ABSTRACT

Recent studies explored whether attitude formation in early childhood can be explained in terms of evaluative conditioning (EC), the change in liking that is due to the pairing of stimuli. This study sought to replicate and extend this line of research by investigating whether and under what conditions preschool children generalise EC effects from conditioned to novel stimuli. Specifically, two experiments were conducted in which 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 139) observed the pairing of two cartoon characters with two positive and negative images. Afterwards, children evaluated the paired characters as well as other novel characters, which were not previously presented, that varied systematically in their perceptual similarity to the conditioned stimuli (Experiments 1 & 2), or that could be grouped by a categorisation rule (Experiment 2). It was found that children generalised attitudes to perceptually similar stimuli, but not to stimuli related by a categorisation rule, despite evidence for rule-learning. Implications of these findings for attitude development are discussed.

摘要

最近的研究探讨了儿童早期的态度形成是否可以用评价性条件反射 (EC) 来解释，即由刺激配对引起的喜好变化。本研究试图通过调查学龄前儿童是否以及在什么条件下将 EC 效应从条件刺激推广到新刺激来复制和扩展这一研究线。具体而言，进行了两个实验，其中 3 至 6 岁的儿童（N = 139) 观察到两个卡通人物与两个正面和负面图像的配对。之后，孩子们评估了配对的角色以及其他以前没有出现过的新角色，这些角色在与条件刺激的感知相似性上有系统的变化（实验 1 和 2），或者可以通过分类规则进行分组（实验 2） ）。研究发现，尽管有规则学习的证据，但儿童对感知上相似的刺激的普遍态度，而不是与分类规则相关的刺激的普遍态度。讨论了这些发现对态度发展的影响。