Abstract The current research investigated a potential mental shortcut that facilitates children’s categorization and generalization of social behavior, called the Domain Frequency Association (DFA). The DFA is a bidirectional association in which children automatically connect a behavioral domain (e.g., norm or preference) with behavioral frequency (e.g., whether many or few group members demonstrate the behavior). When children observe a majority of group members demonstrating a behavior they may assume that the behavior is a norm that all group members should follow. When a minority of group members demonstrates a behavior, children may infer that it is a choice or preference that group members can decide to follow or not. We explored whether children utilized the DFA in two tasks: In Study 1, we provided 4- and 5-year-old preschool (n = 25) and 7- and 8-year-old school-aged children (n = 26) with evidence of either frequency or domain and asked them to verbally provide the other attribute using a forced-choice response measure. Children selected norms more often when behaviors were frequent versus infrequent and selected preferences more often when behaviors were infrequent versus frequent. In Study 2, we examined 4- and 5-year-old preschool children’s (n = 25) and 7- and 8-year-old young school-aged children’s (n = 25) memory patterns for DFA-consistent information (e.g., frequent norms & infrequent preferences) and DFA-inconsistent information (e.g., infrequent norms & frequent preferences). Children were more likely to remember DFA-consistent information than DFA-inconsistent information and tended to misremember inconsistent information as consistent. Together these results demonstrate the presence of an early emerging inferential strategy that structures children’s thinking about the social world.

中文翻译：

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域频率关联：引导儿童概括规范和偏好的心理捷径

摘要 当前的研究调查了一种潜在的心理捷径，该捷径有助于儿童对社会行为进行分类和概括，称为域频率关联 (DFA)。DFA 是一种双向关联，其中儿童自动将行为域（例如，规范或偏好）与行为频率（例如，是多还是少的群体成员表现出该行为）联系起来。当孩子们观察到大多数小组成员表现出一种行为时，他们可能会认为该行为是所有小组成员都应该遵守的规范。当少数群体成员表现出某种行为时，儿童可能会推断出群体成员可以决定是否遵循该选择或偏好。我们探讨了儿童是否在两项任务中使用了 DFA：在研究 1 中，我们为 4 岁和 5 岁学龄前儿童（n = 25）和 7 岁和 8 岁学龄儿童（n = 26）提供了频率或域的证据，并要求他们口头提供其他属性使用强迫选择反应措施。当行为频繁与不频繁时，儿童更频繁地选择规范，而当行为不频繁与频繁时，选择偏好更频繁。在研究 2 中，我们检查了 4 岁和 5 岁学龄前儿童（n = 25）和 7 岁和 8 岁学龄儿童（n = 25）的 DFA 一致信息记忆模式（例如，频繁规范和不频繁偏好）和 DFA 不一致信息（例如，不频繁规范和频繁偏好）。与 DFA 不一致的信息相比，儿童更容易记住 DFA 一致的信息，并且倾向于将不一致的信息误认为一致。这些结果共同证明了早期出现的推理策略的存在，该策略构建了儿童对社会世界的思考。