特定句法提示对3～4岁儿童错误信念理解的影响

Influences of Special Syntactic Cues on False Belief Understanding in 3- and 4-year-olds

通过在错误信念任务中，为儿童提供关于错误信念表征的特定句法，考察这种句法理解对儿童的错误信念理解成绩是否有促进作用。124名3～4岁幼儿参加实验，每个年龄组幼儿随机分配到零级提示，一级提示和二级提示等三个句法提示条件组，并完成4个错误信念任务。结果发现，一级提示条件和二级提示条件下的错误信念理解成绩显著高于零级提示条件下的错误信念理解成绩，而一级和二级两种提示条件之间没有显著差异。句法提示对不同的错误信念任务的影响是相同的，对错误信念的预测问题和解释问题的影响模式是一致的。表明对错误信念表征的特定句法提示，有效促进了儿童的错误信念成绩，提示这种句法结构可能有助于儿童的错误信念理解。

Introduction language skills play an important role m the development of theory of mind m children. According to de Villiers, mastery of the syntax of complementation is a prerequisite for successful false-belief performance because it provides a powerful framework for children＇s representation of false belief state.However, some researchers do not agree with this view. The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of complement syntax on false-belief performance in Chinese preschoolers. Following de Villiers, we hypothesized that （1） providing the complement syntactic framework that included a mental verb should improve children＇s performance in false belief tasks, and （2） the special syntactic cues should have different effects for the unexpected contents task and the unseen displacement task, despite the fact that they are both false belief tasks. Method Four false belief tasks were administered to a total of 124 3- and 4-year-old preschoolers. Each age group was divided into three subgroups, in which three types of special syntactic cues were manipulated. These syntax-cuing conditions were called zero level, first level and second level cuing respectively. The participants were not given any syntactic cues in the zero level condition. Those in the first level condition were given an incomplete syntactic cue, such as ＂where did the boy （a character in the false belief task） think the chocolate was？＂ The second level subgroup was given a complete syntactic cue, such as ＂the boy thought that the chocolate was in the cupboard.＂ In each false belief task, the participants were asked a prediction question as well as an explanation question. One score was given for each correct answer. Results and Conclusion Results and Conclusion.It was shown that children＇s performance of the false belief tasks in the first and second level syntax-cuing conditions was significantly better than that in the zero level condition. However, there was no significant difference between the first and the second level conditions, or between the unexpected contents and the unseen displacement tasks. A similar pattern was found when comparing children＇s performance on prediction questions and explanation questions. These findings indicate that the special syntactic cues significantly facilitate children＇s false belief performance. Finally, the role of the special syntax in false belief understanding was discussed in this paper.