Flavell J H, Green F L, Flavell E R
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, CA 94305-2130.
Child Dev. 1993 Apr;64(2):387-98.
Children and adults were tested for their understanding that there is a virtually continuous flow of mental content in a waking person, a "stream of consciousness" that continues to run even when the person is not examining stimuli perceptually or trying to solve a problem. There was a marked increase with age from preschool to adulthood in subjects' tendency to say that a person who was just waiting quietly was having "some thoughts and ideas" rather than "a mind empty of thoughts and ideas." 4-year-olds also tended to say that the mind of a waiting person was "not doing anything," whether that person was another individual or themselves, and that a person who wanted to could keep his or her "mind completely empty of all thoughts and ideas" for 3 min. These results suggest that preschoolers' conceptions of people's mental lives may be quite different from those of older children and adults.
对儿童和成人进行了测试，以了解他们是否明白，在清醒的人身上，存在着几乎持续不断的心理内容流，即“意识流”，即使这个人没有在感知上审视刺激或试图解决问题，这种意识流也会持续存在。从学前儿童到成年人，随着年龄的增长，受试者认为一个只是静静地等待的人正在有“一些想法和念头”而不是“头脑中没有想法和念头”的倾向显著增加。4岁的儿童也倾向于说，等待的人的头脑“什么都没做”，无论那个人是另一个个体还是他们自己，并且一个想要这样做的人可以让他或她的“头脑完全没有任何想法和念头”持续3分钟。这些结果表明，学龄前儿童对人们心理生活的概念可能与年龄较大的儿童和成年人有很大不同。
