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Three‐Year‐Olds' Problems with False Belief: Conceptual Deficit or Linguistic Artifact?
Author(s) -
Lewis Charlie,
Osborne Amanda
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1990.tb02879.x
Subject(s) - psychology , false belief , task (project management) , theory of mind , contrast (vision) , test (biology) , cognitive psychology , cognitive development , developmental psychology , cognition , artifact (error) , social psychology , linguistics , paleontology , philosophy , management , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science , economics , biology
Researchers are divided over whether young children understand other people's minds. This study reexamines the main technique used to show a basic inability in 3‐year‐olds to make judgments about a person's thoughts when that person's knowledge happens to be false. 131 children, aged 3, 3 1/2, and 4, were shown the real, unexpected contents of a chocolate box and were required to say what a friend would think was in it and what their own previous expectations had been. Success in this task was compared between the 3 age groups and also according to the specificity of questions asked. It was found, in contrast to previous findings, that test questions that are temporally specific and syntactically straightforward enable most 3‐year‐olds to attribute false beliefs to others. These results suggest that 3‐year‐olds' access to information about others' mental states is bounded by the linguistic demands placed upon them, but long before their fourth birthday children have some understanding of others' minds.