认知与发展心理学研究室知识库

儿童的很多知识都是通过社会学习从他人那里获得的。随着儿童年龄的增长以及对语言的掌握，问答互动逐渐成为儿童重要的社会学习方式，解释寻求逐渐成为主要的互动内容。儿童的解释寻求具有选择性，主要表现为对可靠解释者和良好解释的甄别。人们通常采用不同的解释模式回答有关“为什么”的问题，如目的功能解释或因果机制解释。前人围绕解释模式就学前儿童对他人解释的选择与学习做了相关探讨，但这些研究未考虑解释模式领域性或固有解释模式偏向在相关过程中的作用，因而可能低估了儿童辨别、习得不同模式解释的能力。以往研究发现，幼儿在自发解释动物行为或机器运动两类问题时没有明显的解释模式偏向。因此，本研究将围绕上述两个问题领域，考察学前儿童对解释模式的学习过程，以解决前人研究的局限。同时，为了明确学前儿童上述表现背后的影响因素，研究尝试性地测量了被试的能力差异。本研究还结合领域专家们目前关注的热点话题，对儿童在本研究框架下的教学行为(社会传递)展开探讨，以丰富人们对相关学习过程连贯的认识。综上，本研究将对学前儿童习得(研究一)、传递(研究二)解释模式的过程进行实证检验，探讨问题领域(实验1)、个体差异(实验2)和模式预期(实验3)在各过程中的作用。

研究一首先考察了问题领域在学前儿童解释模式学习中的作用。实验1招募了96名4, 5岁幼儿，以年龄和解释模式为组间变量，问题领域为组内变量，考察幼儿对他人解释的评价、习得、泛化与回忆。结果发现，(1)幼儿对他人的解释模式进行了显著地习得与泛化，他们在解释相似问题或新异问题时，使用了与他人一致的解释模式;(2)与动物行为问题相比，幼儿在解释新异机器运动问题时表现出更明显的模式泛化;(3)与机器运动问题相比，幼儿对他人关于动物行为问题的解释回忆成绩更好;(4)与年幼幼儿相比，年长幼儿表现出更强的模式习得与泛化，对他人解释的合理性评价更低，对他人解释的回忆成绩更好。上述结果表明，幼儿能够学习(习得并泛化)他人的解释模式，并且在泛化与回忆过程中表现出问题领域特殊性，证实了问题领域在学前儿童解释模式学习中的影响。

学前儿童在解释模式学习上表现各异，研究一继而考察了个体差异在其中的作用。实验2对参与过实验1的幼儿进行了认识性能力与社会性能力的测试。结果发现，(1)认知灵活性对幼儿泛化解释模式的效果具有显著的预测作用，但对幼儿习得解释模式的效果具有边缘显著的预测作用;(2)性别可以显著预测幼儿对解释模式的习得效果，月龄可以显著预测幼儿对解释模式的泛化效果。上述结果表明，幼儿的认知性差异(认知灵活性的能力差异)可以很好地反映他们在学习解释模式时的表现差异，而幼儿的社会性差异却不能如此。此外，幼儿的人口学差异(月龄、性别)也能在一定程度上反映幼儿在解释模式学习上的表现差异。

研究一证实了问题领域在学前儿童解释模式学习中的影响，但实验1也反映出了一些不足。实验1没有让幼儿同时面对他人不同模式的解释，这不能很好地体现学习时的“选择”。研究二(实验3)将采用双信息源范式，同时对解释模式学习的传递阶段进行了探讨。实验3招募了84名4, 5岁幼儿，以提问者的模式预期为组间变量，问题领域和解释模式为组内变量，考察了幼儿对他人解释的评价与传递。结果发现，(1)当他人用目的功能解释动物行为问题，或用因果机制解释机器运动问题时，幼儿对他人解释的合理性评价更高;(2)幼儿会用模式偏向明显的解释回应他人带有预期的提问，并且传递的解释在模式偏向上与他人的预期相吻合。上述结果表明，幼儿对不同模式解释的评价，因问题领域不同而不同，表现出解释模式评价的领域特殊性。另外，幼儿在传递解释时不受解释模式评价的影响，而是以提问者的模式预期为依据提供适宜的解释。

本研究的结果证实，学前儿童对解释模式的学习具有选择性。这种选择性体现为幼儿对解释模式的评价与学习具有领域特殊性。研究还发现，幼儿的认知灵活性是其解释模式学习表现的潜在影响因素。此外，幼儿对模式预期的理解可能是他们传递他人解释时的一个重要认知成分。研究学前儿童对他人解释的学习过程，不仅有助于研究者深入理解幼儿通过社会学习形成概念系统、推断因果关系等认知发展过程的规律，还能为教师、家长应对幼儿的解释寻求、促进幼儿间的同伴辅导等相关教学实践提供理论依据与指导。

which resulted in the question-answer interaction becomes the major way of social learning and the explanation-seeking becomes the major type of the interaction. Children selectively seek explanations as they usually distinguish reliable explanators or reasonable explanations. People always adopted distinct modes of construal when they answered why-questions, such as teleo-functional explanations or causal/mechanical explanations. Previous studies investigated preschoolers' selection and learning of others' explanations while their result overlooked the role of domain-specificity of the mode of construal and children's inherent bias of the mode of construal, leading to children's capabilities of distinguishing and acquiring different modes of construal were underestimated. Further, when young children are asked to explain animal behaviors or artifact's movements, they don't show apparent bias of modes of construal. Therefore, to fill up the gaps previous studies left out, the present study tried to research preschoolers' learning processes about modes of construal in domains mentioned above. Additionally, the current study also investigated young children's teaching behaviors, which called social transmission that attracted much researchers' attention recently, bringing about a consecutive understanding of learning processes about modes of construal. To sum up, the present study would carry out a series of experiments to make clear what preschoolers' acquisition (Study 1) and transmission (Study 2) of modes of construal are, and how question domains (Experiment 1)，individual differences (Experiment 2) and expectations of modes (Experiment 3) influence these processes.

Study 1，based on prior works, tried to investigate the role of question domains in preschoolers' learning processes about modes of construal. In experiment 1，we recruited 96 4一to _5一year-old children to study how they acquire and generalize other's explanations, with age and modes of construal as between一subject factors and question domains as the within-subject factor. The results showed that: (1) Preschoolers apparently acquired and generalized other's explanations as they gave more responses that were similar with other's modes of construal when they encountered familiar or novel stimulus; (2) Compared with animal behaviors, children generalized others' explanations more severely in the domain of artifact's movements; (3) Regard as other's explanations, 5-year-old generalized more severely, evaluated lower and remembered better than 4-year-old; (4) Additionally, preschoolers recalled other's explanations of animals better than of artifacts. These results revealed that preschoolers can acquire and generalize other's explanations, especially other's modes of construal, and their generalization and recall of other's explanations are domain-specific.

Thereafter, study 1 tried to find out what individual differences that minored preschoolers' performance at learning about modes of construal are. In experiment 2, researcher re-recruited the preschoolers who had taken part in experiment 1 and tested their cognitive and social-cognitive capabilities. The results showed that: (1) Cognitive flexibility (CF) can marginally significantly predict preschoolers' acquisition of modes of construal, while CF can significantly predict preschoolers' generalization of modes of construal; (2) Sex can significantly predict preschoolers' acquisition of modes of construal, while age (in month) can significantly predict preschoolers' generalization of modes of construal. These results revealed that the differences between cognitive flexibility can reflect preschoolers' different performance at learning about modes of construal while the difference between social-cognitive abilities cannot. Moreover, some demographic differences can also partially reflected preschoolers' different performance.

Even though having some methodological flaws, which cannot reflect the free selectivity during learning processes because children could only hear single mode of construal, Study 1 still ensured the role of question domains in the learning processes. To ameliorated these deficits, Study 2 would adopt the daul-informants paradigm and investigated the transmission phase of learning process. In experiment 3, we recruited 84 4- to 5-year-old children to study how they selected other's explanations and whether they make their decisions depends on other's expectation. This experiment set questioner's expectation of modes as the between-subject factor and set question domains and modes of construal as the within-subject factors. The results showed that: (1)Preschoolers rated higher when others explained animal behaviors with the teleolo-functional mode than when someone explained same questions with the causal/mechanical mode; They also rated higher when others explained artifact's movements with the causal/mechanical mode than when someone explained animal behaviors with the same mode; (2) Preschooler explained in different and corresponding modes as responses of other's distinct expectation of modes. These results revealed that preschoolers' evaluations of other's explanations with different modes are depends on the question domains, which implicated that modes of construal are domain-specific. In addition, preschoolers can discriminate distinct expectation of modes, and disregard their prior evaluations of modes to respond appropriately with regard other's specific expectation of modes.

These studies gained nearly ideal results that support the research hypotheses, which means preschoolers selectively learn modes of construal. The selectivity was reflected by domain-specificity of modes of construal, which manifested by preschoolers evaluating, generalizing and recalling modes of construal differently in distinct domains. The differences of preschoolers' performance may spring from their individual differences. Moreover, the understanding of expectation of modes may be a key cognitive component underlying the transmission of others' explanations. The present studies not only facilitate researcher to deepen their understanding of cognitive development, which reveals children's conceptual representing and causal inferencing, but also guide teachers and parents to respond kids' explanation-seeking and to promote peer tutoring.