On the Distinction between False Belief Understanding and Subscribing to an Interpretive Theory of Mind

1996 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 1686 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy I. Carpendale ◽  
Michael J. Chandler
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
False Belief ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Interpretive Theory

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Developing Theory of Mind Twenty-Five Years After the Publication of “Z Badań Nad Kompetencją Komunikacyjną Dziecka” (Edited by B. Bokus and M.Haman)

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maciej Haman
Keyword(s):  
System Theory ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Research Progress ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
The Arts

Abstract Twenty-five years ago, a book “Z badań nad kompetencją komunikacyjną dziecka”, edited by Barbara Bokus and Maciej Haman, was issued containing, among else, the first Polish review of the studies on the development of Theory of Mind. During these 25 years, the area developed extensively and a new “state-of-the-arts” paper is necessary. The current paper does not pretend to the role of a complete review, instead it focusses on two live issues in the Theory of Mind (ToM) research progress: early (before the age of four years) competences in false-belief understanding, which leads to the question of continuity versus discontinuity (e.g., “Two-system theory”) between early and later ToM abilities, and neuroimaging studies of Theory-of-Mind, which may also contribute to the continuity debate.

scholarly journals Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Can Attribute False Beliefs in a Spontaneous-Response Preferential-Looking Task

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Glenwright ◽  
Rose M. Scott ◽  
Elena Bilevicius ◽  
Megan Pronovost ◽  
Ana Hanlon-Dearman
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Children With Asd

An established body of literature indicates that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty understanding figurative language due to a deficit in theory of mind, or the ability to consider the beliefs of other people. Children with ASD tend to similarly fail traditional theory of mind tasks, which assess their ability to represent false beliefs. Our claim is, however, that these tasks involve cognitive processing demands that might mask false belief understanding because they require elicited responses. We examined whether children with ASD demonstrate false-belief understanding when tested with a spontaneous-response false belief task that measures children’s eye gaze durations. The two child participant groups were composed of 20 males with ASD (aged 3–9 years) and 20 typically developing males (aged 2–5 years) who were individually matched according to verbal mental age. Children with ASD and typically developing children listened to a change-of-location story accompanied by a book with matching and non-matching pictures. The final page showed the character searching for her object in a location that was either consistent or inconsistent with her belief. Both groups of children looked reliably longer at the belief-consistent picture, regardless of whether the character’s belief was true or false, though children with ASD were slower to do so. We suggest that a spontaneous-response assessment technique can potentially reveal figurative language comprehension in children with ASD in future research.

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