Lillard A S
Stanford University, CA.
Child Dev. 1993 Apr;64(2):372-86.
A growing body of research indicates that children do not understand mental representation until around age 4. However, children engage in pretend play by age 2, and pretending seems to require understanding mental representation. This apparent contradiction has been reconciled by the claim that in pretense there is precocious understanding of mental representation. 4 studies tested this claim by presenting children with protagonists who were not mentally representing something (i.e., an animal), either because they did not know about the animal or simply because they were not thinking about being the animal. However, the protagonists were acting in ways that could be consistent with pretending to be that animal. Children were then asked whether the protagonists were pretending to be that animal, and children tended to answer in the affirmative. The results suggest that 4-year-olds do not understand that pretending requires mental representation. Children appear to misconstrue pretense as its common external manifestations, such as actions, until at least the sixth year.
越来越多的研究表明，儿童直到4岁左右才理解心理表征。然而，儿童在2岁时就开始进行假装游戏，而假装似乎需要理解心理表征。这种明显的矛盾通过以下观点得以调和：在假装中存在对心理表征的早熟理解。4项研究通过向儿童呈现一些主角来检验这一观点，这些主角要么因为不了解某种动物，要么仅仅因为没有想着成为那种动物，所以没有对某事物进行心理表征（即某种动物）。然而，这些主角的行为方式可能与假装成那种动物一致。然后问儿童这些主角是否在假装成那种动物，儿童往往给出肯定回答。结果表明，4岁的儿童不理解假装需要心理表征。儿童似乎将假装误解为其常见的外部表现，比如动作，这种情况至少持续到6岁。
