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Children's Interpretation of Messages from a Speaker with a False Belief
Author(s) -
Robinson E. J.,
Mitchell P.
Publication year - 1992
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.1467-8624.1992.tb01652.x
Subject(s) - psychology , referent , interpretation (philosophy) , task (project management) , deception , social psychology , test (biology) , cognitive psychology , linguistics , paleontology , philosophy , management , economics , biology
In 5 investigations we examined a new procedure for assessing children's understanding that messages arise from speakers' internal representations. 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds watched the enactment of a message‐desire discrepant story in which a speaker doll, who believed wrongly that bag A was in location 1 and that bag B was in location 2, gave a message referring to the bag in location 1. In a message‐desire consistent control condition, the speaker had a correct belief about the bags' locations. Children frequently judged correctly in the discrepant story that the speaker (who specified location 1) wanted the bag in location 2, and judged correctly in the consistent story that the speaker wanted the bag in location 1. That is, young children attended to the speaker's internal representations, and not just the real‐world referent of the message, when judging what the speaker wanted. In one of the investigations, children performed better on the message‐desire discrepant task than on a false belief task. We discuss why they might find it particularly easy to take into account false belief when inferring desire on the basis of behavior.