Module 4

Question 1

Childrens responses are suggestive of higher order cognitive understandings. How much of demonstrates mentalistc understandings or theory of mind?

Definitions of TOM:

Answer 1

Definitions:
Theory of Mind (TOM) – the ability to attribute mental states (e.g., pretences, intentions, desires, beliefs etc.) to the self and others.

Very carefully, we might say that there is a meta-representational component to TOM. Put carefully, TOM refers to ability to think about people’s thoughts as being thoughts about the state of the world as being a certain way (analogy is cognitions about cognitions as cognitions)

TOM enables analysis of psychological causation – helps us predict what others will do (knowing others mental states helps us anticipate their future actions).
Are there indicators that children possess TOM?

Question 2

Some theorists – like Alan Leslie (1987) – claim that pretend play shows cognitive sophistication and is one of the earliest signs of theory of mind

his two part claim…

Answer 2

Part 1 to the claim:
Young children’s pretend play is surely a sign of meta-representational understanding. Children can take “primary” (i.e., real) experiences of the world and transform them into “secondary” (or hypothetical) representations (e.g., “I pretend the banana is a telephone”)

(Planned pretend play where they take an object and substitute it for something else appears from 18 to 26 months; where they take a representations and transform it into something else must require meta-representational capacity).
Part 2 to the claim:

Children don’t get confused between pretend world and real world (i.e., children can mark off or quarantine pretend world from real world; keep real and hypothetical world separate; they don’t always treat bananas are phones)

*He argues both claims provide evidence that infants can meta-represent i.e., think about thoughts as thoughts.

Question 3

The Debate:
Looking at Part 1 of the claim more carefully (real-hypothetical):

rich vs lean interpretation

Answer 3

The Debate:
Looking at Part 1 of the claim more carefully (real-hypothetical):

(A) Rich interpretation:

Young children’s IS META-REPRESENTATIONAL; pretending involves THINKING as though one believes that something is true when, in fact, one believes that something is false (i.e., explicitly recognising pretence as a THOUGHT - a mental stance or way of thinking of the world; I’m pretending and I know what is true).

Pretence is viewed as thoughts.

(B) Lean interpretation:

Young children’s pretending is NOT META-REPRSENTATIONAL; pretending involves ACTING AS IF one believes that something is true when, in fact, one believes that something is false (i.e., recognising pretence as a THING - a kind of physical action or external manifestation).

Pretence is viewed as an action/behaviour, thing or external manifestation.

Notice that the Lean view do not accept that infants reason about ‘beliefs’.

What evidence do we have for the lean view? That they are just acting as if It was true without thinking about their own thoughts as thoughts?

Lillard (1998):

Question 4

What evidence do we have for the lean view? That they are just acting as if It was true without thinking about their own thoughts as thoughts?

Lean Interpretation Evidence:
Lillard (1998):

Answer 4

Lillard (1998):

Infants are told a story about Moe the troll:
“This is Moe the Troll. He’s never seen a rabbit, and he hasn’t heard of one either. He’s hopping around like this. He’s not trying to be like a rabbit – he’s just hopping.”
They are then asked a test question: Is Moe pretending to be a rabbit?

4-years: 40% correct (by answering “No”- too hard for them).

5-years: 53% correct (by answering “No” from 5 years more than half get it correct)

Justifications:
When you ask children why they answered he is not pretending: they say he hasn’t seen a rabbit before so he doesn’t know they hop and therefore is not trying to be a rabbit.
When 4 year olds get it wrong they say he is hopping like rabbit so must be pretending to be a rabbit.

Implications:
Older infants are more likely to infer the meta states of others when they are pretending. They understand that to pretend to be something you must know about it and intend to do it.

Younger infants understand pretending as external overt actions that is not governed by mental states.

Question 5

Looking at Part 2 of the claim more closely (separate reality from pretend world):

Answer 5

Evidence of lean interpretation:
there are certain circumstances, highly emotionally charged, where infants will struggle to keep reality separate from the pretend world.

Harris et al. (1991).

Steps:

1. Children (4 to 6 years) were invited into the room and asked to inspect two boxes and found they were empty; they were then shut.
2. Then children were asked to pretend that a scary monster was in one box and a friendly puppy was in the other box.
3. To confirm that they were engaging in pretend play and did not actually think they’re were in the boxes they were asked, during play, are we pretending; they confirmed they knew there was nothing in the boxes.
4. They were then invited to place their finger or stick into one of the boxes.

Results:
 They found that infants were more likely to use their finger to inspect the puppy box but the stick for the monster box.

Implications:
§ This tells us that when there is an element of fear involved that infants whilst explicitly stating they understand it is pretend they are unsure of whether the hypothetical world can seep into the real world and to be cautious use the stick to poke inside the box with the monster (caused by heightened emotions; scary pretence).
§ Implication is that children might not yet know enough about the causal links between mind and reality; preschool years is when they begin to understand the contingency between thinking about something at it being real or not.

Question 6

These complications with what pretend play means for infants cognitive reasoning authors have put it to the side and focused on identifying other forms of evidence we can use to understand how theory of mind develops in infants.

Meltzoff (1995)

Answer 6

Meltzoff (1995)
 Imitation might be the platform upon which mental state understanding builds upon. Infants imitate the actions of others AND are also aware of when others imitate their actions (this awareness may be key for them understanding the mental states of others; the social other).

Meltzoff’s Social Mirroring Study
 14-month-old infants were assigned to either the shadow or control condition. In the shadow experimental condition, the experimenter would imitate every action the infant did (i.e., bang toy 3x).
 In the control condition, the experimenter did not imitate the infants and just held the toy passively.
 If infants are sensitive to others imitating them than they should pay more attention to that person when they do so.
 The results support this claim by… 14-month-olds looked longer, more smiles and more tests of behaviour (stops and checks) to imitating experimenter relative to the control experimenter.
 Skeptics may argue that it is due to one experimenter being active and the other passive (not due to imitation

Same study by Meltzoff (1995)
 Ruled out that infants merely attracted by someone who is active than non-active: Self-imitator experimenter manipulated toy in the same way currently shown by infant (contingent);
 other-imitator experimenter manipulated toy in a different way (consistent with what infant had done in past; not causally contingent).
 Similar results: Infants looked longer, more smiles and more tests of behaviour to self-imitator experimenter than to other-imitator experimenter.

Infants recognise self-other equivalence when someone imitates them (like me hypothesis; where they recognise when others are imitating them = foundation for building TOM, learning ; in contrast to Leslie’s theory that TOM is innate).

Question 7

Meltzoff’s ‘Like Me’ idea for how imitation could be a platform that helps children develop theory of mind

Answer 7

Steps:

1. I am in a certain internal state (e.g., state of preferring something or state of not preferring something) when I make a certain expression / action (e.g., smiling face reaching & for object or frowning face & not reaching for something)
2. Other people are appearing like the way I feel myself to be (recognise that the internal state they feel when doing an action may be replicated in others doing the same action)
3. If others are making the same expression, maybe they are also having the same internal state as I am.

§ Meltzoff suggests that imitation might be the way infants use personal experience to understand others’ experience.
§ This idea has not been fully tested, but it does suggest that infants and young children might understand the mental state of desires relatively early.

Question 8

Early desire-based psychology

Answer 8

 Scientists like Wellman and Woolley (1990) view that early psychological understanding is based on desires (younger children as simple desire psychologists; 2–3-year-olds) and very much later psychological understanding is based on interactions between beliefs and desires (older children as belief-desire psychologists; 4+ year olds).
 He created two types of stories (simple desire & desire-belief) and tested how infants respond to them. For example,
 Simply desire psychology (construing actions in terms of desires) = Betsy wants to play with puzzles today, she doesn’t want to play with sand. Where will Betsy go to play? Correct answer is with the puzzle. Belief-desire psychology (predicting actions in relation to beliefs) = Sam wants to find his dog. It might be in the garage or under the porch. Where do you think the puppy is? [if child says in the garage, for example, then story goes on to say - well, Sam thinks his puppy is under the porch. Where will Sam go to look? Correct answer is under the porch.
 Results:
 85% of 2-year pass all desire stories (easy) and only 45% (difficult) passed all belief-desire stories.
 Implications:
 This tells us that 2-year-old infants think mentally about the world differently than adults. They are desire psychologists; they think about the mental states of others only in terms of desires. From 4 years, older infants are more likely to think about mental sates including desires and beliefs.

Question 9

Can younger infants at 18 months of age think about people in terms of their desires?

Answer 9

Early desire-based psychology from a food-request procedure
Betty Repacholi & Alison Gopnik (1997)
 Tested 14-months and 18-month-olds
 They are presented with broccoli or crackers. Alison comes in and tries the food items, she likes the broccoli ad says yum, then she tries the crackers and says eww (normally infants would prefer crackers over broccoli!). Alison than asks infants to pass her preferred item to her. Will they pass her what they prefer (cracker) or what she prefers (broccoli).
Results:
 At 14-mths, 54% succeeded by offering the agent’s preferred food (glimmer of them doing it correctly)
 At 18-months, 73% succeeded by offering the agent’s preferred food (very good at this)
Implications:
 Suggests 18-month-olds reliably show psychological understanding of desire, that desire is an internal psychological state and that two people can have different dispositions (thoughts/feelings) towards the same entity (the broccoli). Preference or dislike for the same item.

We need to be very careful with our interpretations and urge for a leaner interpretation:
“To understand the desires of another person, it is only necessary to understanding objects and events – primary representations” (Goswami, p. 153).
 Rather than thinks of desires as an internal state.
 It could be that they are solving the problem teleologically. Teleology (lean) could apply: The goal is positive for Alison is to be with broccoli (the goal that is positive for myself is to be with crackers). Action that will efficiently satisfy Alison’s goal is to hand over entity from broccoli bowl. Therefore give Alison broccoli.
 The debate is ongoing.

Question 10

To decide the debate is to look at TOM. The philosopher Daniel Dennett (1978) argued that successful reasoning about false belief is the only convincing evidence for attribution of mental states to others.

Wimmer and Perner (1983) – false belief task involving object location

Answer 10

Wimmer and Perner (1983) – false belief task involving object location

1. Max puts his chocolate in the green cupboard and then goes out to play. Whilst he is outside his mother comes in and moves the chocolate to puts the chocolate in the blue cupboard.
2. Test question: where will max look for the chocolate? He tested infants response from 4-9 years of age.
3. The emergence of children’s ability to understand another person’s beliefs and how this person will react on the basis of these beliefs seems to emerge from 6 years of age. 4 and younger will say that max will look at the location that we know it is. Older infants will say max will look where he last saw it even though we know its wrong. Older children also pass by justifying answer: “He will look in the green cupboard because he still think the chocolate is there and he doesn’t know the chocolate is in the blue cupboard.”

Implications:
 Argument for genuine meta-representational understanding is more convincing when older children pass the standard false-belief task. Older infants understanding of false beliefs is late in development after 6 years old. When they pass the task they are also able to verbally justify their decision (use mental state words correctly, think or know; stronger evidence when they have language to justify answer; they need to distinguish belief from reality, not always reflecting reality and know that others will perceive reality based off of their beliefs even if false; evidence of cognitions about cognitions as cognitions).

Question 11

Summary1

Answer 11

Summary
§ Some say that pretend play is an early manifestation of infants’ or very young children’s sophisticated theory of mind – but there are interpretive problems; pretend play could be due to children merely acting as if (or even merely following teleological reasoning)
§ Other researchers put emphasis on infants’ early propensity to imitate others and to recognise when they themselves are being imitated as being the foundation that helps infants learn about theory of mind
§ There is evidence that some kinds of mental states are understood earlier by children (like desires). Understanding of desires could signal that young children are thinking about desires as being an internal state, but we need to be careful - tasks could be solved by applying teleology.
§ There is evidence that some kinds of mental states are understood earlier by children (like desires). Understanding of desires could signal that young children are thinking about desires as being an internal state, but we need to be careful - tasks could be solved by applying teleology.

*genuine cognitive revolution for infants to develop a sophisticated skill such as false beliefs.

Question 12

Recap:

 Wimmer and Perner (1983):

Answer 12

 Wimmer and Perner (1983):
o unexpected object location false belief task: where will Max look for the chocolate (6-year-olds are significantly better at passing this task relative to 4 years old and is able to justify their choice verbally; below 4 will consistently give the wrong choice). This suggest there is a significant developmental change from 4-6 where they go through a cognitive revolution which allows them to engage in meta cognitional nature of TOM. To make this claim, we must find out if we find out whether the same age-related pattern is present in other forms of false belief tasks.
o Powerful evidence there is a discontinuous, difference between the minds of 4-6 infants in their cognitive ability to understand the minds of others.

Question 13

Another false belief task (the unexpected contents task) which also shows an age-related pattern of TOM abilities.

Perner et al. (1989) Smarties Task

Answer 13

Perner et al. (1989) Smarties Task
Steps
1. Children (3-6 years old) are shown a tube of smarties and asked what they think is in it; most will say smarties or chocolate.
2. Then the experimenter opens the container and reveals its unexpected contents; a pencil.
3. They are then asked to predict what someone else who hasn’t seen its contents what do you think they will say is in the box.
4. Will they say that they know what we know or understand that Billy will have a false belief about its contents?

Results:
 Below 4 years of age tend to fail this unexpected-contents task, saying the other person will know that there is a pencil in the container (they predict they’ll be knowledgeable; can’t attribute false beliefs to other agents). After age 4 they tend to pass the task and can attribute false beliefs to other social agents.

Question 14

Evidence by Flavell et al. (1983) show a clear age-related shift in infants’ ability to reflect on how stimulus can be given in two different, seemingly incompatible ways.

Flavell et al. (1983) Appearance-Reality Task

Answer 14

Flavell et al. (1983) Appearance-Reality Task
Steps
1. Tends to involve a deceptive object such as a rock. Children are asked what the object is, they will most likely say a rock, and then they are given the opportunity to physically explore the textile nature of the object to discover its properties.
2. Children are then asked two questions: A reality question (what is it? Is it rally a sponge or really a rock?) a appearance question (when you look at this right now, does it look like a rock or does it look like a sponge).

Results:
 Children between 4-5 years of age answered both questions correctly (sponge-rock). Three-year-olds tend to take a “realist” perspective where the object was really a sponge and looked like a sponge (sponge-sponge).

Implications:
 Therefore, just like how older infants understand that beliefs can contrast with reality, older children also understand that appearances can contrast with reality.

Research shows that children’s success In the appearance-reality task not only temporally coincides with (similar age trends) but also correlates with their performance in unexpected location and unexpected transfer-false belief tasks (pass all or fail all types of false beliefs tasks; coherence in how the tasks hang together).

Question 15

Given the evidence that false belief understanding marks a sea change in children’s cognitive or conceptual development, are these factors that can facilitate children’s false belief understanding?

Answer 15

Linguistic or communicative exchanges about mental states

Family factors promote understanding of the mind

Question 16

Evidence on the facilitative role of linguistic or communicative experiences
 Dunn et al., (1991b)
 Lohmann & Tomasello, (2003)

Answer 16

 Dunn et al., (1991b) the more children talked about feelings or internal states in family conversations from 33-months of age were positively predictive of their later false belief understanding at 40 months (cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence supports that talking about internal states structures TOM development; correlational rather than causal evidence).

 Lohmann & Tomasello, (2003) conducted an experiment to identify the causal role of linguistics on TOM development.

Steps:

1. In their study infants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions and given training in discourse that emphasized the frequent use of mental state words.
2. In condition 1: the experimenter engages the child in question that focus on perspective-shifting discourse using mental state verbs like the word “think”. They were shown the deceptive objects ((sponge that looks like rock). For example, what do you think this is? What do you think this is really? What did you first think it was?
3. In the second condition, the experimenter only focused on generic perspective thinking (no use of think). For example, What is it? What is it really? The dependent variable was infants’ performance on the standard false belief task administered after training (the max’s chocolate problem).

Results:
 Indicated that linguistic training on mental state words were more likely to significantly better relative to generic perspective training condition.

Implications:
 This implies that there is a causal role of mental state language or conversational exchanges help children understand the meta cognitive representational component of attributing false beliefs to others.

Question 17

A different experiment which focuses on demonstrating the influence of mental state language on TOM development by looking at members of the deaf community who non-verbally communicate through sign language.

Woolf et al. (2002)
Age range of participants from 4 to 8 years

Answer 17

Woolf et al. (2002)
Age range of participants from 4 to 8 years

 Participants from 4 to 8 years of age were native-signing deaf children raised by deaf parents vs. Late-signing deaf children raised by hearing parents. Researcher administered two task (photograph task or false belief thought bubble task).
 The experimenter was fluent in sign language. In the photograph task; infants were asked to take a photograph of a scene on the table (a cat sitting on a chair).
 The experimenter then takes the polaroid from the child and moves the cat, so they are now sitting on the bed. They are then asked where in the photograph where is the cat (correct answer chair; incorrect answer is bed; requires infants to recall the cat’s location was different across the two time points and recall where it was before not where it is now).

 The second task with though bubbles involves showing infants a series of images of a boy going fishing. The experimenter then covers the agents face and we reveal to infants what is at the end of the fishing line, a boot. Then children are asked to fill in the boy’s thought bubble and put what the boy will think he has caught (correct answer is fish; wrong answer is boot). They included a control group of typically developing 4-year-olds.

 The results show that both groups of sign language users were equally as good at completing the photograph task. However, there was group differences in their ability to complete the false belief task; Native-deaf-signers performed just as well as typically-developing 4-year-olds on false-belief task. But the Late-signing deaf children of hearing parents performed poorer than typically-developing 4-year-olds on false-belief task.

Implications:
 This implies that late-signing deaf children (hearing parents; learn sign language late in life) more likely to be cut off from communication about mental states (rich) with parents and siblings by lack of shared language or linguistic system (disadvantaged).

*language is key for learning TOM

Question 18

Switching the focus from language (individual sense) to the social uses of language we find there are facilitative roles to family factors like the extent to which caregivers show mind mindedness and children have siblings (family dynamics).

Answer 18

(A) Caregivers with Mind-Mindedness
 Extent to which caregivers treat pre-verbal and young children as individuals with minds is also of benefit. This stance is referred to as mind-mindedness and refers to caregivers’ tendency to use appropriate comments that uses an explicit internal state terms to comment on what the infant or child may be thinking, desiring, experiencing or feeling (e.g., I see you are bored with that toy; infusing behaviours with their internal states benefit the development of TOM).
 Caregivers of securely attached infants are more likely to be mind-minded, and mind-minded stance tends to be Western oriented/individualistic cultures (individuals’ differences in this effect; collectivist or small scale societies pass the flase belief task at later stages of development relative to individualistic socities).
 Caregivers’ mind-minded stance when their infants were at 6- to 20-months predicted accuracy of the children’s verbal performances on standard false-belief tasks (Meins & Fernyhough, 1999; Meins et al., 2002)

(B) Children with siblings
 (some studies emphasise children with older siblings) tend to be more aware of false beliefs. For children with lower language abilities, having a sibling per se (rather than age of sibling) is important (Jenkins & Astington). The implication is that siblings provide a source of opportunities (information) for engaging in play and conflict/rivalry can give opportunities to learn about mental states. They pass the false belief task earlier than children with no siblings.

Question 19

Summary2

Answer 19

• There is evidence that when children pass the standard unexpected-location false-belief task (Max & chocolate – by Wimmer & Perner), children pass a range of other theory of mind tasks. There thus seems to be coherence in children’s learning and understanding, that children are gaining a newfound meta-representational understanding of the social world (conceptual revolution over preschool years from basic desire psychologists to belief-desire psychologists).
• Relatedly, in support of the idea that there is conceptual change happening in children’s theory of mind development, many studies highlight that linguistic/communicative experiences and social-familial factors (presence of siblings, style of talk and mind-minded assumptions about children) can facilitate new learnings and understandings about others’ mental states (diverse & discrepant range of mental states across people).

Question 20

Recap:

Answer 20

 Young children, under 4 years old, give a reality answer; can not attribute false beliefs to others and answer based on where they know the chocolate currently is. After age 4, older infants pass the false belief tasks. The authors conclude that the age trend represents a prominent and reliable shift over the preschool years where infants are able to understand the metacognitive representational components of attributing false beliefs. A discontinuity in development, older and younger infants understand false beliefs differently.
 Other authors counter or critique this claim and raise the concern that we are underestimating infants theory of mind abilities because the tasks is too hard. How do we test this?

Some researchers claim that meaning of question in Wimmer and Perner’s (1983) study is not child friendly;

Question 21

Some researchers claim that meaning of question in Wimmer and Perner’s (1983) study is not child friendly; where will max look for the chocolate question is too ambiguous and it maybe young children incorrectly assume that experimenter means “Where will the person have to go to find the object?”. This may be why younger children struggle to complete the false belief task.

Siegal and Beattie (1991)
Some researchers claim that meaning of question in Wimmer and Perner’s (1983) study is not child friendly; where will max look for the chocolate question is too ambiguous and it maybe young children incorrectly assume that experimenter means “Where will the person have to go to find the object?”. This may be why younger children struggle to complete the false belief task.

Siegal and Beattie (1991)

Answer 21

Siegal and Beattie (1991)

 Tested this theory by improving the questions framing in contents will make younger infants more successful at passing the false belief-change in location task. They added temporal precision to test question by adding the phase ‘look first’ into the test question (e.g., “Sam wants to find his puppy. Sam’s puppy is really in the kitchen. Sam thinks his puppy is in the bathroom. Where will Sam look first for his puppy?”).

Results:
 Siegal and Beattie found that pass rates increased amongst 3-year-olds, so much so that 3-years were as good as 4-year-olds in passing the task (flat line). Relative to control children who performed poorly (no temporal precedence in the test question; diagonal line where older children perform better than younger infants).

Implications:
 Siegal and Beattie view that, instead of reflecting age differences in conceptual understanding, it is the conversational meaning (context) of questions that explains children’s responses in the original findings by Wimmer & Perner. A difference in linguistic understanding than conceptual understanding of TOM.

Question 22

Debate: Siegal and Beattie’s Findings

*careful when drawing a conclusion from one study

Answer 22

(A) Interpretation 1
 Not so fast! Siegal and Beattie is just one study. Many other studies who added ‘first look’ phase to their questions find that the findings are more complex!! Turns out that ‘look first’ only matters to older children’s performance than to younger children’s performance.
 Meta-analysis reveals there is an interaction between look first and age – before the age of 4 it doesn’t matter if the test question includes look first or not their performance is the same but for older infant’s performance increases/better with the look first.
(B) Interpretation 2
 People still hold their original position that Siegal and Beattie’s findings show young children have been underestimated. Maybe young children DO have meta-representational understanding after all!

Question 23

Other researchers are sympathetic to Siegal and Beattie and propose the related view that rather than young children not understanding false beliefs, maybe the traditional false belief task overtaxes young children limited inhibitory control (tasks is too complicated).

Russell et al. (1991)

Answer 23

Russell et al. (1991)
Steps:
1. Two boxes are placed in front of the infant and are told that they will be competing with the experimenter in a game.
2. They are told that they need to point to the experimenter ”where to look” for the chocolate and if the competitor opens the empty box the child gets to keep the chocolate (winning strategy is to deceive the adult and keep the chocolate).
Results:
§ Poor performance amongst 3-year-olds but good performance amongst 4-year-olds (over 20 trials, 65% of 3-year-olds consistently continued to point to baited box and give it to the researcher).
§ Young children find it difficult to inhibit reality, to ignore what they know, ignore a salient object and this could be the reason why young children fail the standard false-belief task.

Lack of inhibitory control is causing them to fail the task (they understand the task but can’t inhibit what they know)

Question 24

The Russell et al. (1991) study highlights that executive functioning (like inhibitory control to ignore something to focus on something else) is important. What is executive functioning?

Answer 24

 Executive functioning refers to a set of skills (e.g., inhibitory control, working memory, planning, task switching, and attention) that helps us manage our behaviours. Many studies have found that there is a reliable relationship between performance on executive function tasks and performance on false belief tasks.
 For example, an inhibitory control task is called the bear/dragon task. Children are told to always do what the friendly bear does but never do what the mean dragon does. Children struggle to inhibit their responses, sperate do what the bear or dragon does, they do both. Older children can inhibit their behaviour and only do what the bear does. Success on this task is positively correlated with their performance on the Max’s chocolate false belief task.

Question 25

Another Issue to Consider:
At least two ways to explain why performance on executive function tasks and performance on false belief tasks are related: executive emergence and executive expression (correlation does not equal causation).

Answer 25

Two Interpretations:
(A) Executive Expression
§ This stance claims that infants have an abstract understanding of belief but are just not able to express them in the standard false belief tasks because they can’t inhibit their own salient knowledge or reality. This is because standard false belief tasks require then to have to select between responses (do as I say max will look at green cupboard or do I say that he will look at the blue cupboard? Choose an answer; inhibit own salient knowledge of reality is too demanding for infants).
§ Standard false belief tasks put extra executive demands on young children.
§ If you give them a less taxing tasks, they will pass under 4 years old.
§ Its innate skill that they cannot express and need to simplify the task for them to complete.

(A) Executive Emergence
§ Young preschool children don’t have an abstract understanding of beliefs. Abstract understandings of beliefs emerge out of children’s executive functioning skills that help to stand back and reflect on information in the world. Without working memory children couldn’t entertain the possibility of multiple perspectives. Without inhibitory control children would be unable to distance themselves from salient perceptual events.
§ Executive function skills help infants learn about abstract mental state concepts and in so doing help then pass false belief tasks.
§ Working memory and inhibition control are executive functioning skills that help infants earn and discover other perspectives on belief; the abstract properties of mental states and attribute them to others.
§ False belief understanding is not innate its learnt.

Question 26

Some researchers promote executive expression account by showing that infants have sophisticated understanding of belief as showing in looking-time tasks

Onishi & Baillargeon (2005)
*they reject the standard verbal false-belief account in favour for their looking time study.

Answer 26

Onishi & Baillargeon (2005)
*they reject the standard verbal false-belief account in favour for their looking time study.

When testing their looking time, we see evidence of infants sophisticated understanding of belief and false beliefs.

VOE false-belief experiment:

1. 15-month-old infants were allocated to true belief green condition and a false belief green condition.
2. In the true belief green condition; there are three steps to the procedure; 1) habituated to three events A) curtain raises to show an experimenter across from you, they put the watermelon into the green box and leaves their hand there; B) curtain comes up and see the experimenter place their hand into the green box; C) they see the experimenter with their hand inside the green box (familiarised in turn to each trial till they stop looking at the event and get bored). 2) belief induction phase: teach infants about the actors belief; we see the experimenters head with the yellow box and they watch the yellow box move side to side in place. 3) test phase; infants see either the experimenter reach for the yellow or the green box. Results: infants look longer when the agent puts their hand inside the yellow box. The authors conclude that infants expect that the agent knows the watermelon is in the green box and expects them to search for it there; therefore, they dishabituate when VOE and they search in the yellow box.
3. In the false-belief study: 1) familiarisation of three trials where the agent places the watermelon in the green box, places their hand inside and leaves it there. 2) false-belief induction: when the agent is away the watermelon moves from the green box to the yellow box. 3) test phase: infants look longer at the yellow box: this indicates that they understand that the agent falsely believes that the object is in the green box even though we know it is actually in the yellow box. VOE to when they search in yellow box which violates her own false belief.

They boldly claim that 15month old infants realise that actors are guided by their beliefs and that they may or may not reflect reality (true/false = innate skills where language etc are triggers of children’s innate TOM understandings).

This clashes with Wilhmer and Perners (date) study which claims that full metarepresentational understandings of beliefs develops after 4 years of age. It clashes with the claims that language and family/social experiences are crucial for theory of mind development (its learnt).

Question 27

WE SHOULD BE CAREFUL; Onishi & Baillargeon’s (2005) EFFECTS MIGHT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH UNDERSTANDING BELIEF AND ONLY APPLICATION OF ASSOCIATION BIAS

Answer 27

Association Biases:
(A) True Belief Condition: in the familiarisation phase infants are learning are three-way association between the agent + object + location (agent +watermelon + green; a visual pattern and association they learn and remember).
(B) Belief Indication Phase: where the yellow box is the only thing that moves this means that the three-way association remains intact and salient in their working memory.
(C) Test Phase: in the green outcome condition the visual patter (agent + watermelon + green) is intact and not surprising but in the yellow outcome box infants are shown a new pattern (agent + watermelon + yellow) so they dishabituate/look longer because they need the extra time to process a new visual pattern.
(D) False Belief Condition: infants learn the three-way association (agent + watermelon + green visual pattern is learnt and remembered).
(E) Belief Induction Phase: there is no agent present so there is no reason to change the three-way association because the agent is not present. The only difference is that the object moves to the yellow box. The three-way association is not changed and remains salient to infants.
(F) Test Phase: infants recall the visual pattern with (agent + watermelon + green) when green the pattern is the same and they don’t look longer when its yellow they look longer because it’s a new visual pattern they need time to unpack (agent + watermelon + yellow).

Critique claims that association biases fully explain Onishi & Baillargeon’s (2005) study
and infants’ performance doesn’t reflect belief understanding at all.

Question 28

MORE REASONS TO BE CAREFUL; EFFECTS MIGHT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH UNDERSTANDING BELIEF AND ONLY APPLICATION OF LEARNT BEHAVIOUR RULEs

Answer 28

Behaviour Rule:

• 15-month old infants, still have 15-months worth of social experience and learning. Therefor it is possible that they pick up on behaviour regularities and learn a basic behaviour rule that “people people will tend to look for an object where they last saw it.” via statistical learning. Infants looking time in Onishi and Baillargeon’s violation of expectation task can also be a result of infants applying that behaviour rule; that the agent will look for the object where they last saw it-nothing to do with belief understanding.
• Infants may indeed be predicting what the actor will do next, but basing their predictions on a weaker form of representation than that of another person’s belief. Infants learn a behaviour rule stating that “agents look for objects where they last saw them,”, and expect agents to search according to the “last saw” rule, and are surprised (look longer) if agents do not search according to behaviour search rule.
• For example, infants see the agent place the object in the green box; thus in both false and true belief conditions infants would apply this basic behaviour rule and expect her to look in the green box where she last saw it. Therefore, they are surprised when they look in the yellow box first.
• The two covered studys could completing disprove their findings (Jason’s view) but the original author still believes their study is legit.

Question 29

Summary3

Answer 29

§ Theory of mind and understanding that beliefs can be false and how those false beliefs can guide people’s actions is important for children to grasp.
§ There is much debate over whether false-belief understanding something that develops slowly and is learned, or whether its something that may be early developing (possibly innate).
§ Resolution of that debate will be critical as false-belief tasks and what underpins performance has implications for researchers in other fields beyond typical child cognition.

Cognitive revolution after 4th birthday where they learn and pass the false belief task or others claim it is an innate skill and that if the task is simplified infants can pass it at a younger and (we discredited this perspective with leaner studies on association biases and behaviour rules).

Language communicative exchanges, family dynamics, executive emergence account are skills that help infants develop TOM skills (if Leaner). Richer explanation is the executive emergence stance where it is an innate skill that’s inhibited by executive function taxing tasks. An ongoing debate which is important to solve because these tasks are used by developmental psychologists, clinical psychologists, computer scientists and philosophers is crucial to understand what the tasks actually measures and is key to work in multiple felids of study.