Marchak Kristan A, Bayly Bryana, Umscheid Valerie, Gelman Susan A
University of Alberta - Campus Saint-Jean.
University of Michigan.
J Cogn Dev. 2020;21(5):774-796. doi: 10.1080/15248372.2020.1802276. Epub 2020 Sep 10.
When reasoning about a representation (e.g., a toy lion), children often engage in "iconic realism," whereby representations are reported to have properties of their real-life referents. The present studies examined an inverse difficulty that we dub "representational blindness": overlooking (i.e., being 'blind' to) a representation's objective, non-symbolic features. In three experiments ( = 302), children (3-6 years) and adults saw a series of representations (pictures and toys) and were tested on how often they endorsed a property that was true of the real-world referent (e.g., reporting that a toy lion is dangerous; iconic realism) or rejected a property that was true of the representation (e.g., denying that a toy elephant can be lifted with one hand; representational blindness). We found that representational blindness and realism were separable tendencies. Children (and to a lesser extent, adults) displayed both, but at different rates for pictures than for toys. We conclude that children's reasoning about representations includes a bias to overlook the features of the representation itself. Further, although pictures and toys are both representations, they provoke ontologically distinct interpretations. We discuss the implications of these results for a variety of important conceptual tasks, including learning to read, draw, or objectively evaluate scientific evidence.
在对一种表征（例如玩具狮子）进行推理时，儿童常常会陷入“图像现实主义”，即据报道表征具有其现实生活中所指对象的属性。本研究考察了一种我们称之为“表征盲视”的相反难题：忽视（即对）一种表征的客观、非符号化特征（“视而不见”）。在三项实验（N = 302）中，儿童（3至6岁）和成人观看了一系列表征（图片和玩具），并接受测试，以了解他们认可现实世界所指对象真实属性（例如，报告玩具狮子是危险的；图像现实主义）或拒绝表征真实属性（例如，否认玩具大象能用一只手举起；表征盲视）的频率。我们发现，表征盲视和现实主义是可分离的倾向。儿童（以及程度较轻的成人）都表现出这两种倾向，但对图片和玩具的表现率不同。我们得出结论，儿童对表征的推理包括一种忽视表征本身特征的偏向。此外，尽管图片和玩具都是表征，但它们引发了在本体论上截然不同的解释。我们讨论了这些结果对各种重要概念任务的影响，包括学习阅读、绘画或客观评估科学证据。
