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Gesture as a Window on Children's Beginning Understanding of False Belief
Author(s) -
Carlson Stephanie M.,
Wong Antoinette,
Lemke Margaret,
Cosser Caron
Publication year - 2005
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.1467-8624.2005.00830.x
Subject(s) - gesture , psychology , task (project management) , cognitive psychology , cognition , false belief , theory of mind , cognitive development , developmental psychology , nonverbal communication , artificial intelligence , computer science , management , neuroscience , economics
Given that gestures may provide access to transitions in cognitive development, preschoolers' performance on standard tasks was compared with their performance on a new gesture false belief task. Experiment 1 confirmed that children ( N =45, M age=54 months) responded consistently on two gesture tasks and that there is dramatic improvement on both the gesture false belief task and a standard task from ages 3 to 5. In 2 subsequent experiments focusing on children in transition with respect to understanding false beliefs ( N s=34 and 70, M age=48 months), there was a significant advantage of gesture over standard and novel verbal‐response tasks. Iconic gesture may facilitate reasoning about opaque mental states in children who are rapidly developing concepts of mind.