认知与发展心理学研究室知识库

目前，关于学前儿童能否对生物特性进行本体区分并形成一致的生物学因果解释仍存有争议，从广泛的多种基本生物特性的角度探查儿童生物概念的发展十分必要。本研究试图从生物“繁殖”的多个层次、多种表现特征出发系统探查儿童关于繁殖的朴素生物学理沦的发展。
本研究采用访谈I系统探查4-7岁儿童对包括动植物在内的整体的生物繁殖现象的认知。包括三个部分:研究一采用不同任务变式从亲代、子代角度探查儿童在繁殖维度上的生物本体区分及因果解释;研究二进一步探查儿童对繁殖的“物种成熟后发生”和“代代衍生”的认知;研究三采用训练干预探查相关领域性知识对儿童对植物繁殖认知的影响。
结果发现:(1) 4-7岁儿童关于繁殖的朴素生物学理论随年龄逐步发展。4岁开始有部分儿童能依据繁殖特性区分动物和非生物，5, 6岁儿童这一认识有了加速的发展，但对认识植物的繁殖现象仍有困难，只有在7岁入学以后儿童的这一认识产生了飞跃，获得了包括植物在内的生物繁殖特性的理解，表现了发展的连续性和阶段性的统一。4-7岁儿童对动物繁殖的认知表现出“逐步发展”的趋势，而对植物的认知却表现出“从学}1可期到学龄期快速发展”的趋势。(2)儿童对生物繁殖特性的因果解释也是从低到高逐步发展。学龄前期多采用生物器官和生物功能的解释，随年龄增长，指向概念本质特性的解释逐渐增多。各年龄儿童倾向于用非意图的生物学因果解释解释动植物繁殖，并能对同领域不同项目本体进行一致的因果解释。(3)儿童对生物繁殖认知存在个体内部差异。第一，儿童先理解动物繁殖、然后才‘理解植物繁殖特性，表现出对任务领域的认知差异; 第二，4, 5岁儿童对同领域内不同层次的项目本体的繁殖特性有认知差异，对高等动物繁殖的认知成绩优于低等动物、果实类植物优于非果实类植物、自然非生物优于人造物。说明低龄儿童的认知发展容易受刺激物表现特性的影响。第三，任务形式对低龄儿童的认知产生影响:对动物繁殖，分类任务的成绩优于判断和来源任务;对植物繁殖，图片选择任务优于临床访谈任务;第四，儿童对生物繁殖的不同表现特征有认知差异，对“成熟后发生”的理解优于“代代衍生”;对动物繁殖的“代代衍生”特征，对“向下衍生”的理解优于“上溯来源”。说明繁殖的不同特征对儿童有理解难度差异。(4)降低任务难度的图片选择任务可以有效地改善儿童对植物来源任务的作业成绩，并使5岁以上儿童有较大获益。相关领域知识的训练可以普遍提高5, 6岁儿童对植物繁殖的认知，同样的训练对6岁的效果好于5岁。

Recently, it has been debated over whether preschoolers distinguished between living being and non-living being and had causal-explanatory framework. So it is very essential to examine children's biological concept from a variety of biological characteristics. The study tries to examine systemically 4一to 7-year-old children's understanding of living being from biological reproduction.
The present research aimed at investigating to integrative understandings pertaining to biological reproduction of both animals and plants in 4- to 7-year-old children. It included three sections. Studyl examined children's animate-inanimate ontological distinctions for reproduction and causal explanatory from two sides of filial and parental generation by a variety of task types. Study2 attempted to probe children's understandings for characteristic features of reproduction, namely growing-up-then-reproduce and generation-after-generation.Study3 was of a pre-test-intervention-post-test design to examine how biological domain-specific knowledge affected understanding of children for plants reproduction.
The results showed the following: 1. Children ages 4-7 have gradually developed naive theory of biology for reproduction with age. Some children by age 4 partially distinguished animals from nonliving things for biological reproduction, and 5一and 6-year-old honored realization, but weren't able to realize reproduction of plant. By age 7-yesr-olds, basically children's understanding for reproduction developed ripidly, and honored sophisticated understanding for reproduction of both animal and plant. Child's cognitive development is towords a combined theory of continuity and stabes. In addition, the cognitive development for reproduction of both animals and plants seemed to have different developmental modes----gradual development for animals and salient development from before- to after-school for plants. 2. The causal explanatory for phenomenon of biological reproduction gradually developed with ages from lower level to higher. Children age 6 and younger explained biological properties by biological functional or/and organic explanations, and children had an emerging grasp of biological causal explanatory toward intrinsic properties of reproduction with age. Children of all ages realized that non-intentional causal mechanisms and not other sort (e.g., human intervention) underlie reproduction of animals and plants, and defined a coherent form of reasoning about a particular set of phenomena in same domain. 3.Preschoolers had different understandings for reproduction. First, children at all ages had acquired understanding for animal reproduction prior to plant. It showed a phenomenon of different understandings for domains of animals and plants. Secondly, children age 4 and 5 had different understandings for different items in same domain. It manifested a phenomenon of they had more understandings for mammal than bird and insect, more plant with fruits than without fruits, more nonliving natural things than artifacts. The findings suggested that concept of reproduction of young children age 4 and 5 was still fragile and easy to be subjected to features and appearances of items. Thirdly, the variety task requirements affected preschoolers'realization for biological reproduction. It manifested a phenomenon that score of the category-task was higher than that of judgment-task and interview-task for understanding of animal reproduction; and that of select-task than interview-task for plant reproduction. Finally,subjects at all ages had different understandings for a variety of characteristic features of reproduction, for example, children had better realizations for feature of growing-up-then-reproduce than that of generation-after-generation, and multiplying-from-generation-to-generation than tracing-to-derivation. It suggested that 4- to 7-year-olds had different clue in select-task might understanding for different features of reproduction. 4.The picture age 5 and older had more improve children's understanding for origin of plants, and children improvement. Domain-specific knowledge might widely accelerate 5一and 6-year-olds' understanding for plant reproduction, and 6-year-olds had more enhancement than 5-year-olds by similar intervention.