Young Children's Knowledge of the Representational Function of Pictorial Symbols: Development Across the Preschool Years in Three Cultures

Three- to 5-year-old children's knowledge that pictures have a representational function for others was investigated using a pictorial false-belief task. In Study 1, children passed the task at around 4 years old, and performance was correlated with standard false-belief and pictorial symbol tasks. In Study 2, the performance of children from two cultural settings who had very little exposure to pictures during the first 3 years (Peru, India) was contrasted with that of children from Canada. Performance was better in the Canadian than Peruvian and Indian samples on the picture false-belief task and drawing tasks but not on the standard false-belief measure. In all settings, children passed drawing and standard false-belief tasks either concurrently with, or prior to, passing the picture false-belief task. The findings suggest that children's explicit knowledge of the representational function of pictorial symbols matures in the late preschool years and develops more rapidly in cultures that strongly promote the symbolic use of pictures early in life.     

False-belief understanding in 2.5-year-olds: evidence from two novel verbal spontaneous-response tasks

Recent research indicates that toddlers and infants succeed at various non-verbal spontaneous-response false-belief tasks; here we asked whether toddlers would also succeed at verbal spontaneous-response false-belief tasks that imposed significant linguistic demands. We tested 2.5-year-olds using two novel tasks: a preferential-looking task in which children listened to a false-belief story while looking at a picture book (with matching and non-matching pictures), and a violation-of-expectation task in which children watched an adult 'Subject' answer (correctly or incorrectly) a standard false-belief question. Positive results were obtained with both tasks, despite their linguistic demands. These results (1) support the distinction between spontaneous- and elicited-response tasks by showing that toddlers succeed at verbal false-belief tasks that do not require them to answer direct questions about agents' false beliefs, (2) reinforce claims of robust continuity in early false-belief understanding as assessed by spontaneous-response tasks, and (3) provide researchers with new experimental tasks for exploring early false-belief understanding in neurotypical and autistic populations.     

Age differences in source forgetting: effects on reality monitoring and on eyewitness testimony

Age differences in memory for the source of memories were investigated using two different experimental paradigms. Experiment 1 used a reality monitoring paradigm. A series of actions were either performed, imagined, or watched, and subjects were later tested for their ability to recognize the actions and identify their origins. Elderly subjects made more false positive responses than did young subjects, and they made more source confusion errors, attributing actions to the wrong sources. Both new and imagined actions were most often misclassified as watched. Experiment 2 used an eyewitness testimony paradigm. After watching a film, subjects read a written version of the story. A recognition test showed that elderly subjects were more often misled by false information in the story than were the younger subjects, and were more confident that their erroneous responses were correct. The findings suggest that a decline in memory for sources may diminish the accuracy of elderly witnesses.     

Children's attention to beliefs in interactive persuasion tasks

Whether and when children can apply their developing understanding of belief to persuasion was examined using interactive puppet tasks. Children selected 1 of 2 arguments to persuade a puppet to do something (e.g., pet a dog) after hearing the puppet's belief (e.g., "I think puppies bite"). Across 2 studies, 132 children (ages 3-7 years) engaged in these persuasion tasks and in false-belief reasoning tasks, presented in puppet and story formats. Belief-relevant argument selection increased with age, as did appropriate reasoning about false beliefs, and occurred more in puppet than story tasks. Results suggest that improvements in belief reasoning in early childhood may be reflected in social interactions such as persuasion.     

Children’s resistance to misleading postevent information: When does it occur?

Whether or not misleading postevent information influences children’s memory has been hotly debated. The present experiment focused on the null effects of misinformation and was designed so as to partially replicate Zaragoza’s (1991) finding that preschoolers were unaffected by suggested information. Consistent with Zaragoza’s findings, no difference in recognition memory performance was observed between control and misled conditions. Item analyses were also indicative of the absence of a misinformation effect. Results are discussed in terms of event salience, interviewer credibility, and their psycholegal implications.     

Children are cursed: an asymmetric bias in mental-state attribution

Abstract - 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.     

Effects of discrete emotions on young children's suggestibility

Two experiments investigated the effects of sadness, anger, and happiness on 4- to 6-year-old children's memory and suggestibility concerning story events. In Experiment 1, children were presented with 3 interactive stories on a video monitor. The stories included protagonists who wanted to give the child a prize. After each story, the child completed a task to try to win the prize. The outcome of the child's effort was manipulated in order to elicit sadness, anger, or happiness. Children's emotions did not affect story recall, but children were more vulnerable to misleading questions about the stories when sad than when angry or happy. In Experiment 2, a story was presented and emotions were elicited using an autobiographical recall task. Children responded to misleading questions and then recalled the story for a different interviewer. Again, children's emotions did not affect the amount of story information recalled correctly, but sad children incorporated more information from misleading questions during recall than did angry or happy children. Sad children's greater suggestibility is discussed in terms of the differing problem-solving strategies associated with discrete emotions.     

错误信念任务中的知识偏差

有观点指出,年幼儿童在错误信念任务上的发展变化,不是发生了概念变化的质变,而是知识偏差的表现。知识偏差是指当我们尝试理解一个更不知情的观点时,不能忽略自己拥有的额外信息并受此影响而产生偏差的倾向。本文对知识偏差的含义及其在错误信念任务中可能产生的影响做了较为详细的综述和分析,并就在错误信念任务中消除知识偏差影响的可能性进行了探讨。     

Does the nature of the experience influence suggestibility? A study of children's event memory

Two experiments examined the effects of event modality on children's memory and suggestibility. In Experiment 1, 3- and 5-year-old children directly participated in, observed, or listened to a narrative about an event. In an interview immediately after the event, free recall was followed by misleading or leading questions and, in turn, test recall questions. One week later children were reinterviewed. In Experiment 2, 4-year-old children either participated in or listened to a story about an event, either a single time or to a criterion level of learning. Misleading questions were presented either immediately or 1 week after learning, followed by test recall questions. Five-year-old children were more accurate than 3-year-olds and those participating were more accurate than those either observing or listening to a narrative. However, method of assessment, level of event learning, delay to testing, and variables relating to the misled items also influenced the magnitude of misinformation effects.     

Sensitivity to criticism and theory of mind: A cross cultural study on Japanese and Italian children

Although recent studies have shown cross-cultural differences in theory of mind (ToM) between children in Western and Eastern cultures, little is known about cross-cultural differences pertaining to social correlates. The present research investigated cultural variations in the relationship between sensitivity to criticism and ToM. Japanese (n = 76) and Italian (n = 76) 6-year-olds completed a sensitivity-to-criticism task (either the teacher condition or the peer condition), second-order false-belief tasks, and a verbal ability test. The results replicated previous findings of an association between ability rating after teacher criticism and ToM in both countries. Cultural variation was found in emotional response and motivation after teacher, but nor peer, criticism. Japanese children responded to teacher criticism more positively than did Italian children. Moreover, Japanese children who failed the second-order false-belief task were more motivated after teacher criticism than were Italian children. These results are discussed in relation to differences in cultural factors.     

Children's use of mental state information in selecting persuasive arguments

Whether and when children use information about others' mental states to invent or select persuasive strategies were examined. In Study 1, preschoolers, 3rd-graders, and 6th-graders (ns = 11, 12, and 16, respectively; 17 girls) were told about story characters' persuading parents to buy pets or toys. Children were either given or not given information about story parents' beliefs and asked to invent or select appropriate arguments. Older children, but not preschoolers, used belief information to select arguments. Results were replicated in Study 2 (16 kindergartners, 16 3rd-graders; 19 girls). In Study 3, kindergartners and 1st-graders (N = 16; 6 girls) reasoned well on false-belief tasks but not on persuasion tasks, suggesting that failure to consider mental states in persuasion was not due to lack of a belief concept. Findings suggest that mental state understanding may continue to develop after the preschool years; methodological qualifications are also considered.     

Infants' Developing Sensitivity to Object Function: Attention to Features and Feature Correlations

In this research we examine the relation between executive function (EF) and false-belief (FB) understanding in young children. Specifically, we proposed that performance on tasks combining 2 executive demands: (a) working memory and (b) inhibitory control would be most predictive of performance on FB tasks. Forty-eight children between the ages of 3 and 5 years were given a battery of EF and FB measures. As predicted we found that performance on executive tasks that combined demands for memory and inhibitory control were highly predictive of performance on FB tasks. To further test the relation of EF and FB understanding we also introduced an experimental manipulation designed to reduce the working memory demands of FB tasks. This manipulation did not significantly improve performance. The results from this study provide support for the relation between EF and FB understanding, although the exact nature of the relation requires further clarification.     

Forced fabrication versus interviewer suggestions: Differences in false memory depend on how memory is assessed

Many studies show that witnesses can develop false memories for suggested misinformation provided by an interviewer. The forced fabrication effect extends this finding by demonstrating that witnesses can also develop false memories for events they were forced to fabricate themselves. In two experiments we compared the incidence of false memory following forced fabrication and interviewer provided suggestion under various conditions (pre‐test warning/no warning; one‐week/two‐week delay) and type of test (source recognition vs. narrative recall). Whereas interviewer suggestions resulted in more false memories than forced fabrications on source recognition tests when participants overtly resisted fabricating and were warned at test, tests of narrative recall showed the opposite pattern even with pre‐test warnings: Fabrications generated following overt resistance led to more false recall than interviewer provided suggestions. This dissociation between suggestive interview type and test type indicates that predictions about the deleterious consequences of interviews are dependent on the way memory is assessed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Theory of mind and executive function: working-memory capacity and inhibitory control as predictors of false-belief task performance

This study of the relationship between theory of mind and executive function examined whether on the false-belief task age differences between 3 and 5 ears of age are related to development of working-memory capacity and inhibitory processes. 72 children completed tasks measuring false belief, working memory, and inhibition. Significant age effects were observed for false-belief and working-memory performance, as well as for the false-alarm and perseveration measures of inhibition. A simultaneous multiple linear regression specified the contribution of age, inhibition, and working memory to the prediction of false-belief performance. This model was significant, explaining a total of 36% of the variance. To examine the independent contributions of the working-memory and inhibition variables, after controlling for age, two hierarchical multiple linear regressions were conducted. These multiple regression analyses indicate that working memory and inhibition make small, overlapping contributions to false-belief performance after accounting for age, but that working memory, as measured in this study, is a somewhat better predictor of false-belief understanding than is inhibition.     

Effects of prior knowledge and response bias upon recognition memory for a story: Implications for children's eyewitness testimony

Abstract: The present study was designed to evaluate the integration hypothesis and the response bias hypothesis for explaining the fragility of children's eyewitness memory, by varying the plausibility of postevent information and the strength of response bias in recognition tests. Preschool children were told a story in which a boy named Ken saw a housebreaker stealing various objects and the postevent information was also incorporated into the story. The first recognition test was administered immediately following the presentation of an interpolated story, and the second recognition test was administered 10 weeks later. The results indicated that high-plausibility objects tended to be recognized as the stolen objects in the second recognition test, and that recognition accuracy was higher for a new-distractor condition than for a misleading-distractor condition. These findings were interpreted as suggesting that the memory representation of the story might be changed through the integration processes and/or rendered inaccessible in terms of the response bias.     

Synchrony in the onset of mental-state reasoning: evidence from five cultures

Over the past 20 years, developmental psychologists have shown considerable interest in the onset of a theory of mind, typically marked by children's ability to pass false-belief tasks. In Western cultures, children pass such tasks around the age of 5 years, with variations of the tasks producing small changes in the age at which they are passed. Knowing whether this age of transition is common across diverse cultures is important to understanding what causes this development. Cross-cultural studies have produced mixed findings, possibly because of varying methods used in different cultures. The present study used a single procedure to measure false-belief understanding in five cultures: Canada, India, Peru, Samoa, and Thailand. With a standardized procedure, we found synchrony in the onset of mentalistic reasoning, with children crossing the false-belief milestone at approximately 5 years of age in every culture studied. The meaning of this synchrony for the origins of mental-state understanding is discussed.     

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     

Indicating when you do not know the answer: The effect of question format and interviewer knowledge on children's ‘don't know’ responses

Children are interviewed in a variety of contexts, for example, in the legal setting and in experimental research. In these situations, it is often very important that children indicate when they do not know the answer to a question, rather than guess. In the present experiment, one hundred and forty‐nine 5‐ to 9‐year‐olds witnessed a staged event in one of two conditions. The interviewer was either present at the event (knowledgeable interviewer) or absent from the event (uninformed interviewer). Children were then interviewed using yes/no questions and wh‐questions. Within each type of question, half were answerable based on the information provided; the other half were not answerable (i. e. the correct answer was ‘don't know’). The children performed consistently well with the answerable questions. With the unanswerable questions, there was an effect of format and interviewer knowledge. Children were more likely correctly to indicate that they did not know the answer to an unanswerable wh‐question than an unanswerable yes/no question. Also, children were more likely correctly to say ‘don't know’ to unanswerable questions when the interviewer had been absent from the event.