Implicit and explicit false belief development in preschool children

The ability to represent the mental states of other agents is referred to as Theory of Mind (ToM). A developmental breakthrough in ToM consists of understanding that others can have false beliefs about the world. Recently, infants younger than 2 years of age have been shown to pass novel implicit false belief tasks. However, the processes underlying these tasks and their relation to later‐developing explicit false belief understanding, as well as to other cognitive abilities, are not yet understood. Here, we study a battery of implicit and explicit false belief tasks in 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children, relating their performance to linguistic abilities and executive functions. The present data show a significant developmental change from failing explicit false belief tasks at 3 years of age to passing them at the age of 4, while both age groups pass implicit false belief tasks. This differential developmental trajectory is reflected by the finding that explicit and implicit false belief tasks do not correlate. Further, we demonstrate that explicit false belief tasks correlate with syntactic and executive functions, whereas implicit false belief tasks do not. The study thus indicates that the processes underlying implicit false belief tasks are different from later‐developing explicit false belief understanding. Moreover, our results speak for a critical role of syntactic and executive functions for passing standard explicit false belief tasks in contrast to implicit tasks.     

Australasian Journal of Philosophy Contents of Volume 88

Veritism says that the fundamental source of epistemic value for a doxastic state is the extent to which it represents the world correctly: that is, its fundamental epistemic value is determined entirely by its truth or falsity. The Swamping Problem says that Veritism is incompatible with two pre-theoretic beliefs about epistemic value: (I) a true justified belief is more (epistemically) valuable than a true unjustified belief; (II) a false justified belief is more (epistemically) valuable than a false unjustified belief. In this paper, I consider the Swamping Problem from the vantage-point of decision theory. I note that the central premise in the argument is what Stefánsson and Bradley call Chance Neutrality in Richard Jeffrey’s decision-theoretic framework. And I describe their argument that it should be rejected. Using this insight, I respond to the Swamping Problem on behalf of the veritist.     

Knowing that I didn't know: preschoolers' understanding of their own false belief is a predictor of assents to fictitious events

The present study examines the relation between children's theory of mind abilities and their tendency to assent to fictitious events when questioned repeatedly across interviews. Children between the ages of 3 and 6 years were interviewed individually either four or seven times about a fictitious and a real staged event, and in addition given a false belief test as well as a fantasy‐reality distinction test. Children's performance on the false belief task addressing the understanding of their own false belief was a better predictor for assents to false events than was understanding the false belief of another person, age, number of interviews and performance on a fantasy‐reality distinction task. Children's memory for a staged event showed that repeated questions across interviews was related to a decrease in correct assents to having experienced a staged event, an increase in wrong yes‐responses about touch and erroneously mentioning names of children who had not been present during the staged event. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sibling conflict and theory of mind

This study examined conflicts between siblings in an attempt to identify variables that are related to false‐belief understanding. The variables investigated were children's use of mental state terms and specific types of arguments (Slomkowski & Dunn, 1992) that occurred during conflict episodes. Twenty‐two children between 3 and 5 years of age were administered eight false‐belief tasks and were also videotaped while playing with an older sibling. Use of other‐oriented arguments by the target child was significantly associated with success on false‐belief tasks after controlling for age and general language ability. No use of argument was negatively related to performance on the false‐belief tasks after controlling for age and general language ability. Neither the use of self‐oriented arguments nor use of mental state terms was found to be associated with false‐belief performance. The findings indicate that specific features of sibling conflicts are related to children's developing false‐belief understanding.     

Lifespan aging and belief reasoning: Influences of executive function and social cue decoding

Older adults often perform poorly on Theory of Mind (ToM) tests that require understanding of others’ beliefs and intentions. The course and specificity of age changes in belief reasoning across the adult lifespan is unclear, as is the cause of the age effects. Cognitive and neuropsychological models predict that two types of processing might influence age differences in belief reasoning: executive functioning and social cue detection. In the current study we assessed 129 adults aged between 18 and 86 on novel measures of ToM (video clips and verbal vignettes), which manipulated whether true or false belief reasoning was required. On both video and verbal tasks, older adults (aged 65–88) had specific impairments in false belief reasoning, but showed no such problem in performing true belief tasks. Middle-aged adults (aged 40–64) generally performed as well as the younger adults (aged 18–39). Difficulties in updating information in working memory (but not inhibitory problems) partially mediated the age differences in false belief reasoning. Also, the ability to decode biological motion, indexing social cue detection, partially mediated age-related variance in the ability to interpret false beliefs. These results indicate that age differences in decoding social cues and updating information in memory may be important influences on the specific problems encountered when reasoning about false beliefs in old age.     

Liar,liar: Consistent lying decreases belief in the truth

This study investigated the effects of lying on belief ratings for autobiographical childhood events. Participants lied by trying to convince the experimenter that likely events had not happened and that unlikely events had happened. Participants consistently lied, consistently told the truth, and alternated lying and truth telling across two sessions. Results showed that consistent false assents increased belief in those false events and that consistent false denials decreased belief in those true events. False denials had a larger influence on belief than did false assents. False assents that were told first were more likely to increase in belief than were false assents told in the second session. False denials decreased belief in the true event regardless of when they were told. These results suggest that lying influences confidence ratings both by increasing belief in a lied‐about event and by decreasing belief in a true event.     

Conversational perspective‐taking and false belief attribution: A longitudinal study

The aim of this study was to explore the developmental links between conversational perspective‐taking and false belief attribution. To examine this, 81 children aged between 3 and 4 years participated in a longitudinal study over a period of 1 year, with three measurement sessions being performed at 6‐month intervals. The children were assessed by means of sets of tasks involving conversational perspective‐taking, false belief attribution and language. The results show that false belief attribution scores, at a given age, are predicted to a significant extent, irrespective of the sessions compared, by the variations in conversational perspective‐taking scores at an earlier age, whereas the reverse is not observed. These results support the hypothesis that perspective‐taking experience contributes to the development of belief representation during the preschool period.     

True or false: do 5-year-olds understand belief?

In 3 studies (N = 188) we tested the hypothesis that children use a perceptual access approach to reason about mental states before they understand beliefs. The perceptual access hypothesis predicts a U-shaped developmental pattern of performance in true belief tasks, in which 3-year-olds who reason about reality should succeed, 4- to 5-year-olds who use perceptual access reasoning should fail, and older children who use belief reasoning should succeed. The results of Study 1 revealed the predicted pattern in 2 different true belief tasks. The results of Study 2 disconfirmed several alternate explanations based on possible pragmatic and inhibitory demands of the true belief tasks. In Study 3, we compared 2 methods of classifying individuals according to which 1 of the 3 reasoning strategies (reality reasoning, perceptual access reasoning, belief reasoning) they used. The 2 methods gave converging results. Both methods indicated that the majority of children used the same approach across tasks and that it was not until after 6 years of age that most children reasoned about beliefs. We conclude that because most prior studies have failed to detect young children's use of perceptual access reasoning, they have overestimated their understanding of false beliefs. We outline several theoretical implications that follow from the perceptual access hypothesis.     

儿童理解误信念的心理机制假设

儿童心理理论是近20年来发展心理学研究热点,对其研究主要是在误信念实验范式之下进行的。儿童理解误信念的心理机制问题是误信念研究的核心问题之一,研究者从不同的角度出发,采用不同的方法,提出了儿童如何理解误信念的几个重要假设,包括：元表征假设、事实掩盖假设、心理理论机制假设、计算资源假设。此文综述了这些假设,以期借鉴使用。     

4岁儿童对他人记忆的评判与错误信念理解的关系

从观点采择的角度考察儿童对他人记忆的评判及其与错误信念理解的关系。与他人分享记忆时,个体需要同时处理自我与他人对过去的表征和看法;而要顺利完成错误信念任务,个体需要同时加工自我的真实信念与他人的错误信念。因此个体对他人记忆的评判能力可能会与其对错误信念的理解相关。40名4岁儿童完成一系列错误信念任务和评判他人记忆是否正确任务,情境包括视觉、意图解释和情绪解释。结果表明,控制年龄、语言和记忆能力等因素后,被试评判他人记忆的成绩仍然可以预测其对错误信念的理解。这些结果为幼儿在回忆叙述中谈及他人越多,其心理理论越好提供了进一步的证据和可能的解释     

Young children's understanding of belief constraints on intention

One important characteristic of rational action is that our intentions should be consistent with our beliefs. That is, an intention to perform an action should normally be accompanied by a belief that the action will in fact be performed, and be supported by other relevant beliefs. Thus, if the intention is unfulfilled it will have been accompanied by false beliefs. Two studies examined whether 3-year-olds understand these belief constraints on intention. Children were shown films in which actors displayed great surprise and sadness at their failure to bring about the outcomes they intended and expected. They were then questioned about the actors' unfulfilled intentions and false beliefs. In both studies their understanding of unfulfilled intentions was excellent, and significantly better than their understanding of false beliefs. Nevertheless, they also revealed considerable understanding of the beliefs underpinning intentions and, in Study 2, their performance in terms of such beliefs was significantly better than that on standard false-belief tasks. Three-year-olds thus appear to have a threshold understanding of the role of belief in intentional action.     

幼儿心理状态术语的运用与心理理论的发展

本研究目的在于探讨幼儿在假装游戏中心理状态术语的应用,以及与错误信念的理解是否存在相关并具有一定的发展特征。57名3—5岁的幼儿参加了实验。研究程序包括两类标准错误信念任务及假装游戏的拍摄、麦卡锡幼儿言语智力测验。结果发现：(1)幼儿的一般言语能力与错误信念的理解存在显著相关;(2)幼儿心理状态术语的使用存在情境差异,且随年龄的增长具有“指向愿望一指向信念”的维度特征;(3)在控制相关因素之后,幼儿错误信念的理解与心理状态术语的应用及其特定范畴(习惯用语)之间仍然存在显著相关;与“真正涉及心理状态”之间的相关不再显著。     

Sociolinguistic awareness and false belief in young Cantonese learners of English

In this study, we examined whether sociolinguistic awareness and false belief were uniquely related in 3- and 4-year-old Cantonese-speaking children learning English as a second language. The English-use background of these children varied so that they possessed sociolinguistic awareness to different degrees. Results indicated that sociolinguistic awareness predicted false belief uniquely after controlling for age, nonverbal intelligence, English vocabulary, and family income for both the second language learners and the more balanced bilinguals. The group difference in false belief was adequately explained by the corresponding difference in sociolinguistic awareness over and above the other variables. Such findings provide evidence for the claim that false belief understanding is critically related to sociolinguistic awareness, which in turn is influenced by how a second language is learned.     

Are errors in false belief tasks symptomatic of a broader difficulty with counterfactuality?

When children acknowledge false belief they are handling a counterfactual situation. In three experiments 3-and 4-year-old children were given false belief tasks and physical state tasks which required similar handling of counterfactual situations but which did not require understanding about beliefs or representations: Children were asked to report what the state of the world might be now had an earlier event not occurred. The incidence of realist errors in the false belief and physical state tasks was significantly correlated independently of shared correlations with chronological age and receptive verbal ability. In a fourth experiment, children made significantly fewer realist errors when asked to infer a future hypothetical state. These results provide preliminary evidence consistent with the suggestion that pre-school children's difficulty with false belief is symptomatic of a more general difficulty entertaining counterfactual situations.     

The role of the counterfactually satisfied desire in the lag between false‐belief and false‐emotion attributions in children aged 4–7

A robust lag was evidenced between the attribution to an individual of a false belief about the world and the attribution of the false emotion associated with this false belief (Bradmetz & Schneider, 1999). This lag was unexpected in the frame of current theories of mind which consider that emotion has a rational cognitive basis. The present paper refers to the theory of appraisal which links emotion to the belief about desire satisfaction rather than the belief concerning the state of the world. The authors claim that, even if counterfactual belief is understood, the associated emotion and belief about counterfactual satisfaction of desire are not automatically understood because they depend on the success of an action. Two experiments conducted on happiness, fear, and anger confirmed this view: Attributing false belief about counterfactual desire satisfaction is much more difficult than attributing false belief about a current state of affairs, and the emotion attributed to the individual is more closely linked to a belief about desire than to a belief about the world. A four‐step developmental sequence is proposed, and the link between action and realist bias is discussed.     

Executive function and children's understanding of false belief: how specific is the relation?

The present study examined developmental relations among understanding false belief, understanding “false” photographs, performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS), and performance on a picture–sentence verification task in 69 3–5-year-old children. Results showed that performance on the DCCS predicted performance on false belief questions even after controlling for children's age and verbal ability. However, neither performance on the picture–sentence verification task, nor performance on the “false” photograph task predicted false belief understanding. Implications of these findings are discussed in the context of suggestions that understanding false belief reflects a general understanding of representation, propositional negation, and the ability to use higher order rules.     

False belief and language comprehension in Cantonese-speaking children

The current research compared two accounts of the relation between language and false belief in children, namely that (a) language is generally related to false belief because both require secondary representation in a social-interactional context and that (b) specific language structures that explicitly code metarepresentation contribute uniquely to the language-false belief relation. In three studies, attempts were made to correlate Cantonese-speaking children's false belief with their general language comprehension and understanding of certain structures that explicitly express metarepresentational knowledge. Results showed that these structures failed to predict false belief after age, nonverbal intelligence, and general language comprehension were considered. In contrast, general language remained predictive of false belief after controlling for age, nonverbal intelligence, and language structures. The current findings are more consistent with a general language account than a language structure account.     

Reliability and generalizability of an acted-out false belief task in 3-year-olds

The current study tested the reliability and generalizability of a narrative act-out false belief task held to reveal Theory of Mind (ToM) competence at 3 years of age, before children pass verbal standard false belief tasks (the “Duplo task”; Rubio-Fernández & Geurts, 2013, Psychological Science). We conducted the task across two labs with methodologically improved matched control conditions. Further, we administered an analogue intensionality version to assess the scope of ToM competence in the Duplo task. 72 3-year-olds participated in a Duplo change-of-location task, a Duplo intensionality task, and half of them in a matched verbal standard change-of-location task, receiving either false belief or matched true belief scenarios. Children performed at chance in the false belief Duplo location change and intensionality tasks as well as in the standard false belief task. There were no differences to the standard task, and performance correlated across all three false belief tasks, revealing a rather unified competence and no task advantage. In the true belief conditions of both Duplo tasks, children performed at ceiling and significantly different from the false belief conditions, while they were at chance in the true belief condition of the standard task. The latter indicates that a pragmatic advantage of the Duplo task compared to the standard task holds only for the true belief scenarios. Our study shows that the Duplo task measures the same ToM competence as the standard task and rejects a notion of earlier false belief understanding on the group level in 3-year-old children.     

A puzzle about epistemic akrasia

In this paper I will present a puzzle about epistemic akrasia, and I will use that puzzle to motivate accepting some non-standard views about the nature of epistemological judgment. The puzzle is that while it seems obvious that epistemic akrasia must be irrational, the claim that epistemic akrasia is always irrational amounts to the claim that a certain sort of justified false belief—a justified false belief about what one ought to believe—is impossible. But justified false beliefs seem to be possible in any domain, and it’s hard to see why beliefs about what one ought to believe should be an exception. I will argue that when we get clearer about what sort of psychological state epistemic akrasia is, we can resolve the puzzle in favor of the intuitive view that epistemic akrasia is always irrational.     

3～4岁儿童的错误信念理解:补语句法, 语义理解和工作记忆的作用

考察3~4岁儿童的错误信念理解中, 补语句法, 语义理解和工作记忆的作用。共有48名幼儿被试接受了错误信念, 补语句法, 皮博迪词汇-图片理解和工作记忆测试。结果表明, 错误信念理解成绩和补语句法测试得分相关和偏相关显著。回归分析表明, 补语句法测试成绩可以显著预测错误信念理解。语义和补语句法能够显著解释错误信念理解成绩的方差变异, 同时补语句法可以解释语义对错误信念理解的作用。本研究支持补语句法在错误信念理解中的独特性作用观点。