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Children's understanding of false beliefs in different domains: Affective vs. physical
Author(s) -
Davis Teresa L.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1348/026151001165958
Subject(s) - psychology , false belief , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , affect (linguistics) , cognition , social psychology , theory of mind , communication , neuroscience
This study compared the development of other false belief and representational change knowledge in the affective and physical domains. Pre‐school children (ages 3–4 years) participated in unexpected contents types of physical tasks and similar affective tasks. There were no domain differences in the children's performance; however, a marginal interaction with age was noted with older children performing better on the physical tasks than younger ones, but no age difference was found for the affective tasks. Children's knowledge of other false belief and representational change was also similar. Controlling for age, partial correlations between the representational change and other false belief questions were significant in the affective and physical domains. Partial correlations investigating the relationships across domains indicated a significant relationship for representational change, but not for other false belief. These results suggest that other false belief knowledge and representational change knowledge develop concurrently in the affective and physical domains.