Resumen
En este estudio, 22 niños chinos (incluido 16 niñas), en una ciudad mediana china, han participado en siete sub-tareas de la tarea del cuerpo, y seis sub-tareas de la tarea de objeto. El resultado muestra que en la comparación, los niños chinos pue- den realizar mejor la diferencia de la talla entre los propios y los cuerpos objetivos, y es más difícil para ellos realizar la diferencia del tamaño entre objetos y la infl uencia de esta diferencia en la práctica.
Palabras clave: los niños chinos, el error del tamaño, los actos
fi ngidos, conciencia del cuerpo.
a. School of Law, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, Chi- na; b. Center for Studies of Education and Psychology of Ethnic Minorities in South- west University, Chongqing, China; c. School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China; d. Southwest University for Nationalities, Chengdu, China. Cor- responding author*: Jin-fu Zhang, E-mail: [email protected],Lin-lin He, E-mail: [email protected], and Yong Chen , E-mail:[email protected].
Abstract
In this study, 22 children (including 16 girls) in one medi- um-scaled city in China have participated in 7 sub-tasks of the body task and 6 sub-tasks of the object task. Results show that by contrast Chinese children can better realize the scale differ- ence between themselves and objective bodies and it is more dif- fi cult for them to realize the scale difference between objects and the infl uences of this difference on task performances. For Chi- nese children with younger age, their scale error increases with the increasing age and reaches the highest level on 26 months. Later, with the increasing age, the scale error decreases. On 40 months, there is no scale error and pretend starts to occur. In this study, there is no gender difference between children in two tasks.
Keywords: chinese children, scale error, pretend, body con-
sciousness.
Introduction
I
n the life, it is common to see that when young children playtoys, they usually experience failure because of ignoring the toy’s actual scales. In recent 10 years, the phenomenon of scale error has gained the attention of some psychologists. Through the observation in the laboratory and home, DeLoache, Uttal and Rosengren (2004) fi nd that children suffer from the scale vision information processing failure when they play with some objects, for example, trying to enter into the house of a doll, sit- ting in a very small chair or trying to wear tiny shoes of a doll. The phenomenon that young children insist on completing some impossible behaviors while ignoring the object scale is called scale errors (DeLoache, Uttal, & Rosengren, 2004).
DeLoache et al. (2004) point out that the typical charac- teristics of scale errors is that when the objects of children’s behaviors are of a small scale, they will continuously try hard, insist and continuously repeat. Later, scholars fi nd that young children have scale errors in case of large scale objects, for ex- ample, children try to put tiny tools into a large hole (Casler, Es- hleman, Greene, & Terziyan, 2011). DeLoache et al. (2004) clas- sifi es scale error into body scale errors and object scale errors. Body scale errors refer to fi lling a part of the body in an object of
an unmatched scale while object scale errors refer to fi lling an object in another object of an unmatched scale. Then, Casler et
al. (2011) fi nd out functional matching errors, for example, un-
der the infl uence of the function of toothbrush, children contin- uously try to fi ll a super large toothbrush in their mouths. Thus, scale error is the phenomenon that children insist on complet- ing some impossible or inharmonious behaviors in case of scale unmatched objects.
Pretend is the most common game for children at two years old. During the observation, it is easy for experimenters to mix it with scale errors. When children pretend, sometimes they do not consider the properties of objects and only think about the features of behaviors, which is very similar to scale errors. Therefore, whether pretend can be distinguished from scale er- rors has become the key of the defi nition of scale errors. So far, researchers always distinguish pretend and scale error only by focusing on the discrimination of theories and experience, lack- ing empirical contrast tests.
At present, explanations of the cause and generation mechanism of children’s scale errors mainly include: a. scale er- rors caused by the failure of inhibitory control (DeLoache et al., 2004 DeLoache, J. S., LoBue, V., Vanderborght, M., & Chiong, C., 2013); b. scale errors caused by coordination failures be- tween different nervous systems that are respectively in charge of plan of action and visual perception (DeLoache et al., 2004); c. the plan-control model and perception-behavior model(Glov-
er, S. , 2004a; 2004b); d. scale errors caused by teleofunctional
bias (Casler et al., 2011); e. scale errors caused by immature body consciousness (Brownell, C. A., Zerwas, S., & Ramani, G. B., 2007; DeLoache et al., 2013).
Through the general review of the exiting studies, the re- sults can be classifi ed into two types. Some scholars think that two types of scale errors decrease as children grow up ( DeLoache
et al., 2004 Brownell et al., 2007; Rosengren, K. S., Carmichael,
C., Schein, S. S., Anderson, K. N., & Gutiérrez, I. T. 2009a Rosengren, K. S., Gutiérrez, I. T., Anderson, K. N., & Schein, S. S., 2009b) while other studies fi nd out that the frequency of ob- ject scale errors increases with children’s age (Ware, E. A., Uttal, D. H., Wetter, E. K., & DeLoache, J. S. 2006; Rosengren, K. S., Schein, S. S., & Gutiérrez, I. T. 2010).So far, studies on scale errors mostly focus on America and Britain and there are almost
no study on other cultures. Thus, it is of great signifi cance to study whether there is a difference of toy selection and focus between children from different cultural backgrounds. Second, previous studies fi nd that children who focus on themselves or external affairs can infl uence the types of scale errors. How- ever, a large number of cross-cultural studies also have found that individual cognitive styles in different environments and cultures vary a lot. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the performances of Chinese children in the body tasks and ob- ject tasks.
Method
Participants
Participants were 22 children (16 girls) in four age groups: 21 months (M = 21.2 months, 5 children, 3 girls), 26 months (M = 26.2 months, 5 children,5 girls), and 32 months (M = 32.6 months, 7 children,6 girls), and 40 months (M = 40.4 months, 5 children,2 girls). All the participants were come from a medi- um-sized urban area in China and their parents are staffs of a university. All children were healthy and developing normally by parent report. Three subjects’ performance was removed be- cause their nonparticipation.
Materials
Standard toys (slide, chair and toy car) and mini version of toys (slide, chair, and toy car, about 8-14cm); standard toys of dolls (bed and bathtub) and mini version of toys of dolls (bed and bathtub, about 5-10cm); clothes of dolls.
Procedure
The experimental paradigm of this research is based on the re- search of Brownell, C.A., Zerwas, S., and Ramani, G.B (2007). All children participate in body tasks and object tasks. Among them, body tasks include children wearing clothes for toys and for themselves; and object tasks include wearing clothes for par- ents and letting dolls play toys. Cloth task includes four sub- tasks, coat, trousers, hat and shoes. Toy body task includes three sub-tasks, toy car, chair and slide. Toy object task include two sub-tasks, bathtub and bed. Children complete tasks of dif- ferent types in different rooms. Their parents can accompany
them all the time. However, in the experiment, no experimenters or parents are permitted to mention the object’s size.