幼儿错误信念理解与语言关系的纵向研究

本研究采用纵向实验研究的方法,在六个月的时间里,考察了51名三岁半不同语言能力幼儿错误信念理解与一般语言能力发展之间的关系。结果发现:在3岁半到4岁之间,汉语幼儿的错误信念理解能力发生了显著变化;语言能力超常组在错误信念任务上的表现显著好于普通语言能力组幼儿;幼儿错误信念理解能力和一般语言能力发展之间存在密切联系,但难以确定二者相互作用的方向。     

训练对3～4岁儿童心理理论发展的影响

本研究旨在通过实验验证训练对于儿童心理理论的发展是否具有促进作用.研究者选取了3～4岁儿童共122名,通过错误信念任务和语言控制任务,筛选出59名被试参加实验,并将被试按年龄、性别平均分配到三个组:故事组、信念组和控制组,分别进行不同的训练.研究结果显示,适当的训练对儿童心理理论能力的发展具有明显的促进作用,且训练效应具有长期性;4岁儿童的训练效果显著优于3岁儿童.     

3～5岁藏族儿童心理理论能力的发展

本研究以58名3～5岁藏族在园幼儿为实验对象,试图探究藏族儿童心理理论能力发展的一般变化趋势,结果表明藏族儿童心理理论的获得和年龄发展趋势与国内外有关儿童心理理论发展的结论有着跨文化的一致性,但也存在重要差异。藏族儿童在5．5岁时才基本形成错误信念理解能力,较国内外其他儿童晚一到半岁;3岁以后能理解外表与事实的区别;4岁以后能同时理解自己和他人的信念;5．5岁掌握他人行为预测任务。藏族儿童的错误信念理解不存在显著的性别差异。     

不同民族儿童"心理理论"发展特征及影响因素研究

在两种标准一级错误信念任务中,云南边境地区240名5-8岁的佤族、拉祜族、汉族被试儿童在一级错误信念的通过表现上存在差异。民族异同和文化背景的差异对儿童“心理理论”能力的得分表现都有重要影响。240名受测民族儿童中最早的要到6岁左右才能通过一级错误信念任务,这与已有研究认为4岁左右是大部分儿童完成一级错误信念任务的时间点不同。     

3～5岁幼儿心理理论发展的任务特性实验研究

以3—5岁幼儿为被试,采用自然实验法探讨幼儿心理理论能力的任务特性问题。研究的结果再次支持3—5岁为幼儿心理理论发展的关键时期这一论点,并发现对于事实真相的双重抑制比传统的错误信念任务需要更多的认知加工,任务难度也随之显著提高。还讨论了心理理论各项任务之间既存在显著的一致性、又具有一定的特异性方面的问题。     

4-6岁幼儿心理理论与语言产生能力的相关研究

目的:通过对4-6岁幼儿进行心理理论测验和图片命名任务测验,研究心理理论与幼儿语言产生能力的关系。方法:研究选取29名4-6岁幼儿参加实验,采用意外转移范式测量心理理论,通过图片命名任务考查语言产生能力。采用SPSS17. 0进行数据录入并使用Pearson相关、t检验、单因素方差分析对录入的数据进行统计分析。结果:心理理论和图片命名任务存在正相关,完全获得心理理论的幼儿图片命名任务成绩高于部分获得或者没有获得心理理论的幼儿成绩,心理理论在性别上不存在显著差异。结论:4-6岁幼儿心理理论与其语言产生能力有显著相关。     

孤儿错误信念认知与情绪理解发展及教育对策

研究用2个心理理论范式测量错误信念认知和情绪理解能力,比较33名孤儿和33名非孤儿的表现,并分析了错误信念认知和情绪理解的关系。结果显示:(1)孤儿错误信念认知水平发展趋势与非孤儿一致,但孤儿的错误信念认知能力发展显著低于非孤儿;(2)孤儿的情绪理解发展趋势和水平与非孤儿基本一致;(3)儿童(包括孤儿)错误信念认知和情绪理解在3-5岁期间发生明显变化,大多数儿童在5岁时已基本具备错误信念认知和情绪理解的能力,4岁是儿童错误信念认知和情绪理解能力发展的重要年龄;(4)儿童错误信念认知与情绪理解关系密切。     

如何促进小小班幼儿的语言发展

语言是人们交往的工具。知识技能的传播和品德行为培养都要通过语言来进行。因此，发展幼儿语言是幼儿接受一切教育的基础，而幼儿期发展幼儿语言的主要任务是提高幼儿的口语表达能力。小小班的幼儿最大的也只有3岁，有的吐字还不清楚，有的听不懂老师的话，作用教育工作，必需了解此年龄段幼儿语言的一般规律。3岁的幼儿具有惊人的语言接受能力，由于他们已掌握了一些基本句子，言语的积极性高，喜欢听别人给出他们讲故事，乐于和成人交谈，对成人有较强的依恋感情，但此时的幼儿发间器官尚未得到充分的发育，听觉的分辨能力较差，不易辨别和运用发音器官的某些部位或不能掌握某些发间方法，所以有些音发不清楚或发出错误的音，那么，如何从小培养他们的口语表达能力呢？     

3～6岁幼儿言语目的性的发展特点

言语目的性是儿童语用能力发展的重要方面。本研究通过创设任务情境对3～6岁儿童的言语目的性发展特点进行了研究。结果发现：随年龄的增长，幼儿言语目的性的发展水平及为实现言语目的而运用有效描述和回应策略的能力不断提高；中班是幼儿将外加言语目的转化为自身言语目的能力发展的重要时期，大班是幼儿为实现言语目的而运用有效策略能力发展的重要时期。     

学前儿童朴素情绪理论的发展

对情绪的心理层面的理解是幼儿心理理论发展中出现得相对较迟的能力。本研究结合主人公愿望是否得到满足的状态,通过利用图片故事个别测查的方法探查了90名3～5岁学前儿童在“内容错误信念”任务中对他人情绪的推测。结果显示,年幼儿童尤其是3岁幼儿的高兴情绪理解受其对情境是否满足愿望的认知的影响,呈现出显著的“积极情绪偏差效应”;     

Metamemory in children with autism

Five experiments are reported comparing metamemory abilities in children with autism, age- and language-matched mentally retarded children, and language-matched young normal controls. The mean language age of the participants in Experiment 1 was approximately 6 years, in Experiments 2, 3, and 4 approximately 8 years, and in Experiment 5 approximately 9 years. All the children were given one or more false belief tests. Experiment 1 assessed the children's understanding that a task variable (list length) and a person variable (age) will affect their own and others' performances on an immediate auditory-verbal recall task. Experiment 2 assessed the ability to utilize category cues in a picture recall task. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed the ability to verbalize strategies used in a memory span test and in one retrospective and two prospective memory situations. Experiment 5 assessed the children's knowledge and understanding of another person's memory. On the basis of available evidence and theory, we predicted that the children with autism would be impaired on all the metamemory tasks and that impairment would be associated with failure on tests of false belief. Our predictions were not supported. The children with autism were not impaired on any of the metamemory tasks, although they were less likely than controls to make spontaneous use of memory strategies involving other people. Unexpectedly few of the children failed the false belief tasks. These results are discussed in relation to theories concerning primary psychological deficits underlying autism.     

Young Children's Understanding of Fictional versus Epistemic Mental Representations: Imagination and Belief

In 2 studies, 3- and 4-year-old children's ability to reason about the relation between mental representations and reality was examined. In the first study, children received parallel false belief and "false" imagination tasks. Results revealed that children performed better on imagination tasks than on belief tasks. The second study demonstrated that, when various alternative explanations for better performance on the imagination task were controlled for, children still performed significantly better when reasoning about another person's imagination than when reasoning about another person's belief. These findings suggest that children's understanding that mental representations can differ from reality may emerge first with respect to representations that do not purport to represent reality truthfully.     

The impact of verbal capacity on theory of mind in deaf and hard of hearing children

Even when they have good language skills, many children with hearing loss lag several years behind hearing children in the ability to grasp beliefs of others. The researchers sought to determine whether this lag results from difficulty with the verbal demands of tasks or from conceptual delays. The researchers related children's performance on a nonverbal theory of mind task to their scores on verbal aptitude tests. Twelve French children (average age about 10 years) with severe to profound hearing loss and 12 French hearing children (average about 7 years) were evaluated. The children with hearing loss showed persistent difficulty with theory of mind tasks, even a nonverbal task, presenting results similar to those of hearing 6-year-olds. Also, the children with hearing loss showed a correlation between language level (lexical and morphosyntactic) and understanding of false beliefs. No such correlation was found in the hearing children.     

Exploration of the autistic child's theory of mind: knowledge, belief, and communication

26 autistic children with mental ages of 3-13 years were tested on 3 tasks that are within the capability of 3- or 4-year-old normal children. The first task tested understanding of a mistaken belief. Children were shown a typical box of a certain brand of sweets, and they all thought that it contained that kind of sweet. To their surprise, however, the box contained something else. Yet, only 4 out of the 26 autistic children were able to anticipate that another child in the same situation would make the same mistake. In contrast, all but 1 of 12 children with specific language impairment, matched for mental age, understood that others would be as misled as they had been themselves. The autistic children were also tested for their ability to infer knowledge about the content of a container from having or not having looked inside. All 4 children who had passed the belief task and an additional 4 performed perfectly, but most failed. The third task assessed children's pragmatic ability to adjust their answers to provide new rather than repeat old information. Here, too, most autistic children seemed unable to reliably make the correct adjustment. These results confirm the hypothesis that autistic children have profound difficulty in taking account of mental states.     

Gesture as a window on children's beginning understanding of false belief

Given that gestures may provide access to transitions in cognitive development, preschoolers' performance on standard tasks was compared with their performance on a new gesture false belief task. Experiment 1 confirmed that children (N=45, M age=54 months) responded consistently on two gesture tasks and that there is dramatic improvement on both the gesture false belief task and a standard task from ages 3 to 5. In 2 subsequent experiments focusing on children in transition with respect to understanding false beliefs (Ns=34 and 70, M age=48 months), there was a significant advantage of gesture over standard and novel verbal-response tasks. Iconic gesture may facilitate reasoning about opaque mental states in children who are rapidly developing concepts of mind.     

学障儿童与正常儿童心理理论四种成分的发展比较

采用统一背景的图片故事法,探讨7-12岁学障儿童（27人）和正常儿童（27人）在一级错误信念、二级错误信念、解释性心理理论和失言理解四个心理理论成分的发展趋势。结果表明,学障儿童的心理理论能力发展显著落后于正常儿童,主要表现在一级错误信念、二级错误信念、解释性心理理论方面;学障儿童的心理理论发展表现出随着年龄增长的特点,而正常儿童心理理论发展的年龄差异并不显著;整合全体被试探讨学龄期儿童心理理论诸成分之间的关系,结果表明,这四种心理理论成分的发展呈现复杂化的趋势。设计背景统一、内容简明的研究任务有助于全面考察心理理论能力的发展。     

The impact of sign language on the cognitive development of deaf children: the case of theories of mind

The ability to attribute false beliefs (i.e., demonstrate theory of mind) by 155 deaf children between 5 and 8 years of age was compared to that of 39 hearing children ages 4 to 6. The hypotheses under investigation were (1) that linguistic features of sign language could promote the development of theories of mind and (2) that early exposure to language would allow an easier access to these theories. Deaf children were grouped according to their communication mode and the hearing status of their parents. The results obtained in three false belief tasks supported the hypotheses: effective representational abilities were demonstrated by deaf children of deaf parents, whereas those born to hearing parents appeared delayed in that regard, with differences according to their communication mode.     

The Role of Age and Verbal Ability in the Theory of Mind Task Performance of Subjects with Autism

A number of studies have reported that most children with autism fail theory of mind tasks. It is unclear why certain children with autism pass such tests and what might be different about these subjects. In the present study, the role of age and verbal ability in theory of mind task performance was explored. Data were pooled from 70 autistic, 34 mentally handicapped, and 70 normal young subjects, previously tested for a number of different studies. The analysis suggested that children with autism required far higher verbal mental age to pass false belief tasks than did other subjects. While normally developing children had a 50% probability of passing both tasks at the verbal mental age of 4 years, autistic subjects took more than twice as long to reach this probability of success (at the advanced verbal mental age of 9-2). Possible causal relations between verbal ability and the ability to represent mental states are discussed.     

Relations between maternal input and theory of mind understanding in deaf children

This study investigates the relationship between theory of mind (ToM) skills in deaf children and input from their hearing mothers. Twenty-two hearing mothers and their deaf children (ages 4-10 years) participated in tasks designed to elicit talk about the mind. The mothers' mental state talk was compared with that of 26 mothers with hearing children (ages 4-6 years). The frequency of mothers' mental talk was correlated with deaf children's performance on ToM tasks, after controlling for effects of child language and age. Maternal sign proficiency was correlated with child language, false belief, and mothers' talk about the mind. Findings are discussed in relation to experiential accounts of ToM development and roles of maternal talk in children's social understanding.     

False Belief, Emotion Understanding, and Social Skills Among Head Start and Non-Head Start Children

The present study investigated relationships among false belief, emotion understanding, and social skills with 60 3- to 5-year-olds (29 boys, 31girls) from Head Start and two other preschools. Children completed language, false belief, and emotion understanding measures; parents and teachers evaluated children's social skills. Children's false belief performance related to their understanding of their friend's emotions and to teacher's ratings of social skills. Aspects of emotion understanding related to social skills. Head Start (n =30) and non-Head Start preschoolers (n = 30) performed similarly on social skills and emotion understanding measures, however, non-Head Start children performed significantly better on false belief tasks than Head Start children. Results demonstrate the importance of including diverse groups of children in studies of social cognition.