scholarly journals A two-lab direct replication attempt of Southgate, Senju and Csibra (2007)

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 210190
Author(s):  
D. Kampis ◽  
P. Kármán ◽  
G. Csibra ◽  
V. Southgate ◽  
M. Hernik
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Collaborative Study ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Action Prediction ◽  
Belief Attribution ◽  
Link Type ◽  
False Belief Understanding

The study by Southgate et al. (2007 Psychol. Sci. 18 , 587–592. ( doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x )) has been widely cited as evidence for false-belief attribution in young children. Recent replication attempts of this paradigm have yielded mixed results: several studies did not replicate the original findings, raising doubts about the suitability of the paradigm to assess non-verbal action prediction and Theory of Mind. In a preregistered collaborative study including two of the original authors, we tested one hundred and sixty 24- to 26-month-olds across two locations using the original stimuli, procedure and analyses as closely as possible. We found no evidence for action anticipation: only roughly half of the infants looked to the location of an agent's impending action when action prediction did not require taking into account the agent's beliefs and a similar number when the agent held a false-belief. These results and other non-replications suggest that this paradigm does not reliably elicit action prediction and thus cannot assess false-belief understanding in 2-year-olds. While the present results do not support any claim regarding the presence or absence of Theory of Mind in infants, we conclude that an important piece of evidence that has to date supported arguments for the existence of this competence can no longer serve that function.

scholarly journals A two-lab direct replication attempt of Southgate, Senju, & Csibra (2007)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dora Kampis ◽  
Petra Karman ◽  
Gergely Csibra ◽  
Victoria Southgate ◽  
Mikołaj Hernik
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Collaborative Study ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Action Prediction ◽  
Belief Attribution ◽  
False Belief Understanding

The study by Southgate, V., Senju, A., and Csibra, G. (Southgate et al., 2007) has been widely cited as evidence for false-belief attribution in young children. Recent replication attempts of this paradigm have yielded mixed results: several studies were unable to replicate the original finding, raising doubts about the suitability of the paradigm to assess non-verbal action prediction and Theory of Mind. In a preregistered collaborative study including two of the original authors, we tested 160 24- to 26-month-olds across two locations using the original stimuli, procedure, and analyses as closely as possible. We found no evidence for action anticipation: only roughly half of the infants looked in anticipation to the location of an agent’s impending action when action prediction did not require taking into account the agent’s beliefs and a similar number when the agent held a false-belief. These results and other non-replications suggest that the paradigm does not reliably elicit action prediction and thus cannot assess false belief understanding in 2- year-old children. While the results of the current study do not support any claim regarding the presence or absence of Theory of Mind in infants, we conclude that an important piece of evidence that has to date supported arguments for the existence of this competence, can no longer serve that function.

Little pranksters: Inhibitory control mediates the association between false belief understanding and practical joking in young children

2021 ◽  
pp. 016502542098859
Author(s):  
Zhenlin Wang ◽  
Lamei Wang
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Verbal Ability ◽  
False Belief ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
The Relationship

To successfully pull a practical joke on someone, children need to understand that their victims do not know what they themselves know, be able to intentionally manipulate others’ beliefs, and maintain a straight face to safeguard the integrity of the joke. This study examined the relationship between children’s developing theory of mind (ToM), inhibitory control, and their ability to pull a practical joke. Ninety-five children between ages 2 and 6 participated in, among other measures, a practical joke task that required them to knowingly give one of the experimenters a gift box containing a rubber insect. Results showed that children’s ability to pull a practical joke was significantly related to their age, false belief understanding (FBU), inhibitory control, and verbal ability. Children with more siblings were more likely to successfully pull a practical joke. Most importantly, inhibitory control was shown to mediate the relation between FBU and practical joking. The findings provide evidence that practical joking as an example of ToM use is effortful.

False belief understanding: Children catch it from classmates of different ages

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifang Wang ◽  
Yanjie Su
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Location Task ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
Larger Sample ◽  
Better Than

Two experiments were conducted to compare the false belief understanding of children who have no siblings, but have classmates of different ages in kindergarten. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds completed two unexpected location tasks. We found that 4-year-olds with classmates of different ages performed significantly better than those with classmates of the same age. This result was replicated in a larger sample in Experiment 2 in which the children were asked to complete an unexpected location task and an unexpected content task. The findings suggested that the presence of minds with varied ages stimulates the social cognitive understanding of young children, particularly for 4-year-olds. The findings of the present study give a particularly clear view of the effect of classmates of different ages on young children's theory of mind development, extending findings in other research on the advantage of having siblings.

Do children understand desires before they understand beliefs? A comparison of 3-year-olds’ grasp of incompatible desires, competitive games and false beliefs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Proft ◽  
Cornelia Hoss ◽  
Katharina Manfredini Paredes ◽  
hannes rakoczy
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
False Belief ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Active Choice ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
Competitive Games ◽  
Cognitive Attitudes

A long-standing dispute in theory of mind research concerns the development of understanding different kinds of propositional attitudes. The asymmetry view suggests that children understand conative attitudes (e.g., desires) before they understand cognitive attitudes (e.g., beliefs). The symmetry view suggests that notions of cognitive and conative attitudes develop simultaneously. Relevant studies to date have produced inconsistent results, yet with different methods and dependent measures. To test between the two accounts more systematically, we thus combined different forms of desire tasks (incompatible desires and competition) with different forms of measurement (verbal ascription and active choice) in a single design. Additionally, children’s performance in the desire tasks was compared to their false-belief understanding. Results revealed that 3-year-olds were better at ascribing desires than at ascribing beliefs for both desire tasks whereas they had difficulties actively choosing the more desired option in the competition task. The present findings thus favor the asymmetry theory.

False Belief Understanding in Young Children: Explanations do not Develop Before Predictions

1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinz Wimmer ◽  
Heinz Mayringer
Keyword(s):  
Transfer Task ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Action Prediction ◽  
Epistemic States ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Critical Object ◽  
Action Analysis ◽  
Critical Account ◽  
Simple Action ◽  
Wrong Place

Two studies contrasted children’s ability to predict a wrong action with their ability to explain such an action in a standard unexpected transfer task. It was found that the majority of 31/2- to 41/2-year-old children was unable to explain in an appropriate way why the protagonist looked for the critical object in the wrong place and, therefore, exhibited at least as much difficulty with explanation as with prediction. This finding speaks against Fodor’s (1992) critical account of the standard false belief tasks. According to Fodor, these tasks induce children to rely on too simple action prediction heuristics (“Predict that the agent will act in a way that will satisfy his desire”) although they possess an understanding of belief and desire as joint causes of action. Analysis of children’s inadequate explanatory attempts showed that in the majority of these answers they referred to the protagonist’s desire to get the object or to the actual location of the object. These desire and reality orientations in explanation are similar to response tendencies in prediction and suggest a lacking in understanding of the causal links between misleading informational conditions, epistemic states, and resulting actions in younger children.

scholarly journals A Longitudinal Study of the Relations Between Theory of Mind, Executive Function, and Lying in Children

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Changzhi Zhao ◽  
Siyuan Shang ◽  
Alison M. Compton ◽  
Genyue Fu ◽  
Liyang Sai
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Executive Function ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Emotion Understanding ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Chinese Children ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Knowledge Access

This study used longitudinal cross-lagged modeling to examine the contribution of theory of mind (ToM), executive function (EF) to children’s lying development and of children’s lying to ToM and EF development. Ninety-seven Chinese children (initial Mage = 46 months, 47 boys) were tested three times approximately 4 months apart. Results showed that the diverse desire understanding and knowledge access understanding components of ToM, as well as the inhibitory control component of EF predicted the development of children’s lying, while the diverse belief understanding and false belief understanding components of ToM, and the working memory component of EF did not predict development of children’s lying. Meanwhile, children’s lying predicted development of children’s belief-emotion understanding components of ToM, but not any other ToM components, or EF components. These findings provide longitudinal evidence for the relation between ToM, EF, and children’s lying during the preschool years.

Friends, Secrets, and Lies

Reading Minds ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 23-34
Author(s):  
Henry M. Wellman
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Well Being ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Children's Achievement

This chapter examines children’s theory of mind and how it can affect children’s, and adults’, lives. A key window on all of this is children’s understanding, achieved in the preschool years, that people can be ignorant and mistaken. Voluminous “false-belief” studies in countries worldwide illuminate this. Moreover, children’s achievement of these theory-of-mind milestones impacts their friendships or friendlessness. And being friendless can have disastrous consequences for a child’s social and academic life that can continue into adulthood. As well as acquiring friends and avoiding friendlessness, theory-of-mind advances impact a child’s ability to keep secrets, to inform and deceive others, and to persuade and argue—all skills vital to a person’s social well-being. Ultimately, young children who best understand false beliefs are not only better liars, secret keepers, and persuaders but also better accepted by their peers.

The Development of Theory of Mind Reasoning in Micronesian Children

2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 39-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Oberle
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
False Belief ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Preschool Age Children ◽  
False Belief Tasks

AbstractIn this study, the development of false-belief understanding was investigated among 3–5-year-old Yapese and Fais children in Micronesia. Sixty-nine children took part in an experiment investigating their understanding of false belief with a culturally adjusted surprise content task, which has been widely used in Theory of Mind (ToM) research and was first introduced by Hogrefe, Wimmer and Perner (1986). The results show that as in western cultures, 3-year-old Micronesian preschoolers do not display understanding of false belief measured with classical false-belief tasks, while 5-year-olds do. These findings contribute to research on the universality and cultural variability of cognitive development in preschool age children.

scholarly journals Developmental Readiness in the Understanding of Own and Other’s False Beliefs

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Amadó ◽  
Elisabet Serrat ◽  
Francesc Sidera
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
False Belief ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Developmental Readiness ◽  
Representational Change

One of the most important milestones in the development of theory of mind is the understanding of false beliefs. This study compares children’s understanding of representational change and others’ false beliefs and evaluates the effectiveness of an appearance-reality training for improving children’s false belief understanding. A total of 78 children ranging in age from 41 to 47 months were trained in three sessions and evaluated in a pretest and in a posttest. The results show that for children it is easier to understand representational change than false beliefs in others, and that the improvement after training was greater when starting from a higher score in the pretest. The implications of this for training in false belief understanding are discussed.

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