5-9岁儿童对常见食物及其功能的认知发展

Research on naïve biology investigates children spontaneous understanding of biology objects, phenomena and function. Previous researches focus mostly on biology phenomena. Little has done on organism’s function, such as eating food. Many research in this field found that children were unable to categorize food by nutrition criterion, but rely on physical cues. In order to investigate the development of children’s naïve understanding of food and to find if they can classify food by nutrition criterion, three age groups (5-year-olds, 7-year-olds, and 9-year-olds) were included in this study. Varies experimental tasks were also used to explore the children’s understanding of food and its function. The results showed as the followings: 1) A few 5-year- old children can classify food by nutrition criterion when they take the spontaneous classification task. However, more and more children can realize what make a kind of food different from another can be the nutrition it contains. 2) Kindergarteners can find the relation between food and its output. When they become older, more and more children can explain the relation by consistent theory. It can be said that 9-year-old children have already have a profound understanding of nutrition. They gradually developed naive theory of biology on nutrition level. 3) Even kindergarteners can understand the concept of “food balance”. However, with development there was a significant age increase in food balance choice. 4) Children’s knowledge of food balance grows with age, but urban and rural educational background influence cognitive performance.

朴素生物理论是儿童在接受系统的科学教育以前，对于生物本体、生物现象和生物功能等等方面的朴素认知。前人的研究中包含了大量有关儿童对生物现象的研究，而对诸如“进食”之类的生物功能的研究较少。这方面的研究认为儿童对食物的认知达不到营养成分的水平，学前儿童对食物的认知还停留在物理性质的水平。为了进一步考察儿童对食物及其功能的认知，以及这种认知是否基于营养成分的水平，本研究选取5岁学前儿童、小学一年级（7岁）、小学三年级（9岁）儿童为研究对象，采用多种任务范式，探查了儿童对食物及其功能的认知发展。本研究得出的主要研究结果有： 1）5岁儿童中已经有少数人可以在自发分类中运用营养为标准分类，随着年龄的增长，越来越多的儿童能够认识到造成食物与食物之间不同的因素是食物中的营养成分。 2）学前儿童可以认识到食物与营养效果的关系，随着年龄的增长，他们能用一致的理论来解释这种关系。学前儿童已经有了初步的“营养”认知，9岁儿童已经对营养有了较为深刻的认知。 3）学前儿童可以认识到“膳食平衡”的概念，随着年龄的增长，越来越多的儿童能够认识到平衡的观念。 4）儿童的“膳食平衡”的认知存在个体差异, 知识经验影响了他们朴素生物学理论的形成。