Context shapes early diversity in abstract thought

被引:27
作者
Carstensen, Alexandra [1 ,2 ]
Zhang, Jing [3 ]
Heyman, Gail D. [2 ]
Fu, Genyue [4 ,5 ]
Lee, Kang [3 ,6 ]
Walker, Caren M. [2 ]
机构
[1] Stanford Univ, Dept Psychol, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
[2] Univ Calif San Diego, Dept Psychol, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA
[3] Zhejiang Normal Univ, Dept Psychol, Jinhua 321004, Zhejiang, Peoples R China
[4] Hangzhou Normal Univ, Dept Psychol, Hangzhou 311121, Zhejiang, Peoples R China
[5] Hangzhou Normal Univ, Zhejiang Key Lab Res Assessment Cognit Impairment, Hangzhou 311121, Zhejiang, Peoples R China
[6] Univ Toronto, Dept Appl Psychol & Human Dev, Toronto, ON M5R 2X2, Canada
基金
美国国家科学基金会;
关键词
cognitive development; relational reasoning; learning; culture; RELATIONAL SHIFT; CHINESE; ANALOGY; VERBS; SIMILARITY; INDUCTION; KNOWLEDGE; TODDLERS; CULTURE; NOUNS;
D O I
10.1073/pnas.1818365116
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Early abstract reasoning has typically been characterized by a "relational shift," in which children initially focus on object features but increasingly come to interpret similarity in terms of structured relations. An alternative possibility is that this shift reflects a learned bias, rather than a typical waypoint along a universal developmental trajectory. If so, consistent differences in the focus on objects or relations in a child's learning environment could create distinct patterns of relational reasoning, influencing the type of hypotheses that are privileged and applied. Specifically, children in the United States may be subject to culture-specific influences that bias their reasoning toward objects, to the detriment of relations. In experiment 1, we examine relational reasoning in a population with less object-centric experience-3-y-olds in China-and find no evidence of the failures observed in the United States at the same age. A second experiment with younger and older toddlers in China (18 to 30 mo and 30 to 36 mo) establishes distinct developmental trajectories of relational reasoning across the two cultures, showing a linear trajectory in China, in contrast to the U-shaped trajectory that has been previously reported in the United States. In a third experiment, Chinese 3-y-olds exhibit a bias toward relational solutions in an ambiguous context, while those in the United States prefer objectbased solutions. Together, these findings establish population-level differences in relational bias that predict the developmental trajectory of relational reasoning, challenging the generality of an initial object focus and suggesting a critical role for experience.
引用
收藏
页码:13891 / 13896
页数:6
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