3-5岁幼儿认知灵活性的发展

To test preschoolers’ development of cognitive flexibility--an ability to solve a problem in one way and to then switch solution strategies, and the mechanism involved in the development, 3-5-year-olds are asked to perform switching tasks in which the experimenter manipulates the way the stimuli are presented: consecutive or simultaneous; the way the switching happens: between dimensions or within a dimension; the conceptual domains involved: shape, color, number and direction; the specific labels used. The main results of this work are presented below: (1) 3-5-year-olds’ cognitive flexibility develops with age, yet its development is not of the same speed in extra-dimensional switch tasks and inter-dimensional reversal tasks. 3-year-olds manifest some cognitive flexibility, but their performance is significantly worse than that of 4- and 5-year-olds. For the 3-year-olds, in reversal tasks, although 80% of the children passed the post-switch phrase in color task; less then 60% children passed the post-switch phrase in shape, number and direction tasks. In extra-dimensional tasks, 3-year-olds performance is worse than that in the reversal tasks. Less than 50% of the children passed the tasks. Children’s cognitive flexibility develops fast from 3-year-olds to 4-year-olds. Both 4-year-olds and 5-year-olds demonstrate high flexibility without significant difference between them. (2) Children’s flexibility in the conceptual domains of shape, color, number and direction follows different developing patterns. In inter-dimensional reversal tasks, 3-year-olds’ performance is not the same in the 4 conceptual domains, but the difference among the domains is insignificant in 4-and-5-year-olds. In extra-dimensional switching tasks, children’s performance on the 4 domain tasks is significantly different from one another in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. (3) The way the stimuli are presented affects children’s development of cognitive flexibility. In inter-dimensional reversal tasks, 3-year-olds’ performance in consecutive presentation is significantly better than that in simultaneous presentation. 4- and 5-year-olds’ performance in the 2 presentations is not significantly different from each other. In extra-dimensional switch tasks, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds’ performance in the consecutive presentation is not significantly better than that in the simultaneous presentation (4) 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds’ self-issued labeling aids their performance on the switching tasks. Children’ performance in the labeling condition is significantly better than that of no labeling. (5) 3-5-year-olds’ cognitive flexibility is highly correlated with their working memory and inhibition. Children’ development of cognitive flexibility is a process that involves activation of working memory and inhibition, in which the complexity of the task also plays a role.

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.

学前儿童朴素生物学“理论”的发展——对“生长”认知的实验研究

There is a debate in cognitive development theory on whether cognitive development is general or specific. More and more researchers think that cognitive development is domain specific. People start to investigate preschoolers' native theory of human being's basic knowledge systems. Naive biology is one of the core domains. But there is argument whether there is separate native biological concepts among preschoolers. The research examined preschoolers' cognitive development of naive biological theory on two levels which is "growth" and "aliveness", and it also examined individual difference and factors that lead to the difference. Three studies were designed. Study 1 was to study preschoolers' cognition on growth, which is a basic trait of living things, and whether children can distinguish living and non-living things with the trait and understanding the causality. Study 2 was to investigate preschoolers' distinction between living things and non-living things from an integrated level. Study 3 was to investigate how children make inferences to unfamiliar things with their domain specific knowledge. The results showed the following: 1. Preschoolers gradually developed naive theory of biology on growth level, but their naive theory on integrated level has not developed. 2 Preschoolers' naive theory of biology is not "all or none", 4- and 5-year-old children showed some distinction between living and non-living things to some extent, they use non-intentional reason to explain the cause of growth and their explanation showed coherence. But growth has not been a criteria of ontological distinction of living and non-living things for 4- and 5-year-old children, most 6-year-old children can distinguish between living and non-living things, and these show the developing process of biological cognition. 3. Preschoolers' biological inference is influenced by their domain-specific knowledge, whether they can make inference to new trait of living things depends on whether they have specific knowledge. In the deductive task, children use their knowledge to make inference to unfamiliar things. 4-year-olds use concrete knowledge more often while the 6-year-old use generalized knowledge more frequency. 4. Preschoolers' knowledge grow with age, but individuals' cognitive development speed at different period. Urban and rural educational background affect cognitive performance. As time goes by, the urban-rural knowledge difference to distinguish living and nonliving things reduces. And preschoolers' are at the same developmental stage because the three age groups have similar causal explanation both in quantity and quality. 5. There is intra-individual difference on preschoolers' naive biological cognition. They show different performance on different tasks and domains, and their cognitive development is sequential, they understand growth earlier than they understand "alive", which is an integrated concept. The intra-individual differences decrease with age.