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Preschoolers’ Implicit and Explicit False‐Belief Understanding: Relations With Complex Syntactical Mastery
Author(s) -
Low Jason
Publication year - 2010
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.1467-8624.2009.01418.x
Subject(s) - psychology , anticipation (artificial intelligence) , cognitive psychology , task (project management) , cognition , gaze , complement (music) , false belief , flexibility (engineering) , theory of mind , artificial intelligence , biochemistry , chemistry , statistics , mathematics , management , neuroscience , complementation , computer science , psychoanalysis , economics , gene , phenotype
Three studies were carried out to investigate sentential complements being the critical device that allows for false‐belief understanding in 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds ( N = 102). Participants across studies accurately gazed in anticipation of a character’s mistaken belief in a predictive looking task despite erring on verbal responses for direct false‐belief questions. Gaze was independent of complement mastery. These patterns held when other low‐verbal false‐belief tasks were considered and the predictive looking task was presented as a time‐controlled film. While implicit (gaze) knowledge predicted explicit (verbal) false‐belief understanding, complement mastery and cognitive flexibility also supported explicit reasoning. Overall, explicit false‐belief understanding is complexly underpinned by implicit knowledge and input from higher‐order systems of language and executive control.