Children Are Cursed

2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan A.J. Birch ◽  
Paul Bloom
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
False Belief ◽  
The Other ◽  
Knowledge Attribution ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Older Children ◽  
False Belief Tasks ◽  
Curse Of Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Bias

Young children have problems reasoning about false beliefs. We suggest that this is at least partially the result of the same curse of knowledge that has been observed in adults—a tendency to be biased by one's own knowledge when assessing the knowledge of a more naive person. We tested 3- to 5-year-old children in a knowledge-attribution task and found that young children exhibited a curse-of-knowledge bias to a greater extent than older children, a finding that is consistent with their greater difficulty with false-belief tasks. We also found that children's misattributions were asymmetric. They were limited to cases in which the children were more knowledgeable than the other person; misattributions did not occur when the children were more ignorant than the other person. This suggests that their difficulty is better characterized by the curse of knowledge than by more general egocentrism or rationality accounts.

scholarly journals Are the classic false belief tasks cursed? Young children are just as likely as older children to pass a false belief task when they are not required to overcome the curse of knowledge

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. e0244141
Author(s):  
Siba Ghrear ◽  
Adam Baimel ◽  
Taeh Haddock ◽  
Susan A. J. Birch
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Young Children ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Older Children ◽  
False Belief Reasoning ◽  
False Belief Tasks ◽  
Curse Of Knowledge ◽  
Litmus Test ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Belief Reasoning

The question of when children understand that others have minds that can represent or misrepresent reality (i.e., possess a ‘Theory of Mind’) is hotly debated. This understanding plays a fundamental role in social interaction (e.g., interpreting human behavior, communicating, empathizing). Most research on this topic has relied on false belief tasks such as the ‘Sally-Anne Task’, because researchers have argued that it is the strongest litmus test examining one’s understanding that the mind can misrepresent reality. Unfortunately, in addition to a variety of other cognitive demands this widely used measure also unnecessarily involves overcoming a bias that is especially pronounced in young children—the ‘curse of knowledge’ (the tendency to be biased by one’s knowledge when considering less-informed perspectives). Three- to 6-year-old’s (n = 230) false belief reasoning was examined across tasks that either did, or did not, require overcoming the curse of knowledge, revealing that when the curse of knowledge was removed three-year-olds were significantly better at inferring false beliefs, and as accurate as five- and six-year-olds. These findings reveal that the classic task is not specifically measuring false belief understanding. Instead, previously observed developmental changes in children’s performance could be attributed to the ability to overcome the curse of knowledge. Similarly, previously observed relationships between individual differences in false belief reasoning and a variety of social outcomes could instead be the result of individual differences in the ability to overcome the curse of knowledge, highlighting the need to re-evaluate how best to interpret large bodies of research on false belief reasoning and social-emotional functioning.

False Beliefs About Emotion: Children's Understanding of Misleading Emotional Displays

1988 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Gross ◽  
Paul L. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
False Belief ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Character ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Emotional Displays ◽  
Display Rule ◽  
The Way

The major goal of this study was to determine whether young children appreciate that one effect of using a display rule may be to create a false belief in another person. Fourand 6-year-old children listened to stories in which it would be appropriate for the protagonist to really feel a negative emotion. In half of the stories a reason was given for the protagonist to hide the way he or she really felt (the discrepant condition) from the other story characters; the other half contained a reason for the protagonist to show the other story characters how he or she really felt (the nondiscrepant condition). Subjects were asked to say how the main character would really feel, how the main character would look on his or her face, and how other characters in the story would think the protagonist felt, and to justify their answers. The results indicated that 6-year-old children were more accurate than 4-year-old children in judging that real and apparent emotion would not coincide in the discrepant condition and that other story characters would be misled as a result. Six-year-olds also offered more correct justifications of their responses in both story conditions. The findings are related to recent investigations of children's understanding of the appearance-reality distinction and the development of children's knowledge about how to create a false belief in another person.

Cultural Variations in the Curse of Knowledge: the Curse of Knowledge Bias in Children from a Nomadic Pastoralist Culture in Kenya

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 366-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siba Ghrear ◽  
Maciej Chudek ◽  
Klint Fung ◽  
Sarah Mathew ◽  
Susan A. J. Birch
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Nomadic Pastoralist ◽  
Curse Of Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Bias

AbstractWe examined the universality of the curse of knowledge (i.e., the tendency to be biased by one’s knowledge when inferring other perspectives) by investigating it in a unique cross-cultural sample; a nomadic Nilo-Saharan pastoralist society in East Africa, the Turkana. Forty Turkana children were asked eight factual questions and asked to predict how widely-known those facts were among their peers. To test the effect of their knowledge, we taught children the answers to half of the questions, while the other half were unknown. Based on findings suggesting the bias’s universality, we predicted that children would estimate that more of their peers would know the answers to the questions that were taught versus the unknown questions. We also predicted that with age children would become less biased by their knowledge. In contrast, we found that only Turkana males were biased by their knowledge when inferring their peers’ perspectives, and the bias did not change with age. We discuss the implications of these findings.

Chinese children's understanding of false beliefs: the role of language

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
KANG LEE ◽  
DAVID R. OLSON ◽  
NANCY TORRANCE
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Early Development ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Developmental Pattern ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Old Chinese ◽  
False Belief Tasks ◽  
Probe Question

The present study investigated the universality of the early development of young children's understanding and representation of false beliefs, and specifically, the effect of language on Chinese-speaking children's performance in false belief tasks under three between-subjects conditions. The three conditions differed only in the belief verb that was used in probe questions regarding one's own or another person's beliefs, namely the Chinese verbs, xiang, yiwei, and dang. While the three words are all appropriate to false beliefs, they have different connotations regarding the likelihood of a belief being false, with xiang being more neutral than either yiwei or dang. Experiment i involved thirty-five Chinese-speaking adults who responded to false belief tasks to be used in Experiment 2 in order both to establish an adult comparison and to obtain empirical evidence regarding how Chinese-speaking adults use the three belief verbs to describe different false belief situations. In Experiment 2, 188 three-, four-, and five-year-old Chinese-speaking children participated in three false belief tasks. They were asked to report about an individual's false belief when either xiang, yiwei, or dang was used in the probe question. Results revealed a rapid developmental pattern in Chinese-speaking children's understanding of false belief, which is similar to that found with Western children. In addition, children performed significantly better when yiwei and dang, which connote that the belief referred to may be false, were used in belief questions than when xiang, the more neutral verb, was used. This finding suggests an important role of language in assessing children's understanding of belief and false belief.

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.

scholarly journals Two-and-a-half-year-olds succeed at a traditional false-belief task with reduced processing demands

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (47) ◽  
pp. 13360-13365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peipei Setoh ◽  
Rose M. Scott ◽  
Renée Baillargeon
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Generation Process ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
False Belief Task ◽  
Concurrent Processing ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Processing Demands ◽  
Practice Trials ◽  
False Belief Tasks

When tested with traditional false-belief tasks, which require answering a standard question about the likely behavior of an agent with a false belief, children perform below chance until age 4 y or later. When tested without such questions, however, children give evidence of false-belief understanding much earlier. Are traditional tasks difficult because they tap a more advanced form of false-belief understanding (fundamental-change view) or because they impose greater processing demands (processing-demands view)? Evidence that young children succeed at traditional false-belief tasks when processing demands are reduced would support the latter view. In prior research, reductions in inhibitory-control demands led to improvements in young children’s performance, but often only to chance (instead of below-chance) levels. Here we examined whether further reductions in processing demands might lead to success. We speculated that: (i) young children could respond randomly in a traditional low-inhibition task because their limited information-processing resources are overwhelmed by the total concurrent processing demands in the task; and (ii) these demands include those from the response-generation process activated by the standard question. This analysis suggested that 2.5-y-old toddlers might succeed at a traditional low-inhibition task if response-generation demands were also reduced via practice trials. As predicted, toddlers performed above chance following two response-generation practice trials; toddlers failed when these trials either were rendered less effective or were used in a high-inhibition task. These results support the processing-demands view: Even toddlers succeed at a traditional false-belief task when overall processing demands are reduced.

scholarly journals Growing Up Thinking of God’s Beliefs: Theory of Mind and Ontological Knowledge

SAGE Open ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824401880987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cinzia Di Dio ◽  
Sara Isernia ◽  
Chiara Ceolaro ◽  
Antonella Marchetti ◽  
Davide Massaro
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Belief Attribution ◽  
Knowledge Bias

The study of social cognition involves the attribution of states of mind to humans, as well as, quite recently, to nonhuman creatures, like God. Some studies support the role of social cognition in religious beliefs, whereas others ascribe religious beliefs to an ontological knowledge bias. The present study compares these distinct approaches in 37 catholic children aged 4 to 10 years, who were administered an adapted version of the unexpected content task assessing false beliefs of different agents: a human, a dog, a robot, and God. The children were also administered an intentionality understanding task, a component of mentalization abilities, and an interview on ontological knowledge assessing emotions, intentions, imagination, and epistemic knowledge. In line with previous research, the results showed that children did not attribute false beliefs to God as they did to the human and to other nonhuman agents. Importantly, while false-belief attribution to the human was associated with the children’s ability to attribute mental states (intentionality understanding), false-belief attribution to God was related to children’s ontological knowledge. We conclude that, contrary to false-belief attribution to the human and to other nonhuman agents, children’s understanding of God’s mind is largely a function of ontological knowledge about God, rather than of children’s social cognitive functions.

Computers and ‘The Mind’: An Intervention Study

1997 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. Fletcher-Flinn ◽  
T. Suddendorf
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Computer Use ◽  
Intervention Group ◽  
Interval Data ◽  
Computer Time ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
False Belief Tasks

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between computer use and the development of social metacognition in young children by using an intervention design. Fifty-nine preschool children were given three false-belief tasks, and the results showed a significant and positive correlation between computer use and false-belief understanding. The children were then put into one of three groups. Those who did not have a computer at home and failed the false-belief tasks were matched on birth-order and number of siblings and put into either an intervention or control group. All of the other children formed an age-comparison group. Children in the intervention group were provided with a home computer for a period of two and one-half months and then both this group and the controls were re-tested on the false-belief tasks. The controls then received the computers for a period of six weeks, and both groups were again re-tested. Children in the intervention group did not make greater gains on false-belief tasks when compared with the controls. Analysis of the computer time-interval data showed that gains for both groups were associated with the average interaction time, which probably represents interactive quality. This suggests that it is the communicational requirements of computer interaction that may foster the development of false-belief understanding in young children.

scholarly journals Epistemic Norms, the False Belief Requirement, and Love

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-309
Author(s):  
J. Spencer Atkins ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Love ◽  
False Belief ◽  
The Other ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Norms ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
Special Position ◽  
Radical Claim ◽  
The Right

Many authors have argued that epistemic rationality sometimes comes into conflict with our relationships. Although Sarah Stroud and Simon Keller argue that friendships sometimes require bad epistemic agency, their proposals do not go far enough. I argue here for a more radical claim—romantic love sometimes requires we form beliefs that are false. Lovers stand in a special position with one another; they owe things to one another that they do not owe to others. Such demands hold for beliefs as well. Two facets of love ground what I call the false belief requirement , or the demand to form false beliefs when it is for the good of the beloved: the demand to love for the right reasons and the demand to refrain from doxastic wronging. Since truth is indispensable to epistemic rationality, the requirement to believe falsely, consequently, undermines truth norms. I demonstrate that, when the false belief requirement obtains, there is an irreconcilable conflict between love and truth norms of epistemic rationality: we must forsake one, at least at the time, for the other.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document