Slaughter V, Gopnik A
University of California, Berkeley, USA.
Child Dev. 1996 Dec;67(6):2967-88.
Intuitive theories are defined as coherently interrelated systems of concepts that generate explanations and predictions in a particular domain of experience. 2 studies tested whether the child's theory of mind can be characterized as an intuitive theory. In Study 1, 3-year-old children who did not pass a false belief pretest were trained in 2 groups: (1) on the concept of belief, or (2) on the related concepts of desire and perception. Training took place over 2 weeks, with children given mental state tasks and receiving feedback according to their performance. Both training groups showed improved false belief performance on the posttest, compared to a control group trained on number conservation. This result is interpreted as demonstrating coherence in the child's theory of mind. In Study 2, these findings were repeated and expanded: training on belief as well as training on desire and perception resulted in improved performance on a variety of standard theory of mind posttests. Results are discussed with respect to competing theories of children's intuitive psychological knowledge.
直观理论被定义为连贯相关的概念系统，这些概念系统在特定的经验领域中产生解释和预测。两项研究测试了儿童的心理理论是否可被表征为一种直观理论。在研究1中，未通过错误信念预测试的3岁儿童被分为两组进行训练：（1）信念概念组，或（2）欲望和感知相关概念组。训练持续两周，期间给儿童布置心理状态任务，并根据他们的表现给予反馈。与接受数字守恒训练的控制组相比，两个训练组在后期测试中的错误信念表现均有所改善。这一结果被解释为证明了儿童心理理论中的连贯性。在研究2中，重复并扩展了这些发现：信念训练以及欲望和感知训练均使在各种标准心理理论后期测试中的表现得到改善。针对儿童直观心理知识的竞争理论对结果进行了讨论。
