Preschool Children's Understanding of Conflicting Desires

This study examines the conditions under which 3-year-olds can use the desires of others to predict others' behavior. In Study 1, children were highly successful in predicting the actions of an agent based on that agent's desires when they were explicitly told about the agent's desires, even when the agent's desires were strongly different from the children's own. Study 2 showed that 3-year-olds could also predict the actions of an agent when they had to infer the agent's desires from the previous good and bad experiences of the agent and from information about the agent's general behavioral preferences. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that children had difficulty predicting an agent's behavior when they both had to infer the desire of the agent and this desire conflicted with their own desires. These results suggest that preschoolers' desire reasoning is sophisticated but also may be influenced by the processing demands of the task.     

Accuracy and differentiation in social prediction: A developmental perspective1

Two studies examined the accuracy and differentiation of 4–5-yearolds‘, 8–9-year-olds’, and undergraduates' predictions of the preferences of peers and nonpeers. In Study 1 each subject was presented with separate arrays of snacks, meals, and activities depicted on cards and were asked to select their own preferences and the preferences of peers and nonpeers (“grown-ups” for the children, and “4- to 5-year-olds” for the undergraduates). In Study 2 each subject selected his or her own preference, the preference of peers, and the preferences of both older nonpeers (“grown-ups”) and younger nonpeers (“2-year-olds”). For all age groups, including 4–5-year-olds: (1) the preference predictions differentiated peers from nonpeers, as well as older nonpeers from younger nonpeers; (2) it was very rare for a subject to select his or her own preferences for the preference predictions of both peers and nonpeers. There were no consistent developmental differences either in the tendency to select one's own preferences when predicting the preferences of others or in the tendency to differentiate predictions for peers and nonpeers. In contrast, there was a clear developmental increase in predictive accuracy, with 4–5-year-olds being relatively inaccurate in predicting the preferences of nonpeers. The inadequacy of constructs such as “assumed similarity” and “egocentrism” as explanations for the general accuracy in predicting peers' preferences and the 4–5-year-olds' inaccuracy in predicting nonpeers' preferences is discussed. Possible alternative variables underlying developmental increases in judgmental accuracy, such as “social reference,”“self reference,” and “social category knowledge,” are then proposed.     

Do Preschoolers Appreciate That Identical Actions May Be Motivated by Different Intentions?

Four studies investigated whether 4- and 5-year-olds recognize the potential for diversity in the intentions that motivate a given action. Children heard stories in which 2 characters performed the same action (e.g., running) yet had different desires (e.g., to be home for dinner vs. to be healthy and strong). Children were asked to determine what each character was trying to do (e.g., get somewhere fast vs. get some exercise). Five-year-olds successfully assigned different intentions to the characters, despite the fact that their actions were identical. Four-year-olds, in contrast, tended to attribute the same intention to characters performing the same action, even though their desires clearly differed. Children of this age were, nevertheless, capable of attributing different intentions to characters performing different actions (Study 2). Four-year-olds' difficulty differentiating two intentions for a given action persisted despite several task simplifications (Studies 3 and 4), suggesting that children's early concept of intention may be intimately tied to action.     

“They Danced Around in My Head and I Learned Them”: Children's Developing Conceptions of Learning

Two studies examined how 3–6-year-olds understand the process of learning. In study 1 examined how children spontaneously talk about learning via a CHILDES language analysis. Talk about the learning process increased between the ages of 3–5. Talk specifically about learning in terms of desire decreased during this period. This suggests the possibility that desire is important to children's initial understanding of learning, and children develop an understanding that various mental states including desire, attention, and intention, play a role in the learning process. In Study 2, we presented 4- and 6-year-olds with a set of stories designed to test their understanding of the role of these mental states. In both their judgments about whether someone learns and their justifications of their responses, younger children relied more on the character's desires whereas older children were more likely to integrate desire, attention, and intention together. These data suggest that children's understanding of the process of learning is developing during the early elementary school years.     

Can unpredicted outcomes be intended? The role of outcome-beliefs in children's judgments of intention

An adult-like concept of intention includes a deliberate action to achieve a goal and a belief that one's action (if successful) will cause the desired outcome. For example, good outcomes caused by accident or by chance are not believed to be caused intentionally. In two experiments, we asked whether children understand this connection between intentions and outcomes. Children played two games in which actions could produce unintended outcomes (i.e., causes were unplanned). Children sometimes received a desirable reward independent of intention. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds mistakenly claimed they had intended the desirable outcome even when it was unexpected. Four-year-olds judged that they had not intended a deliberate action if it did not yield a rewarding outcome. Experiment 2 demonstrates that 6-year-olds seldom make these errors. The results suggest that 4- and 5-year-old children have not yet attained an adult-like concept of intention. Their inaccurate judgments regarding their intentions, given a rewarding yet unexpected outcome, can be explained by a positivity bias.     

Young Children's Theory of Mind and Emotion

Abstract

In three experiments, children aged 3 to 7 years were tested for their understanding of the impact of beliefs and desires on emotion. Children watched while animal characters were offered various types of container and then predicted their emotional reaction. In Experiment 1, the children (but not the characters) knew that the desirable contents of each container had been removed. The majority of 6-year-olds and a minority of 4-year-olds understood that the characters would be happy with the gift, given their mistaken belief about its contents. In Experiment 2, characters were given containers apparently containing an object they wanted but really containing an object they did not want, or vice versa. Predictions of emotion based on both the desire and the mistaken belief of the characters increased with age. In Experiment 3, characters were given closed containers that might or might not contain an item they wanted. Both 3-and 5-year-olds grasped that the characters' emotional reaction would depend on both their (unconfirmed) beliefs and desires about its content.

The experiments show that preschool children deploy a theory-like conception of mind in predicting emotional reactions. They understand that the emotional impact of a situation depends not on its objective features but on the beliefs and desires that are brought to it.     

Contexts of a person's prior intentions facilitate observational learning in 2.5-year-old children

We examined whether contexts suggesting an actor's prior intentions facilitate observational learning in 2.5-year-olds. In Experiment 1, children observed an experimenter handle one box before proceeding to open a second box. In two prior intention conditions, children either watched the experimenter extract a toy from the first box or saw that the box had already been opened. In two no prior intention conditions, children watched the demonstration with only the second box or paired with irrelevant actions upon the first box. Children successfully opened the second box more often in the two prior intention conditions than in the two no prior intention conditions. Experiment 2 investigated stimulus generalization as another explanation for these results. A functionally different trap-tube task served as the pre-demonstration apparatus. Before watching the experimenter open the box, children either saw her extract a toy from the tube with a stick or observed the toy accidentally fall from the opening. In both cases, children opened the box at similar high rates. We discuss children's use of others’ prior intentions or observable outcomes in observational learning.     

The development of future-oriented prudence and altruism in preschoolers

This research tested the hypothesis that prudence and altruism, in situations involving future desires, follow a similar developmental course between the ages of 3 and 5 years. Using a modified delay of gratification paradigm, 3- to 5-year-olds were tested on their ability to forgo a current opportunity to obtain some stickers in order to gratify their own future desires—or the current or future desires of a research assistant. Results showed that in choices involving current desires, altruistic behavior was unrelated to age. However, prudence and altruism involving future situations were correlated with one another and with age. Children under 4 years of age demonstrated significantly less future-oriented prudence than the older children (F(1,49) = 15.75; p < .001) and significantly less altruism involving future situations (F(1,49) = 33.24; p < .001). The data for the 3-year-olds, but not for the older children, also showed age-partialled correlations between the two future-oriented choice situations. These results suggest that between 3 and 4 years, children acquire the ability to deal with future-oriented situations through the development of some common mechanism which affects both future-oriented prudence and altruism.     

Children's understanding of mental states as causes of emotions

Theory of mind studies of emotion usually focus on children's ability to predict other people's feelings. This study examined children's spontaneous references to mental states in explaining others' emotions. Children (4‐, 6‐ and 10‐year‐olds, n = 122) were told stories and asked to explain both typical and atypical emotional reactions of characters. Because atypical emotional reactions are unexpected, we hypothesized that children would be more likely to refer to mental states, such as desires and beliefs, in explaining them than when explaining typical emotions. From the development of lay theories of emotion, derived the prediction that older children would refer more often to mental states than younger children. The developmental shift from a desire‐psychology to a belief‐psychology led to the expectation that references to desires would increase at an earlier age than references to beliefs. Our findings confirmed these expectations only partly, because the nature of the emotion (happiness, anger, sadness or fear) interacted with these factors. Whereas anger, happiness and sadness mainly evoked desire references, fear evoked more belief references, even in 4‐year‐olds. The fact that other factors besides age can also play an influential role in children's mental state reasoning is discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rational Inference of Beliefs and Desires From Emotional Expressions

We investigated people's ability to infer others’ mental states from their emotional reactions, manipulating whether agents wanted, expected, and caused an outcome. Participants recovered agents’ desires throughout. When the agent observed, but did not cause the outcome, participants’ ability to recover the agent's beliefs depended on the evidence they got (i.e., her reaction only to the actual outcome or to both the expected and actual outcomes; Experiments 1 and 2). When the agent caused the event, participants’ judgments also depended on the probability of the action (Experiments 3 and 4); when actions were improbable given the mental states, people failed to recover the agent's beliefs even when they saw her react to both the anticipated and actual outcomes. A Bayesian model captured human performance throughout (rs ≥ .95), consistent with the proposal that people rationally integrate information about others’ actions and emotional reactions to infer their unobservable mental states.     

The affective structure of supportive parenting: depressive symptoms, immediate emotions, and child-oriented motivation

This study investigated the maternal concerns and emotions that may regulate one form of sensitive parenting, support for children's immediate desires or intentions. While reviewing a videotape of interactions with their 1-year-olds, mothers who varied on depressive symptoms reported concerns and emotions they had during the interaction. Emotions reflected outcomes either to children (child-oriented concerns) or to mothers themselves (parent-oriented concerns). Child-oriented concerns were associated with fewer negative emotions and more supportive behavior. Supportive parenting was high among mothers who experienced high joy and worry and low anger, sadness, and guilt. However, relations depended on whether emotions were child or parent oriented: Supportive behavior occurred more when emotions were child oriented. In addition, as depressive symptoms increased, mothers reported fewer child-oriented concerns, fewer child-oriented positive emotions, and more parent-oriented negative emotions. They also displayed less supportive behavior. Findings suggest that support for children's immediate intentions may be regulated by parents' concerns, immediate emotions, and depressive symptoms.     

Who Is to Blame? Children's and Adults' Moral Judgments Regarding Victim and Transgressor Negligence

Research has documented that individuals consider outcomes, intentions, and transgressor negligence when making morally relevant judgments (Nobes, Panagiotaki, & Engelhardt, 2017). However, less is known about whether individuals attend to both victim and transgressor negligence in their evaluations. The current study measured 3- to 6-year-olds (N = 70), 7- to 12-year-olds (N = 54), and adults' (N = 97, ages 18–25 years) moral judgments about scenarios in which an accidental transgression occurred involving property damage or physical harm. Participants were either assigned to conditions where the victim or the transgressor was negligent. Results revealed attention to negligence among all participants across a range of different moral judgment measures (including acceptability judgments, punishment judgments, and attributions of blame), with age-related increases in attention to negligence evident. Results provide novel evidence that children and adults consider not just outcomes and intentions, but also the role of negligence in both victims and transgressors, when making social decisions.     

II. Intentions and conditions of satisfaction 1

This paper discusses a problem arising from the way in which John Searle marks the distinction between intentional and unintentional action (Inquiry, Vol. 22, pp. 253–80), namely, that of adequately distinguishing those events which we regard as unintentional actions on the part of an agent from those other events occasioned by or brought about as a result of his action which we (correctly) do not countenance as actions of any sort ‐ unintentional or otherwise. Searle's attempt to distinguish them in terms of the ‘proximity of the contents of intentions’ is examined and rejected, and an alternative account which exploits the anthropocentric character of our action vocabulary is proposed and defended. The discussion ends with a brief indication of some other difficulties engendered by Searle's analysis.     

The Blicket Within: Preschoolers' Inferences About Insides and Causes

Four experiments examined children's inferences about the relation between objects' internal parts and their causal properties. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds recognized that objects with different internal parts had different causal properties, and those causal properties transferred if the internal part moved to another object. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds made inferences from an object's internal parts to its causal properties without being given verbal labels for objects or being shown that insides and causal properties covaried. Experiment 3 found that 4-year-olds chose an object with the same internal part over one with the same external property when asked which object had the same causal property as the target (which had both the internal part and external property). Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that 4-year-olds made similar inferences from causal properties to internal parts, but 3-year-olds relied more on objects' external perceptual appearance. These results suggest that by the age of 4, children have developed an understanding of a relation between an artifact's internal parts and its causal properties.     

Rational Action Entails Rational Desire: A Critical Review of Searle's Rationality in Action1

Abstract

In this paper I contest Searle's thesis that desire-independent reasons for action – ‘reasons that are binding on a rational agent, regardless of desires and dispositions in his motivational set’ – are inherent in the concept of rationality. Following Searle's procedure, I first address his argument that altruistic reasons for action inhere in the concept of rationality, and then examine his argument for his more general thesis. I conclude that a viable theory of rational action would be centered, not on the concept of desire-independent reasons, but rather on the concept of rational desire.     

Attention to Explicit and Implicit Contrast in Verb Learning

Contrast information could be useful for verb learning, but few studies have examined children's ability to use this type of information. Contrast may be useful when children are told explicitly that different verbs apply, or when they hear two different verbs in a single context. Three studies examine children's attention to different types of contrast as they learn new verbs. Study 1 shows that 3.5-year-olds can use both implicit contrast (“I'm meeking it. I'm koobing it.”) and explicit contrast (“I'm meeking it. I'm not meeking it.”) when learning a new verb, while a control group's responses did not differ from chance. Study 2 shows that even though children at this age who hear explicit contrast statements differ from a control group, they do not reliably extend a newly learned verb to events with new objects. In Study 3, children in three age groups were given both comparison and contrast information, not in blocks of trials as in past studies, but in a procedure that interleaved both cues. Results show that while 2.5-year-olds were unable to use these cues when asked to compare and contrast, by 3.5 years old, children are beginning to be able to process these cues and use them to influence their verb extensions, and by 4.5 years, children are proficient at integrating multiple cues when learning and extending new verbs. Together these studies examine children's use of contrast in verb learning, a potentially important source of information that has been rarely studied.     

Artifacts as Conventional Objects

What underlies children's understanding of artifacts? Studies suggest that beginning around age 7, people reason about artifacts in terms of the inventor's purpose—termed the design stance. Our two studies emphasize another component of artifact understanding—the cultural nature of artifacts—by demonstrating people's sensitivity to an artifact's conventional use. In past studies participants were shown a novel artifact and told that someone invented it for a certain purpose and that later another person used it for a different purpose. Here we demonstrate that if participants are told that many people, as opposed to just one person, use an artifact differently, 5-year-olds, 7-year-olds, and adults do not strictly judge the artifact in terms of its invented purpose. We conclude that people's conceptions of artifacts are more complex and dynamic than has been suggested.     

The effects of age and cue-action reminders on event-based prospective memory performance in preschoolers

The present study investigated event-based prospective memory in five age groups of preschoolers (i.e., 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds). Applying a laboratory-controlled prospective memory procedure, the data showed that event-based prospective memory performance improves across the preschool years, at least between 3 and 6 years of age. However, our findings do not confirm early speculations that 2-year-olds may have attained reliable skills to carry out future intentions on their own. By contrast, there were first signs of prospective memory abilities among the 3-year-olds. The present study also revealed that children as young as 3 years can use external memory aids in the form of cue-action reminders to improve their event-based prospective remembering. Finally, the findings suggest that parents or caregivers can adequately estimate their preschool children's prospective memory abilities, as revealed by applying a modified version of the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ).