Department of Psychology, UNC Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Child Dev. 2021 Sep;92(5):e817-e831. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13655. Epub 2021 Aug 31.
Understanding disease transmission is a complex problem highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. These studies test whether 3- to 6-year-old children in the United States use information about social interactions to predict disease transmission. Before and during COVID-19, children predicted illness would spread through close interactions. Older children outperformed younger children with no associations between task performance and pandemic experience. Children did not predict that being hungry or tired would similarly spread through close interactions. Participants include 196 three- to six-year-olds (53% girls, 47% boys; 68% White, 9% Black, 7% Asian, 6% Hispanic or Latinx), with medium-sized effects (d = .6, = .3). These findings suggest that thinking about social interaction supports young children's predictions about illness, with noted limitations regarding children's real-world avoidance of disease-spreading behaviors.
理解疾病传播是一个复杂的问题，这一问题在 COVID-19 大流行期间得到了凸显。这些研究检验了美国 3 至 6 岁儿童是否会利用社交互动信息来预测疾病传播。在 COVID-19 之前和期间，儿童预测疾病会通过密切接触传播。年龄较大的儿童比年龄较小的儿童表现更好，任务表现与大流行经历之间没有关联。儿童们没有预测到饥饿或疲劳也会通过密切接触传播。参与者包括 196 名 3 至 6 岁的儿童（53%为女孩，47%为男孩；68%为白人，9%为黑人，7%为亚洲人，6%为西班牙裔或拉丁裔），具有中等效应（d=0.6，r=0.3）。这些发现表明，思考社交互动有助于儿童预测疾病，但需要注意的是，儿童在现实世界中避免疾病传播行为方面存在局限性。
