Infants' ability to connect gaze and emotional expression to intentional action

Four studies investigated whether and when infants connect information about an actor's affect and perception to their action. Arguably, this may be a crucial way in which infants come to recognize the intentional behaviors of others. In Study 1 an actor grasped one of two objects in a situation where cues from the actor's gaze and expression could serve to determine which object would be grasped, specifically the actor first looked at and emoted positively about one object but not the other. Twelve-month-olds, but not 8-month-olds, recognized that the actor was likely to grasp the object which she had visually regarded with positive affect. Studies 2, 3, and 4 replicated the main finding from Study 1 with 12- and 14-month-olds and included several contrasting conditions and controls. These studies provide evidence that the ability to use information about an adult's direction of gaze and emotional expression to predict action is both present, and developing at the end of the first year of life.     

Reflexively mindblind: Using theory of mind to interpret behavior requires effortful attention

People commonly interpret others’ behavior in terms of the actors’ underlying beliefs, knowledge, or other mental states, thereby using their “theory of mind.” Two experiments suggest that using one’s theory of mind is a relatively effortful process. In both experiments, people reflexively used their own knowledge and beliefs to follow a speaker’s instruction, but only effortfully used their theory of mind to take into account a speaker’s intention to interpret those instructions. In Experiment 1, people with lower working memory capacity were less effective than people with larger working memory capacity in applying their theory of mind to interpret behavior. In Experiment 2, an attention-demanding secondary task reduced people’s ability to apply their theory of mind. People appear to be reflexively mindblind, interpreting behavior in terms of the actor’s mental states only to the extent that they have the cognitive resources to do so.     

The relationship between joint attention and theory of mind in neurotypical adults

Joint attention (JA) is hypothesized to have a close relationship with developing theory of mind (ToM) capabilities. We tested the co-occurrence of ToM and JA in social interactions between adults with no reported history of psychiatric illness or neurodevelopmental disorders. Participants engaged in an experimental task that encouraged nonverbal communication, including JA, and also ToM activity. We adapted an in-lab variant of experience sampling methods (Bryant et al., 2013) to measure ToM during JA based on participants’ subjective reports of their thoughts while performing the task. This experiment successfully elicited instances of JA in 17/20 dyads. We compared participants’ thought contents during episodes of JA and non-JA. Our results suggest that, in adults, JA and ToM may occur independently.     

The accidental transgressor: morally-relevant theory of mind

To test young children’s false belief theory of mind in a morally relevant context, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, children (N = 162) at 3.5, 5.5, and 7.5 years of age were administered three tasks: prototypic moral transgression task, false belief theory of mind task (ToM), and an “accidental transgressor” task, which measured a morally-relevant false belief theory of mind (MoToM). Children who did not pass false belief ToM were more likely to attribute negative intentions to an accidental transgressor than children who passed false belief ToM, and to use moral reasons when blaming the accidental transgressor. In Experiment 2, children (N = 46) who did not pass false belief ToM viewed it as more acceptable to punish the accidental transgressor than did participants who passed false belief ToM. Findings are discussed in light of research on the emergence of moral judgment and theory of mind.     

Second-order beliefs about intention and children's attributions of sociomoral judgment

Predicting how another person will evaluate the intention underlying an action involves consideration of second-order mental states. Children (ages 5-10 years) and college students (N=105) predicted an observer's belief about an actor's intention and evaluated the actor from both their own perspectives and the perspective of the observer. Younger children were more likely than older children and adults to attribute a belief to the observer that mismatched the actor's prior intention. Attributed beliefs about intention were more likely to match negative prior intentions than to match positive prior intentions and were also more likely to match prior intentions when the observer knew the actor's prior intention than when the observer did not know the actor's prior intention. The judgments attributed to the observer were based on the beliefs about intention attributed to the observer, showing use of second-order mental states to infer another's sociomoral judgments.     

Representational change and children's numerical estimation

We applied overlapping waves theory and microgenetic methods to examine how children improve their estimation proficiency, and in particular how they shift from reliance on immature to mature representations of numerical magnitude. We also tested the theoretical prediction that feedback on problems on which the discrepancy between two representations is greatest will cause the greatest representational change. Second graders who initially were assessed as relying on an immature representation were presented feedback that varied in degree of discrepancy between the predictions of the mature and immature representations. The most discrepant feedback produced the greatest representational change. The change was strikingly abrupt, often occurring after a single feedback trial, and impressively broad, affecting estimates over the entire range of numbers from 0 to 1000. The findings indicated that cognitive change can occur at the level of an entire representation, rather than always involving a sequence of local repairs.     

Teaching children to understand metaphors as a path leading to theory of mind development

The objective of the present study was to verify whether metaphors could be a tool in examining and teaching children's theory of mind (ToM) ability. Searching for sources of ToM development, we tried to stimulate mind-reading ability via metaphors. A group of 109 children participated in the project. Four and five-year-old participants (mean age 4 years, 11 months) were randomly divided into three groups: two experimental groups (with two kinds of prompts: direct, linguistic and indirect, contextual) and the controls. All the participating children were to solve three false beliefs and one metaphors test (with or without prompts). The results show that metaphors may provide an ecologically relevant and reliable tool for testing ToM in children. Although the methods employed to teach metaphors understanding proved ineffective, a critical analysis of the results provides important suggestions for further research.     

Does it always feel good to get what you want? Young children differentiate between material and wicked desires

One line of research on children's attributions of guilt suggests that 3‐year‐olds attribute negative emotion to self‐serving victimizers, slightly older children attribute happiness, and with increasing age, attributions become negative again (i.e., a three‐step model; Yuill et al., 1996, Br. J. Dev. Psychol., 14, 457). Another line of research provides reason to expect that 3‐year‐olds may be predisposed to view self‐serving moral transgression as leading to positive emotion; this is a linear developmental model in which emotion attributions to transgressors become increasingly negative over the course of childhood (e.g., Nunner‐Winkler & Sodian, 1988, Child Dev., 59, 1323). However, key differences in methodology make it difficult to compare across these findings. The present study was designed to address this problem. We asked how 3‐ to 9‐year‐old children (n = 111) reason about transgression scenarios that involve satisfying wicked desires (wanting to cause harm and doing so successfully) versus material desires (wanting an object and getting it successfully via harmful behaviour). Three‐year‐old children reasoned differently about desire and emotion across these two types of transgressions, attributing negative emotion in the case of wicked desires and positive emotion in the case of material desires. This pattern of emotion attribution by young children provides new information about how young children process information about desires and emotions in the moral domain, and it bridges a gap in the existing literature on this topic.     

The role of experience in children's developing folk epistemology: review and analysis from the theory–theory perspective

The role of experience in children's developing folk epistemology, specifically in their acquisition of an understanding of belief, is explored from the theory–theory perspective (i.e., the perspective claiming that children's conceptual development can be viewed as analogous to scientific theory development) through a selective review and analysis of extant empirical literature. Three types of investigations are identified: examinations of observed relationships between social experiences and belief understanding, attempts to facilitate the reasoning of children on the verge of belief understanding through experiences intended to compel children to face reasoning inconsistencies; and training studies demonstrating that children can be trained to understand belief over time through specific feedback experiences. A comparison of these studies reveals that experience is defined differently across them, resulting in varying and sometimes ambiguous implications for a theory–theory perspective on development. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Preschoolers use pedagogical cues to guide radical reorganization of category knowledge

In constructing a conceptual understanding of the world, children must actively evaluate what information is idiosyncratic or superficial, and what represents essential, defining information about kinds and categories. Preschoolers observed identical evidence about a novel object’s function (magnetism) produced in subtly different manners: accidentally, intentionally, or demonstrated communicatively and pedagogically. Only when evidence was explicitly demonstrated for their benefit did children reliably go beyond salient perceptual features (color or shape), to infer function to be a defining property on which to base judgments about category membership. Children did not show this pattern when reasoning about a novel perceptual property, suggesting that a pedagogical communicative context may be especially important for children’s learning about artifact functions. Observing functional evidence in a pedagogical context helps children construct fundamentally different conceptions of novel categories as defined not by superficial appearances but by deeper, functional properties.     

Costs and benefits of representational change: effects of context on age and sex differences in symbolic magnitude estimation

Studies have reported high correlations in accuracy across estimation contexts, robust transfer of estimation training to novel numerical contexts, and adults drawing mistaken analogies between numerical and fractional values. We hypothesized that these disparate findings may reflect the benefits and costs of learning linear representations of numerical magnitude. Specifically, children learn that their default logarithmic representations are inappropriate for many numerical tasks, leading them to adopt more appropriate linear representations despite linear representations being inappropriate for estimating fractional magnitude. In Experiment 1, this hypothesis accurately predicted a developmental shift from logarithmic to linear estimates of numerical magnitude and a negative correlation between accuracy of numerical and fractional magnitude estimates (r = −.80). In Experiment 2, training that improved numerical estimates also led to poorer fractional magnitude estimates. Finally, both before and after training that eliminated age differences in estimation accuracy, complementary sex differences were observed across the two estimation contexts.