Do young children track other's beliefs, or merely their perceptual access? An interactive, anticipatory measure of early theory of mind
This paper aimed to contribute to answering three questions. First, how robust and reliable are early implicit measures of false belief (FB) understanding? Second, do these measures tap FB understanding rather than simpler processes such as tracking the protagonist's perceptual access? Third, d...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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The Royal Society
2022-10-01
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| Series: | Royal Society Open Science |
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| Online Access: | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211278 |
| _version_ | 1797845345642741760 |
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| author | Pamela Barone Lisa Wenzel Marina Proft Hannes Rakoczy |
| author_facet | Pamela Barone Lisa Wenzel Marina Proft Hannes Rakoczy |
| author_sort | Pamela Barone |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This paper aimed to contribute to answering three questions. First, how robust and reliable are early implicit measures of false belief (FB) understanding? Second, do these measures tap FB understanding rather than simpler processes such as tracking the protagonist's perceptual access? Third, do implicit FB tasks tap an earlier, more basic form of theory of mind (ToM) than standard verbal tasks? We conducted a conceptual replication of Garnham & Perner's task (Garnham and Perner 2001 Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 19, 413–432) simultaneously measuring children's anticipatory looking and interactive behaviours toward an agent with a true or FB (N = 81, M = 40 months). Additionally, we implemented an ignorance condition and a standard FB task. We successfully replicated the original findings: children's looking and interactive behaviour differed according to the agent's true or FB. However, children mostly did not differentiate between FB and ignorance conditions in various measures of anticipation and uncertainty, suggesting the use of simpler conceptual strategies than full-blown ToM. Moreover, implicit measures were all related to each other but largely not related to performance in the standard FB task, except for first look in the FB condition. Overall, our findings suggest that these implicit measures are robust but may not tap the same underlying cognitive capacity as explicit FB tasks. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-09T17:37:32Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-9faa94f8f7884efaa3369aecfaf3d9bb |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2054-5703 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-09T17:37:32Z |
| publishDate | 2022-10-01 |
| publisher | The Royal Society |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Royal Society Open Science |
| spelling | doaj.art-9faa94f8f7884efaa3369aecfaf3d9bb2023-04-17T11:00:59ZengThe Royal SocietyRoyal Society Open Science2054-57032022-10-0191010.1098/rsos.211278Do young children track other's beliefs, or merely their perceptual access? An interactive, anticipatory measure of early theory of mindPamela Barone0Lisa Wenzel1Marina Proft2Hannes Rakoczy3Department of Psychology, Universidad Católica de Murcia (UCAM), Campus de los Jerónimos, 30107 Murcia, SpainDepartment of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, GermanyDepartment of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, GermanyDepartment of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, GermanyThis paper aimed to contribute to answering three questions. First, how robust and reliable are early implicit measures of false belief (FB) understanding? Second, do these measures tap FB understanding rather than simpler processes such as tracking the protagonist's perceptual access? Third, do implicit FB tasks tap an earlier, more basic form of theory of mind (ToM) than standard verbal tasks? We conducted a conceptual replication of Garnham & Perner's task (Garnham and Perner 2001 Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 19, 413–432) simultaneously measuring children's anticipatory looking and interactive behaviours toward an agent with a true or FB (N = 81, M = 40 months). Additionally, we implemented an ignorance condition and a standard FB task. We successfully replicated the original findings: children's looking and interactive behaviour differed according to the agent's true or FB. However, children mostly did not differentiate between FB and ignorance conditions in various measures of anticipation and uncertainty, suggesting the use of simpler conceptual strategies than full-blown ToM. Moreover, implicit measures were all related to each other but largely not related to performance in the standard FB task, except for first look in the FB condition. Overall, our findings suggest that these implicit measures are robust but may not tap the same underlying cognitive capacity as explicit FB tasks.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211278implicit theory of mindfalse beliefreplicationignorancechildren |
| spellingShingle | Pamela Barone Lisa Wenzel Marina Proft Hannes Rakoczy Do young children track other's beliefs, or merely their perceptual access? An interactive, anticipatory measure of early theory of mind Royal Society Open Science implicit theory of mind false belief replication ignorance children |
| title | Do young children track other's beliefs, or merely their perceptual access? An interactive, anticipatory measure of early theory of mind |
| title_full | Do young children track other's beliefs, or merely their perceptual access? An interactive, anticipatory measure of early theory of mind |
| title_fullStr | Do young children track other's beliefs, or merely their perceptual access? An interactive, anticipatory measure of early theory of mind |
| title_full_unstemmed | Do young children track other's beliefs, or merely their perceptual access? An interactive, anticipatory measure of early theory of mind |
| title_short | Do young children track other's beliefs, or merely their perceptual access? An interactive, anticipatory measure of early theory of mind |
| title_sort | do young children track other s beliefs or merely their perceptual access an interactive anticipatory measure of early theory of mind |
| topic | implicit theory of mind false belief replication ignorance children |
| url | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211278 |
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