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Between Desires and Beliefs: Young Children's Action Predictions
Author(s) -
Bartsch Karen
Publication year - 1996
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.1467-8624.1996.tb01820.x
Subject(s) - nothing , object (grammar) , psychology , interpretation (philosophy) , action (physics) , transition (genetics) , theory of mind , social psychology , cognitive psychology , concept learning , developmental psychology , epistemology , cognition , artificial intelligence , computer science , philosophy , biochemistry , physics , chemistry , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , gene , programming language
1 view of children's developing understanding of mind contends that children adopt a succession of naive psychological theories, moving from a desirefocused theory to a mature theory that attributes a greater role to beliefs. Between these, a transition theory, in which desires are primary but beliefs play an auxiliary role, is characteristic. Novel predictions arising from this view were tested in 2 experiments utilizing within participants designs. Preschool children ( N s = 20 and 24) were asked to predict the actions of story characters who believed a desired object to be in one of two containers (which were shown to actually contain the desired object, nothing, or a different object). In both experiments, children's predictions accorded with belief significantly more when objects of the type desired were in both containers than when containers held nothing or other sorts of objects, supporting a transition theory interpretation over competing interpretations.