热执行功能的发展研究：儿童赌博任务

【作者】 高山；

【导师】 李红；

【作者基本信息】 西南师范大学 ， 发展与教育心理学， 2005， 硕士

【摘要】 执行功能可区分为纯认知的冷执行功能和有高度情感卷入的热执行功能。情感决策是热执行功能的重要组成部分。赌博法是近年来国际上十分盛行的一种情感决策的研究范式。本研究采用适合学前儿童的赌博范式,逐步探测学前儿童的情感决策乃至热执行功能的发展及其背后蕴藏的心理机制。 首先,实验1采用Kerr和Zelazo的儿童赌博任务,检测了60名3-4岁儿童情感决策的发展。结果表明,3岁和4岁儿童在此任务上存在显著的年龄差异,情感决策在3-4岁期间发展迅速;另外,儿童此任务上的性别差异在统计上不显著。就情感决策的发展性特征来说,中国儿童与北美儿童之间存在着跨文化一致性。 实验2根据对3岁儿童在赌博任务上存在困难的原因可能是该任务要求较高的归纳概括能力的分析,对该任务作了降低归纳推理难度的改进,并抽取60名小学二年级的学生,考察对该改进是否降低了该任务对儿童归纳概括能力的要求,结果表明,改进的确降低了归纳概括的难度。 实验3采用改进后的儿童赌博任务,测量了181名3-5岁儿童的情感决策,发现3岁和4岁儿童成绩有显著差异,而4岁和5岁儿童成绩无显著差异,这进一步验证了3-4岁是学前儿童情感决策的迅速发展期。更重要的是,该实验发现降低任务中归纳概括的难度,在总体上可以改善儿童在此任务上的成绩,但大多数3岁儿童仍倾向于选择不利纸牌。这说明归纳概括能力是完成此任务的必要但不充分条件,缺乏足够的归纳概括能力不是引起3岁儿童在此任务上困难的核心因素。另外,本实验将样本量扩大了一倍,性别差异在总体上仍不显著,但最后4个试验段的成绩体现了显著的性别差异,且4岁男孩的成绩明显优于女孩。 实验4在实验3的基础上再次改进,将儿童赌博任务对儿童归纳概括能力的要求降到了最低,结果3岁儿童仍然未能成功完成该任务。这进一步确认了涉及记忆和计算的更多还原

【Abstract】 Executive function can be divided into a more purely cognitive aspect "cool" executive function and an aspect highly involved affect and motivation "hot" executive function. There has been growing interest in hot EF, as well—in particular in what might be called affective decision-making, or decision-making about events that have emotionally significant consequences (i.e., meaningful rewards and/or losses). The gambling paradigm is one of the most popular measures of affective decision-making. In the present research, 4 experiments examined the development of affective decision-making and hot executive function during the preschool period.Experiment 1 tested 60 children at 2 ages (3 and 4 years) using the Children’s Gambling Task (Kerr & Zelazo, 2004). Results showed a significant age difference between 3- and 4-year-olds, indicating that affective decision-making develops rapidly between 3 and 4 years. On the other hand, a lot of variability in children’s performance on this task might have obscured sex effects; therefore, sex difference was not statistically significant, though boys did better than girls on the last two blocks. These findings from Chinese children are generally consistent with the previous results, which indicates the development of affective decision-making in preschool period might have cross-cultural consistency between North American children and Chinese children.Seventy-six students of 7 years were tested in Experiment 2 to investigate whether the modification about the Children’s Gambling task reduced the demands on children’s inductive ability. Positive results were gained.Experiment 3 measured 181 children of 3, 4, and 5 years old using the modified version更多还原