| Deontic rules,as norms to restrain people's social action,play an important role in children's social cognition.In psychology,studies on deontic rules mainly focus on two fields:one is in the cognitive psychology field,where the four-card selection task is adopted as the main method to study children's conditional reasoning ability for deontic rules of different forms;the other is in developmental psychology field,where questionnaire and interview methods are mainly adopted to explore children's understanding of deontic rules in different domains and its affecting factors.However,children usually encounter such situations in which their desires to do something conflict with deontic rules.In these situations,an important challenge that children's social development faces is how to use the knowledge of psychological state and deontic rules to judge others' social behaviors.Most of previous studies explored through psychological theories how individuals predicted and explained behaviors by psychological state(Wang,et al.,2011).Clement(2011)pointed out that when children used deontic rules to predict and explain others' behaviors,the social cognition shouldn't be taken simply as a psychological theory.To predict and explain people's social behaviors only by psychological theories or deontic rules still couldn't effectively reveal children's processing mechanism of deontic rules when their desires conflicted with rules.Wellman and Mille(2008)highlighted that on the basis of the understanding of related psychological and deontic meaning,social reasoning should combine both the above two aspects to expand studies on children's social cognition under a larger framework,which would be more conducive to understanding the development of children's social cognition.Given this,different domains and forms of deontic rules in experiment materials of this research were clearly distinguished,and reasoning task and lexical decision task that were in accord with children's age development features,as well as methods of the two response paradigm and the testing of analysis system engagement in the dual-process approach were adopted.Through exploring directly the reasoning action of children at different ages in the situation of children's desires conflicting with deontic rules,the research revealed children's processing mechanism of deontic rules from the three aspects of processing features,processing model and processing process.This research is conducive to integrating social reasoning studies on psychological state and deontic rules,defining children's processing model of deontic rules in the personal domain,illustrating the development features of children's heuristic system and analytical system and clarifying the cognitive locus of children's heuristic bias.Meanwhile,exploring children's processing mechanism of deontic rules in the personal domain in the situation that desires conflicting with deontic rules serves as an effective way to deepen studies on children's psychological inversion.The research results can further promote intervention studies on psychological inversion of children at different ages.In the situation of desires conflicting with deontic rules,aiming at deontic rules in personal domain and comparing with the domain of conventional rules,Research 1 mainly discussed features of processing deontic rules by children at different ages.By discussing processing output,Research 2 tested whether the processing of deontic rules in personal domain by children at different ages in the situation that desires conflicting with deontic rules was dual-process and defined its processing model so as to explain from the perspective of dual-process that the features of violating rules shown commonly in children's processing of deontic rules in personal domain in the conflict situation of Research 1 was the biased response which was caused by heuristic system processing,namely,heuristic bias.Then through exploring differences in the time when the cognitive locus of heuristic bias started in the processing process,Research 3 further revealed the fundamental reasons for heuristic bias shown by children at different ages.This research is divided into three parts with four experiments.The first part was Experiment 1,mainly discussing children's features of processing deontic rules in conflict situation.Research Purposes:In the situation of desire conflicting with deontic rules,aiming at deontic rules in personal domain and comparing with the domain of conventional rules,this part revealed the processing features of deontic rules of children at different ages by discussing their reasoning of people's action in the story.Research Methods:The reasoning problems of desires conflicting with deontic rules were presented in a random order.Each reasoning problem was presented by six pictures describing the story situations which shared a common structure.Participants were required to judge whether the action decision of people in the situation was "obeying" or "disobeying".Research Results:Four-year-old children couldn't distinguish deontic rules in different domains.Instead,they were able to do this from the 7-year-old group and they commonly showed biased response of violating rules in the processing of deontic rules in personal domain in the conflict situation.As their distinction of deontic rules in different domains became increasingly definite,participants' violation of deontic rules in personal domain was particularly remarkable in the 16-year-old group.The second part included Experiment 2 and Experiment 3,mainly discussing children's processing model of deontic rules in personal domain from the perspective of development.Specifically,for Experiment 2,Research Purposes:From the perspective of development,the experiment aimed at testing whether the reasoning of deontic rules in personal domain by children at different ages was dual-process.Methods:The two response paradigm and the testing of analysis system engagement.Participants of different ages were provided with reasoning problems of desires conflicting or not conflicting with deontic rules in personal domain and they were required to make two judgments on each reasoning problem.By analyzing in detail whether the intuitive response time of participants at different ages had difference from the final response time,whether the reflection time on conflict problems was notably longer than that on the no-conflict problem and the difference in reasoning violation probability between intuitive response and final response,it tested whether the process of deontic rules by children in the 7-year-old group,12-year-old group and 16-year-old group respectively was dual-process or not.Research Results:In the situation that desires conflicted with deontic rules in personal domain,the 7-year-old group had no analysis system engagement,therefore,it was not dual-process.Instead,only the process of deontic rules in personal domain by participants in the 12-year-old group and 16-year-old group was dual-process.Furthermore,heuristic system and analytical system was serial model.For Experiment 3,Research Purposes:On the basis of Experiment 2,this experiment aimed at further testing whether the processing model of heuristic system was a parallel model of desires and deontic rules in this system and whether it was the advantageously intuitive response that was output by heuristic system in the conflict situation.Research Methods:Participants were provided with reasoning problems of desires conflicting or not conflicting with deontic rules as well as those concerning or not concerning deontic rules.The experiment studied the processing model of heuristic system by analyzing the intuitive response and its response time of participants at different ages.Research Results:The desire and deontic rules were parallel model in the heuristic system and it was the advantageously intuitive response that was output in the conflict situation.Given all this,the second part defined by Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 that only the process of deontic rules in the 12-year-old group and the 16-year-old group was a serial model of heuristic system and analytical system and intuitions of two different types in heuristic system were parallel model.Therefore,Research 2 explained from the perspective of dual-processing that the biased response of violating rules showed commonly by children to the deontic rules in personal domain in the conflict situation of Research 1 was caused by heuristic bias.The third part was Experiment 4,mainly exploring the heuristic bias of children at different ages in the reasoning of deontic rules in personal domain.Research Purposes:By discussing whether the heuristic bias showed by children at different ages was caused by storage failure,monitoring failure or inhibition failure in the situation that children's desires conflicted with deontic rales in personal domain,the experiment aimed at revealing the fundamental reason for the heuristic bias showed by children of different age groups.Research Methods:Participants were required to complete reasoning task and lexical decision task and rate their response confidence.Research Results:Heuristic bias shown in reasoning deontic rules in personal domain was caused by storage failure in the 4-year-old group,monitoring failure in the 7-year-old group and inhibition failure in the 12-year-old group.In the 16-year-old group,participants were able to complete inhibition process so as to show less heuristic bias.From results of the above four experiments,the following conclusion can be drawn in this study:(1)Processing Features:Children in the 4-year-old group could not distinguish deontic rules in different domains.After they could distinguish them in different domains,children's processing of deontic rules in the personal domain in the situation that desires conflicting with deontic rules usually showed biased response that was not consistent with rules and the violation of rules in the personal domain was particularly obvious in the 16-year-old group.(2)Processing Model:Children's processing of deontic rules was the serial model of heuristic system and analytical system only in the conflict situation that occurs in adolescence.Specifically,the heuristic system of the 4-year-old group was not mature.Although children in the 7-year-old group could commonly made biased response according to heuristic system,they could not detect conflicts which would not cause the involvement of analytical system.Therefore,the 7-year-old group was not dual-process model.Although children's reasoning of deontic rules in the personal domain was dual-process in the 12-year-old group in which both heuristic system and analytical system were involved,their incomplete analytical system could neither complete inhibition of heuristic bias,nor effectively promote the rationalization of heuristic bias.Children's reasoning of deontic rules in the personal domain was also dual-process in which both heuristic system and analytical system were involved in the 16-year-old group.However,the quite mature analytical system that developed with age directed the rationalization of intuitive response after analyzing and reflecting deontic rules in the personal domain.(3)Processing Process:In the processing of deontic rules in the personal domain,the cognitive locus of heuristic bias shown by children at different ages was different.Specifically,heuristic bias was caused by storage failure in the 4-year-old group,monitoring failure in the 7-year-old group and inhibition failure in the 12-year-old group.In the 16-year-old group,participants were able to complete inhibition process so as to show less heuristic bias.(4)Development Features of Heuristic System and Analytical System:Analytical System showed more notable development changes than heuristic system.In other words,heuristic system didn't change with age,while analytical system constantly improved with age. |
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