幼儿心理理论发展与师生关系和同伴交往能力:一项纵向研究

采用纵向设计通过三次施测考察了3～5岁儿童心理理论发展与师生关系和同伴交往能力的关系。结果发现,(1)年龄、语言、第一次施测的一级错误信念理解分数,以及同伴交往能力中的语言和非语言交往可以显著预测第二次施测的一级错误信念理解成绩。(2)年龄和师生关系中的冲突感得分可以显著预测第二次施测的二级错误信念理解成绩。表明年龄是儿童心理理论发展的一个主要预测源。同伴交往能力与一级错误信念理解的发展存在密切关系,而较为复杂的二级错误信念理解与师生关系中的冲突感存在密切关系。     

儿童解释性心理理论研究述评

错误信念理解后儿童心理理论有着怎样的发展,学者们提出了三种不同的观点。其中之一认为错误信念理解后,心理理论的发展产生了质的变化,即由复制式心理理论发展到解释性心理理论。本文在阐明了复制式心理理论和解释性心理理论涵义的基础上,比较了两者的不同,并探讨了解释性心理理论的研究方法和相关的研究结论。     

儿童解释性心理理论研究回顾与展望

解释性心理理论是指儿童能够理解到不同的个体由于进行的建构不同或预期不同,即使在知觉信息或事件完全相同的情况下,他们具有的信念也不同。它是儿童心理理论发展的第二个里程碑。该文从解释性心理理论的界定、与错误信念理解的关系、研究方法及其发展特点等方面对已有研究进行了概括,并从实验范式的规范、被试选择的科学性、研究方法的改进以及开展跨文化研究等方面对未来解释性心理理论的研究进行了展望。     

3～5岁儿童心理理论的发展对其社会行为的影响

随机选取108名3～5岁儿童,通过对其进行一级错误信念认知和二级错误信念认知任务测试及社会行为评定,考察儿童的心理理论对其社会行为(亲社会行为、攻击性行为和退缩行为)的影响.研究结果表明:(1)儿童亲社会行为发生概率随着年龄的增长而显著提高,攻击性行为发生概率随着年龄的增长而显著降低,退缩行为发生概率也随着年龄的增长而降低,但差异并不显著.(2)儿童的错误信念认知水平随着年龄的增长而提高.(3)在控制了年龄和性别变量后,儿童的二级错误信念认知水平可以预测其亲社会行为和攻击性行为的发生,而儿童对错误信念的认知水平不能预测其退缩行为的发生.     

家庭和同伴对儿童心理理论发展的影响

错误信念认知是儿童心理理论研究的重要领域,发展心理学家常常通过儿童对他人信念的认知来考察儿童心理理论的发展.本研究以两项错误信念任务、家庭环境量表及同伴提名法为研究工具,考察儿童的心理理论发展水平及家庭环境和幼儿同伴关系特征,探讨家庭和同伴对儿童心理理论发展的影响.研究表明:(1)儿童心理理论发展的关键期为4岁.(2)同伴地位对儿童心理理论的发展有显著影响.(3)社会偏好性、家庭亲密度、家庭矛盾性和家庭娱乐性均对儿童心理理论的发展产生影响.     

儿童心理理论发展的家庭影响因素

心理理论是指个体对自己和他人心理状态（如需要、信念、愿望、意图、感知、知识、情绪等）的认识,并由此对相应行为作出因果性的预测和解释。研究者一般把达到对“错误信念”——他人或自己的一些与现实不一致的信念的理解作为儿童拥有心理理论的主要标志。大量研究表明,儿童在4岁时才能达到对错误信念的理解。导致儿童心理理论发展存在差异的影响因素很多．其中,家庭是造成儿童心理理论发展出现差异的最重要的影响因素．主要包括：     

影响儿童心理理论的家庭因素及其对家庭教育的启示

一、引言 心理理论最早源于Premack和Woodruff对黑猩猩是否具有一种心理理论的研究，之后国内外许多学者对儿童的心理理论进行了大量的理论探讨和实证研究，以至于对它的研究已成为继皮亚杰关于儿童认知和元认知发展的研究之后，又一个探讨儿童心理表征和心理认知的新范式。心理理论是指个体对自己和他人心理状态（如需要、信念、意图、感觉等）的认知，并由此对相应的行为做出因果性的预测和解释。目前对于心理理论的研究主要集中在个体对他人和自己的信念以及信念与行为之间关系的认知。因此，实验研究范式大多是错误信念任务（意外地点任务、意外内容任务、外表事实区分等），也通常把儿童达到能够正确理解他人会拥有错误信念的年龄认为是儿童获得心理理论能力的年龄。大部分研究认为儿童在4岁左右获得了心理理论能力。     

同伴交往、亲子交往与儿童心理理论发展的关系

已有的大量研究表明,学前期是儿童心理理论发展的关键期,4岁左右是儿童获得心理理论的关键年龄.但是,并非4岁儿童均能通过错误信念任务,不同个体之间心理理论发展水平存在一定的差异,探查心理理论发展差异成为近年心理理论研究最活跃的领域之一.     

影响儿童心理理论发展的神经递质与神经机制及其教育促进策略

心理理论是儿童社会认知和社会交往发展的基础。关于心理理论的神经科学研究显示，多巴胺能与催产素水平的提高能够促进儿童心理理论的发展，五羟色胺能与加压素的正常分泌则是儿童心理理论健康发展的保证。与此同时，无论是完成心理理论任务，还是理解他人信念、意图与情绪，都需要儿童多个脑区的共同参与。基于神经科学揭示的影响儿童心理理论发展的神经递质与神经机制，成人应引导儿童养成爱运动、善饮食、会游戏的行为习惯，给予儿童充分的安全感和归属感，在与儿童交谈过程中多运用描绘心理状态的词语，以促进儿童心理理论的发展。     

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。     

Seriation, Conservation, and Theory of Mind Abilities in Individuals with Autism, Individuals with Mental Retardation, and Normally Developing Children

Seriation, conservation, and theory of mind abilities were examined in individuals with autism ( N = 16), mental retardation ( N = 16), and in normally developing children ( N = 16). Seriation tasks included seriation of tubes, blocks, and flat squares. Conservation tasks included conservation of area, number, substance, quantity, and weight. Theory of mind tasks involved predicting false belief and understanding value and fact beliefs. Participants with autism performed better than participants with mental retardation on seriation, while no differences emerged between these groups on conservation and false belief. Individuals with autism performed less well than individuals with mental retardation on the value and fact belief tasks; however, when verbal ability was held as a covariant, the difference was no longer significant. Normally developing children performed better than the other two groups on all tasks. These results suggest that autism does not involve a specific impairment in theory of mind and that theory of mind deficits are not unique to autism.     

不同语言能力幼儿在三种错误信念任务中的表现

本研究采用了实验的方法,以言语、非言语性任务,意外转移与表征变化任务为变量,考察了不同语言能力的88名3-4岁幼儿的错误信念理解能力。研究结果发现,降低错误信念任务对语言能力的要求并不能改变幼儿在错误信念理解上的年龄特征;在3岁和4岁两个年龄组中,语言能力超常的幼儿在各项实验任务上的表现均好于语言能力一般的幼儿。     

Graphic symbols as "the mind on paper": links between children's interpretive theory of mind and symbol understanding

Children gradually develop interpretive theory of mind (iToM)—the understanding that different people may interpret identical events or stimuli differently. The present study tested whether more advanced iToM underlies children’s recognition that map symbols’ meanings must be communicated to others when symbols are iconic (resemble their referents). Children (6–9 years; N = 80) made maps using either iconic or abstract symbols. After accounting for age, intelligence, vocabulary, and memory, iToM predicted children’s success in communicating symbols’ meaning to a naïve map‐user when mapping tasks involved iconic (but not abstract) symbols. Findings suggest children’s growing appreciation of alternative representations and of the intentional assignment of meaning, and support the contention that ToM progresses beyond mastery of false belief.     

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.     

Individual Differences in Theory of Mind,Aggressive Behavior,and Social Skills In Young Children

Research Findings. The present study examined relations between social-cognitive skills, aggression, and social competence using teacher questionnaires and tabletop tasks with preschool and kindergarten children. It was hypothesized that the acquisition of a theory of "mind," as indexed by an understanding of false beliefs, might be related to social behavior for this age group. Overall, results indicated that both generation of forceful solutions in a traditional social-problem solving task and performance on the false belief tasks were significantly related to social competence, after controlling for the effects of age, language comprehension, and teacher ratings of aggression. In addition, theory of mind understanding was a better predictor of social competence than performance on a more traditional social information-processing task that involved the generation of alternative solutions to interpersonal problems. Practice. The implications of these findings for preschool and kindergarten peer relations and their potential relevance to treatment of deficits in social skills are discussed. Specifically, training in an understanding of counterfactual thinking (e.g., through increased and structured opportunities to engage in pretend play and storytelling) may enhance preschooler social skills.     

Perceptual Access Reasoning (PAR) in Developing a Representational Theory of Mind

An important part of children's social and cognitive development is their understanding that people are psychological beings with internal, mental states including desire, intention, perception, and belief. A full understanding of people as psychological beings requires a representational theory of mind (ToM), which is an understanding that mental states can faithfully represent reality, or misrepresent reality. For the last 35 years, researchers have relied on false-belief tasks as the gold standard to test children's understanding that beliefs can misrepresent reality. In false-belief tasks, children are asked to reason about the behavior of agents who have false beliefs about situations. Although a large body of evidence indicates that most children pass false-belief tasks by the end of the preschool years, the evidence we present in this monograph suggests that most children do not understand false beliefs or, surprisingly, even true beliefs until middle childhood. We argue that young children pass false-belief tasks without understanding false beliefs by using perceptual access reasoning (PAR). With PAR, children understand that seeing leads to knowing in the moment, but not that knowing also arises from thinking or persists as memory and belief after the situation changes. By the same token, PAR leads children to fail true-belief tasks. PAR theory can account for performance on other traditional tests of representational ToM and related tasks, and can account for the factors that have been found to correlate with or affect both true- and false-belief performance. The theory provides a new laboratory measure which we label the belief understanding scale (BUS). This scale can distinguish between a child who is operating with PAR versus a child who is understanding beliefs. This scale provides a method needed to allow the study of the development of representational ToM. In this monograph, we report the outcome of the tests that we have conducted of predictions generated by PAR theory. The findings demonstrated signature PAR limitations in reasoning about the mind during the ages when children are hypothesized to be using PAR. In Chapter II, secondary analyses of the published true-belief literature revealed that children failed several types of true-belief tasks. Chapters III through IX describe new empirical data collected across multiple studies between 2003 and 2014 from 580 children aged 4–7 years, as well as from a small sample of 14 adults. Participants were recruited from the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. All participants were native English-speakers. Children were recruited from university-sponsored and community preschools and daycare centers, and from hospital maternity wards. Adults were university students who participated to partially fulfill course requirements for research participation. Sociometric data were collected only in Chapter IX, and are fully reported there. In Chapter III, minor alterations in task procedures produced wide variations in children's performance in 3-option false-belief tasks. In Chapter IV, we report findings which show that the developmental lag between children's understanding ignorance and understanding false belief is longer than the lag reported in previous studies. In Chapter V, children did not distinguish between agents who have false beliefs versus agents who have no beliefs. In Chapter VI, findings showed that children found it no easier to reason about true beliefs than to reason about false beliefs. In Chapter VII, when children were asked to justify their correct answers in false-belief tasks, they did not reference agents’ false beliefs. Similarly, in Chapter VIII, when children were asked to explain agents’ actions in false-belief tasks, they did not reference agents’ false beliefs. In Chapter IX, children who were identified as using PAR differed from children who understood beliefs along three dimensions—in levels of social development, inhibitory control, and kindergarten adjustment. Although the findings need replication and additional studies of alternative interpretations, the collection of results reported in this monograph challenges the prevailing view that representational ToM is in place by the end of the preschool years. Furthermore, the pattern of findings is consistent with the proposal that PAR is the developmental precursor of representational ToM. The current findings also raise questions about claims that infants and toddlers demonstrate ToM-related abilities, and that representational ToM is innate.     

Conceptual Coherence in the Child's Theory of Mind: Training Children to Understand Belief

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.     

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.     

The Association Between Narratives and Theory of Mind for Low-Income Preschoolers

This study investigated the relationship between narrative skills and theory of mind for low-income children. Two groups of low-income preschoolers, one African American (n = 33) and one European American (n = 36), created a narrative and participated in a false belief task. The European Americans outperformed African Americans on the false belief task, but there were no differences in the narrative skills across the groups. After controlling for children's age, false belief performance had no effect on European Americans' narrative abilities. However, African Americans who passed the false belief task told stories that were more grammatically coherent and social cognitively sophisticated than those African American children who did not pass the task.     

自闭症儿童的心理理论发展及其与言语能力的关系

研究用5个信念任务测量心理理论能力,用皮博迪图片词汇测验测量言语能力,比较12名自闭症儿童和同等言语能力的28名正常儿童的表现,并分析了心理理论和言语能力的相关。结果表明:(1)自闭症儿童的心理理论发展显著落后于同等言语智力的正常儿童;(2)自闭症和正常儿童的信念理解发展序列基本一致;(3)心理理论和言语能力保持中度相关,但控制年龄因素后的偏相关不显著。本研究支持心理理论发展的领域特殊性观点。