幼儿选择性信任与心理理论和执行功能的关联:来自追踪研究的证据

Relations between Selective Trust,Theory of Mind,and Executive Function in Preschoolers: Evidence from Longitudinal Study

研究选取122名3到5岁幼儿,同时测量了选择性信任、心理理论和执行功能,并控制了幼儿的语言能力,通过追踪研究进行交叉滞后回归分析探讨了幼儿选择性信任与心理理论和执行功能之间的关联。结果表明:幼儿的选择性信任与执行功能呈显著正相关,控制了幼儿的年龄和语言能力之后,相关仍然显著;第一年的选择性信任可以正向预测第二年的执行功能,而第一年的执行功能不能预测第二年的选择性信任;选择性信任与心理理论之间不存在纵向的相互关联。该结果为幼儿选择性信任领域的争议提供了重要的证据支持。

Not all learning comes from direct observation or one＇s personal experience; sometimes people have to acquire knowledge from second- hand materials. Given that information could be from multiple informants, how to distinguish and select reliable informants becomes very important. Early childhood is one of the best periods for learning and selective trust appears to be a hot spot in the developmental psychology field. Studies in this field would help researchers to understand the developmental trends of cognition and knowledge learning in early childhood. It would benefit early education as well. Previous research indicated that preschoolers would select the informant to trust as a source of epistemic information and social information. However, the relations between selective trust, theory of mind, and executive function remained unclear to date. Some researchers argued that selective trust was associated with theory of mind because both of them appear at age four. Other researchers thought that preschooler＇s selective trust was based on executive function. The previous inconsistent results might be due to the limited measurement of theory of mind and executive function, or uncontrolled language ability. In addition, lack of longitudinal data might confuse the predictive direction of these variables. The goal of the present study was to examine the relations between selective trust, theory of mind, executive function in early childhood from a comprehensive perspective. 122 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds participated in the study. We measured preschoolers＇ selective trust, theory of mind, and executive function at the same time when language ability was also collected. The results first indicated that Chinese preschoolers trusted the informant who was accurate in the past as their Western counterparts at both time 1 and time 2. Moreover, 4- and 5-year-olds had better selective trust than 3-year-olds. Secondly, after controlling for language ability, selective trust was positively associated with executive function while not associated with theory of mind at both time I and time 2. We conducted cross-lagged analyses to test the predictive relations between selective trust, theory of mind and executive function by longitudinal data. The results indicated that selective trust played a very important role in the cognitive development of early childhood. After controlling for language ability and stabilities of study variables, selective trust significantly and positively predicted later executive function while the opposite prediction was non-significant. Selective trust was not associated with theory of mind in longitudinal data. Results are discussed in terms of the nature of selective trust and the developmental process of its influence on preschoolers＇ s executive function.