The biological world includes many negatively valenced activities, like predation, parasitism, and disease. Do children’s books cover these activities? And how do parents discuss them with their children? In a content analysis of children’s nature books (Study 1), we found that negatively valenced concepts were rarely depicted across genres and reading levels. When parents encountered negative information in books (Studies 2–3), they did not omit it but rather elaborated on it, adding their own comments and questions, and their children (ages 3–11) were more likely to remember the negative information but less likely to generalize that information beyond the animal in the book. These findings suggest that early input relevant to biological competition may hamper children’s developing understanding of ecology and evolution.

中文翻译：

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粉饰自然：儿童书籍和亲子对话中对生物学的消毒描述

生物世界包括许多负价活动，如捕食、寄生和疾病。儿童书籍是否涵盖这些活动？父母如何与孩子讨论这些问题？在对儿童自然类书籍的内容分析（研究 1）中，我们发现负效价概念很少在不同类型和阅读水平上被描述。当父母在书中遇到负面信息时（研究 2-3），他们并没有省略，而是详细阐述，添加自己的评论和问题，他们的孩子（3-11 岁）更容易记住负面信息，但不太可能将这些信息推广到书中的动物之外。这些发现表明，与生物竞争相关的早期输入可能会阻碍儿童对生态和进化的理解。