
Cooperation is generally found to have a more positive impact than competition on children's high-level social understanding (e.g., diverse desires, false beliefs); however, recent evidence has shown that competition could also improve such understanding. Differences in coordination level during interactions with others may potentially explain these inconsistent results. In this study, we tested the impact of coordination on children's ability to reason about diverse desires in both competitive and cooperative conditions. Four-year-old children played a competitive (Experiment 1, N = 48) or cooperative (Experiment 2, N = 48) game with an adult. They were then tested for their understanding of diverse desires in a gift selection condition that was difficult for children of this age. Coordination levels were manipulated as high versus low in both games. Results showed that coordination enhanced children's performance in reasoning about diverse desires, allowing children to conduct desire inferences and perspective taking simultaneously in both conditions. This finding accords well with the constructivist view that social understanding could be shaped by the underlying structure of the social interaction in which one participates. More important, it adds to our knowledge about how social interaction enhances one's social understanding at an early age; specifically, it highlights the decisive role of coordination in this process.
一般发现，合作比竞争对儿童高层次的社会理解（如不同的欲望、错误信念）有更积极的影响；然而，最近的证据表明，竞争也能提高这种理解。与他人互动时协调水平的差异可能潜在地解释了这些不一致的结果。在本研究中，我们测试了在竞争和合作条件下，协调对儿童推断不同欲望能力的影响。4岁儿童与一名成年人玩竞争游戏（实验1，N = 48）或合作游戏（实验2，N = 48）。然后，在一个对这个年龄段儿童来说有难度的礼物选择情境中，测试他们对不同欲望的理解。在两个游戏中，协调水平都被操纵为高与低。结果表明，协调提高了儿童在推断不同欲望方面的表现，使儿童在两种条件下都能同时进行欲望推理和观点采择。这一发现与建构主义观点非常契合，即社会理解可能由个体参与的社会互动的潜在结构塑造。更重要的是，它增加了我们对社会互动如何在早期提高个体社会理解的认识；具体而言，它突出了协调在这一过程中的决定性作用。
