5-9岁儿童对常见病病因及其致病不确定性的认知发展

Research on children's naive concepts has previously tended to focus on the domains of physics and psychology, but more recently attention has turned to conceptual development in biology as a core domain of knowledge. Because of its familiarity, illness has been a popular topic for researchers in this domain. However, they have only studied the children’s understanding of its causes. Other aspects of illness, such as treatment and prognosis, have received little attention. This research addresses the development of 5- to 9-year-old children’s understanding of the causes of illness and their probabilities via open-ended and forced choice interviews. The results of this research are: 1) Most of the 5- to 7-year-old children used behavioral causes to explain illness, and the 9-year-old children primarily used biological causes to interpret illness. With age, more and more children selected psychological causes to explain illness. 2) Pre-school children did not over-generalize contagions to non-contagious illnesses. They used behavioral and biological causes to explain contagious illnesses. For non-contagious illnesses, they chose only behavioral causes. 3) Most of the children used only one kind of cause to explain illness. 4) Some preschool-aged children viewed outcomes of familiar causes of illness as probabilistic. With age, more and more could make uncertain predictions of illness. 5) The children’s understanding of the causes’ probabilities appeared to be based on naïve biology. 5- to 9-year-old children often made probabilistic predictions by analyzing a single cause of illness. 6) Children coming from higher educational backgrounds outperformed their counterparts coming from lower educational backgrounds with respect to understanding illness. 7) Specific knowledge acquired could generally improved the preschoolers’ understanding of causes of illness and their probabilities.

疾病作为一种儿童早期即有所经验并较为熟悉的生物学现象，被不少研究者选作为考察学前儿童朴素生物学认知的研究内容，而现有的研究大多只探查到儿童对病因的认知，对于疾病其他相关内容较少触及。本研究考察了学前儿童对病因及其致病不确定性这两方面的认知，并将被试选择扩大到小学生，从发展的角度探查儿童对疾病认知发展现状。本研究主要结果如下： 1）5岁和7岁儿童主要用行为原因来解释疾病，9岁儿童主要用生物学原因来解释疾病；少数5岁儿童已能够认识到疾病发生的心理方面病因，随着年龄的增长，越来越多的儿童认识到疾病心理方面的原因； 2）学前儿童并非用“传染”来解释所有疾病。对于传染性疾病，学前儿童更加关注机体外部的行为学和生物学原因，对于非传染性疾病，学前儿童仅关注机体外部的行为方面原因； 3）大多数5-9岁儿童仅能认识到疾病发生的某一类别原因。随着年龄增长，越来越多的儿童能够认识到疾病的发生是机体内外多种病因共同作用的结果； 4）对疾病发生进行预测时，在已知一个病因条件时，部分5岁儿童已能够做出疾病发生不确定性的判断，随着年龄的增长，越来越多的儿童能够认识疾病发生的不确定性； 5）儿童对疾病发生不确定性的认知是朴素生物领域的。5岁和7岁儿童在对疾病发生进行预测时，主要使用单因性质判断和单因程度判断策略。多数9岁儿童使用多因综合判断策略，能够认识到疾病的发生是多种病因共同作用的结果； 6）教育条件不同的同年级儿童对病因及其致病不确定性的认知有显著差异，教育条件较好的儿童认知要优于教育条件较差的儿童； 7）在对5岁学前儿童进行领域特殊性干预后，其对常见病病因和疾病发生不确定性的认知水平显著提高，干预后的儿童更多地使用生物学原因和机体状态原因来进行病因解释，并可运用多个可能病因的综合分析的方法对疾病的发生进行预测。