用“你”表述物体的功能会抑制成因对分类的影响

"You" is Different:Inhibition from A Second Person Functional Depiction to Object's History's Influence on Object Naming

已有研究显示物体的成因等变量会影响人造物概念的分类;但这种影响的中介变量为何,基于设计和基于用途的理论有不同的假设。实验采用物体自由命名任务,在陈述物体的功能时,操纵角色词的类型(旁观者"有人"和使用者"你"),比较被试对物体的命名在领域水平的分类倾向。结果发现,呈现"旁观者"角色词时,呈现或不呈现物体自然形成的成因故事会造成不同的分类倾向;但是在呈现"使用者"角色词时,成因故事对分类倾向的影响消失了。提示物体的功能是成因和分类的中介变量,支持基于用途的人造物分类模型。

How do people categorize an object into artifact domain？ Many researchers consider creator＇s intended design （Bloom, 1996） to be a mediate variable between the final judgment and many single factors, such as object＇s history （ Gelman and Bloom 2000）, plausibility of object＇s function （ Asher and Kemler Nelson, 2008 ）, and creator＇s label to the object （Jaswal 2006）. As an alternative theory, the utility-based view （Sun and Fu 2005 ） postulates that using- goal is the mediate variable instead of creator＇s design. This view predicts that if subjects consider them as users rather than viewers of an object, the object would be named as an artifact because its functional information would be strongly activated. We used a short-depiction-based object free naming task to test the above hypothesis （see Sun, Wang, and Fu, 2006）. More than 160 subjects were randomly assigned to one of four experiment groups. A 2 （pronoun in functional depiction： ＂ You＂ vs. ＂ someone＂ used the object ） × 2 （object＇s history： naturally-formed vs. not mentioned ） between-subject design was used. In a 7-page booklet we described 6 objects （ one object per page） plus a cover page. Subjects were asked to read the depictions and write down their naming, confidence rating, and naming reasons for each object. The results showed an interesting interaction between pronoun and object＇s history. At the ＂ someone＂ condition, subjects significantly less named objects into artifact domain when the object history was ＂naturally-formed＂ than ＂not mentioned＂. But at ＂ you＂ condition such difference disappeared. Besides, subjects in both conditions named object into artifact domain no matter whether the object was formed naturally or not and their confidence ratings were at the same level. Finally, functional properties of objects were more listed as naming reasons in ＂You＂ condition than in ＂ Someone＂ condition. Current findings suggest that object＇ s function mediates object＇ s history and category judgment. Based on this, we further discussed artifact concept categorization from the utility-based perspective.