中国婴幼儿对社会优势等级的认知特点与习得机制

Every child, from a very early age, attempts to make sense of the world around them. Like the ability to speak a language, the ability to understand people's social interaction is commonplace yet fundamentally important for our species. Consider, in particular, our uniquely human ability to reason about social rules. Social rules lay the foundations for children to interact harmoniously with others. Among all the social rules, social dominance is one of the most important rules for human and non-human animals living in social groups. ..This project aims to examine the cognitive mechanism with which infants and toddlers reason about social dominance. To seek converging evidence for early understanding of social dominance, we plan to deploy multiple paradigms and techniques, such as behavioral, eye-tracking, ERP, saliva collection and cortisol assay. We aim to explore how young children's understanding of social dominance is expressed, modulated, and acquired, respectively. ..Here, we mainly focus on five research questions: (1) Could infants and toddlers reason about social dominance in various situations? (2) What social cues could infants and toddlers use to infer the hierarchy of social dominance? (3) What is the developmental trajectory for early understanding of social dominance? (4) How would the rudimentary understanding of social dominance be modulated by other social cognitive functions? (5) How would individuals' understanding of social dominance be affected by parenting and cultural values? ..The results of this project will shed light on the cogntive mechanism for rule-based social reasoning in infants and toddlers. Of course, adaption to social rules is a skill that takes children many years to perfect, as all parents and educators will attest. This project is, nevertheless, a critical step for us to better understand the foundation of social cognition, and to further explore the origin of human morality.

社会规范是儿童顺利与他人互动的基础，而社会优势等级又是社会规范中的重要概念。探索儿童成长早期对社会优势等级的理解对于完善婴幼儿社会性发展的理论，改善儿童早期发展条件具有重要意义。本项目拟结合行为、眼动、脑成像实验及唾液取样测试等技术手段，考察婴幼儿对社会优势等级的认知特点和习得机制。.我们在三个子课题中分别考察婴幼儿对社会优势等级的理解，及其调节机制与习得机制。着重探讨以下五个问题：（1）婴幼儿如何在不同情境中理解社会优势等级？（2）婴幼儿通过什么等级线索判断他人的社会优势等级？ （3）婴幼儿对社会优势等级的理解如何随年龄发展？（4）婴幼儿对社会等级的理解是否或如何受到其他社会认知因素调节？（5）婴幼儿如何习得对社会优势等级的理解？本项目的研究工作将加深我们对早期社会认知的理解，有助于我们从起始出发，了解人类道德发展过程，进而探索提高社会道德水平的科学方法。

学习社会规范是儿童成长过程中的重要内容。掌握恰当的、符合社会主流价值的社会规范是儿童步入社会的重要基石，并帮助儿童营造良好的同伴关系，得体地融入集体环境，最终成为符合社会正面价值需求的人才。然而已有研究较少关注0-3岁婴幼儿对社会规范的理解。婴幼儿语言能力与社交经验有限，所以很长时间里研究者都假设婴幼儿对社会概念缺乏理解。但最新的心理学研究开发了不依赖于言语的认知实验范式，通过婴幼儿的目光注视方向与注视时间等指标，检测婴幼儿对周围事物的认识。使用非言语任务探索人类最初阶段的认知能力，有助于我们理解人类发展的基础。将这种非言语认知实验范式用于探索婴幼儿对社会规范的理解是本课题的重要科学意义之一。..本项目主要考察了婴幼儿对社会优势等级的理解。我们发现该社会认知能力受到情境因素影响，并且依赖于一些社会线索，比如中国社会特有的文化价值线索。我们重点关注婴幼儿早期社会认知能力随年龄的变化发展特点。同时我们探索了婴幼儿对社会优势地位理解的习得机制，并建构其神经反应模型。在子课题一中，我们通过多种社会情境（分享情境、助人情境等），考察婴幼儿对社会优势等级的情境灵活性，还采用微观发生分析法来考察婴幼儿在该社会认知能力上如何随年龄发展。在子课题二中，我们考察了婴幼儿对社会优势等级理解的调节因素，包括了如何受合理性原则调节以及合作性原则调节。在子课题三中，我们研究了婴幼儿对社会优势地位的习得机制。..0-3岁阶段是考察人类心灵起源的重要窗口。虽然很长一段时期里，认知发展研究都忽略了这一时期，很多发展学家如皮亚杰等认为3岁以下的儿童认知能力非常有限。近年来研究发现我们过去远远低估了婴幼儿的能力，尤其低估了婴幼儿对社会现象和社会关系的理解。本项目以社会优势等级这一基本社会概念为切入点，考察婴幼儿对社会规则的初步理解，探讨道德的起源与发展。本项目考察婴幼儿对社会规范的认知随年龄的发展过程，同时关注家庭环境影响与内在神经机制，整合先天与后天两方面的影响。本研究为婴幼儿心理学研究在中国的本土化做出开拓性的尝试。