Wellman H M, Hickling A K
Center for Human Growth and Development, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-0406.
Child Dev. 1994 Dec;65(6):1564-80. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1994.tb00836.x.
1 hypothesis about children's developing conception of the mind is that preschoolers are limited to an understanding that persons have internal, mental contents like thoughts and beliefs, whereas older children and adults conceive of the mind itself as an independent, active structure or processor. Adults' conception of the mind in this independent active fashion seems evident in their use of personified mental metaphor (e.g., "My mind tricked me"). 3 studies examined the development and consolidation of this active, personified view. Study 1 provided an analysis of natural language data regarding 1 child's uses of vision words such as see and look from age 2 1/2 to 8 years. We examined the child's use of such words to refer literally to perception (e.g., "I see the TV") and also to refer nonliterally to active mental processes such as comprehension and inference (e.g., "I see what you mean"). Studies 2 and 3 examined 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds' comprehension and production of mental metaphors. In a metaphor comprehension task, we asked children to interpret personified metaphoric statements about the mind (e.g., "My mind wandered") and 3 comparison domains, mechanics (e.g., "The car is dead"), nature (e.g., "The wind is howling"), and emotion (e.g., "Her heart was smiling"). In an explanation task, we asked children to explain the processes underlying the making of both instant photos and mental images. The findings reveal a developing ability to interpret and produce statements personifying the mind and provide considerable evidence about children's movement toward a conception of the mind as an independent entity deserving reference and conceptualization in its own right.
关于儿童心理概念发展的一种假设是，学龄前儿童仅限于理解人具有内在的心理内容，如思想和信念，而年龄较大的儿童和成年人则将心理本身视为一个独立的、活跃的结构或处理器。成年人以这种独立活跃的方式对心理的概念，在他们使用人格化的心理隐喻（例如，“我的思维欺骗了我”）中似乎很明显。三项研究考察了这种活跃的、人格化观点的发展和巩固。研究1对一名儿童从2岁半到8岁使用视觉词汇（如see和look）的自然语言数据进行了分析。我们考察了该儿童使用这些词汇来字面指称感知（例如，“我看到电视”），以及非字面地指称诸如理解和推理等活跃的心理过程（例如，“我明白你的意思”）。研究2和研究3考察了6岁、8岁和10岁儿童对心理隐喻的理解和生成。在一个隐喻理解任务中，我们要求儿童解释关于心理的人格化隐喻陈述（例如，“我的思维游离了”）以及三个比较领域的陈述，机械领域（例如，“汽车熄火了”）、自然领域（例如，“风在呼啸”）和情感领域（例如，“她的心在微笑”）。在一个解释任务中，我们要求儿童解释即时照片和心理图像形成背后的过程。研究结果揭示了儿童解释和生成人格化心理陈述的能力在不断发展，并提供了大量证据表明儿童正朝着将心理视为一个独立实体的概念发展，这个实体本身值得被提及和概念化。
