从知觉分心任务看儿童类比推理能力的发展

Children’s Development of Analogical Reasoning from the Perspective of Perceptual Distraction Task

采用四类图片类比映射任务，考察了知觉分心对90名4岁、5岁、6岁儿童类比推理能力发展的影响，并进一步阐释影响儿童类比推理能力发展的可能机制。四类图片类比映射任务分别为一种关系无分心任务、一种关系有分心任务、两种关系无分心任务和两种关系有分心任务。结果表明：（1）在具备相应知识经验的前提下，知觉分心对儿童类比推理成绩有显著影响，儿童在无分心任务中的表现明显好于知觉分心任务的表现。在无分心条件下，4岁儿童已经开始能够选择关系匹配来正确完成类比推理。错误分析发现知觉分心任务中儿童所犯错误主要是分心错误，而且分心错误随年龄增长呈下降趋势。这表明对知觉分心的抑制控制可能是儿童类比推理能力发展的一个重要影响因素。（2）随着年龄增长，儿童类比推理能力逐渐提高。总体表现为6岁组的成绩显著优于4岁、5岁组的成绩，而4岁组的成绩与5岁组的成绩没有显著差异。5岁可能是儿童能够抑制知觉分心进行类比推理的快速发展期。

The mechanism underlying the development of children’s analogical reasoning is not yet well explained. Growing domain knowledge and relational shift from perceptual similarity to relational similarity had been used to explain the development of analogical reasoning. Although younger children were asked to attend relational similarity， they could not inhibit the advantage of perceptual similarity in analogical reasoning task. We hypothesized that inhibitory control of perceptual distraction may be an important factor that influenced children’s development of analogical reasoning. Using four kinds of self-designed picture-mapping tasks， we explored the influence of perceptual distraction on children’s development of analogical reasoning， and the possible mechanism underlying the development of analogical reasoning. The picture-mapping tasks included four kinds of condition: single relation with no distraction， single relation with distraction， double relations with no distraction， double relations with distraction. 90 children aged 4， 5 and 6 years participated in the study. Each child completed tasks of all the four conditions. The result indicated: (1) With relevant knowledge and experiences， children’s performances in analogical reasoning were modulated significantly by perceptual distraction. Children’s performances were better in conditions with no distraction than conditions with distraction. Even 4 years olds understood the task and selected the right relational match when there was not perceptual distraction. Error analysis suggested that children were more likely to make distraction-error than other errors， but this tendency decreased with age. It confirmed that inhibitory control of perceptual distraction may have an effect on children’s development of analogical reasoning. (2) Children’s ability of analogical reasoning developed with age. 6 years olds were remarkably superior to 4 years olds and 5 years olds in the analogical reasoning tasks， but there wasn’t significant difference between 4 years olds and 5 years olds in the analogical reasoning tasks. The major finding of the study is that inhibitory control of perceptual distraction may be one mechanism critical to children’s development of analogical reasoning. In general， most children of 6 years old can inhibit irrelative distracting objects and complete analogical reasoning tasks on the basis of relational similarity.