Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany.
Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2019 May;181:17-33. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.12.001. Epub 2019 Jan 18.
When children come to grasp the concept of intention is a central question in theory of mind research. Existing studies, however, present a puzzling picture. On the one hand, infants distinguish between intentional and accidental actions. On the other hand, previous work suggests that until 8 years of age children do not yet understand an essential property of intentions-their aspectuality. Intentions are aspectual in the sense that they refer to objects and actions only under specific aspects. For example, Oedipus married Jocasta without knowing that she was his mother. Thus, he intentionally married Jocasta but did not intentionally marry his mother. However, the negative findings from these studies may indicate performance limitations rather than competence limitations. The rationale of the current set of studies, therefore, was to test children's understanding of the aspectuality of intentions in a simplified, cognitively less demanding design. The participants, 5- and 6-year-olds (Study 1) and 4-year-olds (Study 2), were involved in simple games where they (or another agent) intentionally acted on objects that had an obvious first identity and a hidden second identity. Children either did or did not know about the toy's second identity at the moment of acting. After their actions, children were asked about their intentions regarding the toys' different identities. Results revealed that the 5- and 6-year-olds, but not the 4-year-olds, systematically considered how they (or another agent) represented the objects when making intentionality judgments. Thus, an understanding of aspectual intentions seems to develop at around the late preschool years-much earlier than previously assumed.
当儿童开始掌握意图概念时，这是心理理论研究中的一个核心问题。然而，现有研究呈现出令人困惑的局面。一方面，婴儿能够区分有意和无意的行为。另一方面，先前的工作表明，直到 8 岁，儿童还不理解意图的一个基本属性——意向性的方面性。从意向性方面来看，它们仅指特定方面的对象和行为。例如，俄狄浦斯在不知道乔卡斯塔是他母亲的情况下与她结婚。因此，他有意与乔卡斯塔结婚，但并没有有意与他的母亲结婚。然而，这些研究中的负面结果可能表明是表现上的限制，而不是能力上的限制。因此，当前这组研究的基本原理是在简化的、认知要求较低的设计中测试儿童对意图方面性的理解。参与者是 5 岁和 6 岁的儿童（研究 1）和 4 岁的儿童（研究 2），他们参与了简单的游戏，在游戏中，他们（或另一个代理人）有意地作用于具有明显第一身份和隐藏第二身份的物体。在行动时，儿童要么知道玩具的第二个身份，要么不知道。在他们的行为之后，儿童被问及他们对玩具不同身份的意图。结果表明，5 岁和 6 岁的儿童，而不是 4 岁的儿童，系统地考虑了他们（或另一个代理人）在进行意图判断时如何表示物体。因此，对方面意图的理解似乎在学前后期发展，比之前假设的要早得多。
