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.     

Judging intoxication

Judgments of whether a person is intoxicated by alcohol are important in a number of civil and law enforcement settings. This paper reviews how well people are able to make such judgments, the evidence for individual signs of intoxication, several structured rating techniques, and the use of sobriety tests. It is concluded that observers relying on common-sense clues of intoxication have limited ability to assess the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels of strangers, particularly below .10%. This generalization holds across professions that might be expected to show greater accuracy. Structured assessment instruments based on observable signs have shown promise but are confounded by the wide variations between casual social drinkers and those that have obtained a high level of tolerance. Among sobriety tests, only NHTSA's Standardized Field Sobriety Tests (SFSTs) have substantial, but seriously flawed, research support. Assessing the sobriety of strangers in the low to moderate BAC ranges without resort to chemical tests remains a daunting task. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.