A scientist working at her lab bench and a sixmonthold baby playing with his food might seem to have little in common. After all, the scientist is engaged in serious research to uncover the very nature of the physical world, and the baby is, well, just playing...right? Perhaps, but some developmental psychologists have argued that this “play” is more like a scientific investigation than one might think.
一位在实验室长椅上工作的科学家和一个六个月大，玩食物的婴儿似乎没有什么共同点。毕竟，这位科学家正在进行严肃的研究，以揭示物理世界的本质，而婴儿只是在玩......正确吗？也许吧，但一些发展心理学家认为，这种“玩”和人们想的不一样，更像是一场科学调查。
Take a closer look at the baby playing at the table. Each time the bowl of rice is pushed over the table edge, it falls to the ground - and, in the process, it brings out important evidence about how physical objects interact: bowls of rice do not float in midair, but require support to remain stable. It is likely that babies are not born knowing the basic fact of the universe; nor are they ever clearly taught it. Instead, babies may form an understanding of object support through repeated experiments and then build on this knowledge to learn even more about how objects interact. Though their ranges and tools differ, the baby’s investigation and the scientist’s experiment appear to share the same aim (to learn about the natural world), overall approach (gathering direct evidence from the world), and logic (are my observations what I expected?).
仔细观察在桌子旁玩耍的婴儿。每次饭碗被推过桌子边缘时，它都会掉到地上，在这个过程中，它会带来关于物体如何相互作用的重要证据：一碗碗米饭不会漂浮在半空中，但需要支撑才能保持稳定。很可能婴儿出生时并不了解宇宙的基本事实，也从来没有明确地教过。但婴儿可能会通过反复实验形成对物体支撑的理解，然后在这些知识的基础上进一步了解物体是如何相互作用的。尽管他们的范围和工具不同，但婴儿的调查和科学家的实验似乎有着相同的目标（了解自然世界），总体方案（从世界上收集直接证据）和逻辑（我的观察结果是我所期望的吗？）。
Some psychologists suggest that young children learn about more than just the physical world in this way - that they investigate human psychology and the rules of language using similar means. For example, it may only be through repeated experiments, evidence gathering, and finally overturning a theory, that a baby will come to accept the idea that other people can have different views and desires from what he or she has, for example, unlike the child, Mommy actually doesn’t like Dove chocolate.
一些心理学家建议，幼儿通过这种方式学习的不仅仅是物理世界，他们还可以使用类似的手段来研究人类心理和语言规则。例如，只有通过反复的实验、收集证据，并最终推翻一个理论，婴儿才会接受其他人可能有不同观点的想法，例如，和孩子不同，妈妈实际上不喜欢多芬巧克力。
Viewing childhood development as a scientific investigation throws light on how children learn, but it also offers an inspiring look at science and scientists. Why do young children and scientists seem to be so much alike? Psychologists have suggested that science as an effort - the desire to explore, explain, and understand our world - is simply something that comes from our babyhood. Perhaps evolution provided human babies with curiosity and a natural drive to explain their worlds, and adult scientists simply make use of the same drive that served them as children. The same cognitive systems that make young children feel good about figuring something out may have been adopted by adult scientists. As some psychologists put it, “It is not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children.”
将儿童发展视为一项科学调查，揭示了儿童是如何学习的，但它也为科学和科学家提供了一个鼓舞人心的视角。为什么幼儿和科学家看起来如此相似？心理学家认为，科学作为一种努力，探索、解释和理解我们世界的愿望来自我们婴儿时期。也许进化为人类婴儿提供了好奇心和解释世界的自然动力，而成年科学家只是利用了他们小时候的动力。成年科学家可能已经采用了同样的认知系统，这些系统让年幼的孩子在弄清楚一些事情时感觉良好。正如一些心理学家所说，“并不是孩子是小科学家，而是科学家是大孩子。”
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