Wk10 Pre-recorded Flashcards
What are concepts?
General ideas that can be used to group together aspects of the world on the basis of some similarity
What can concepts help us do?
Make sense of the world
Generalise from past experiences
Prime our emotional reactions
Why is it difficult to understand how the human mind develops in infancy?
It is hard to determine if infants use invisible mental states to make judgements about how someone will act, or if they are basing their judgements on other visible information in the world.
What is theory of mind?
The ability to explain, predict, and interpret people’s behaviour by attributing mental states to ourselves and others
What 2 experimental methods/tests are used to demonstrate a conceptual shift in understanding theory of mind?
False-belief tests
Appearance-reality tests
What have tests of theory of mind concluded?
There is a conceptual shift in children’s theory of mind development at around about 4 years old
Explain the Maxi test (Wimmer & Perner)
False-belief test
Children are asked where Max will look for his chocolate after his mother has moved it without him knowing.
What are the findings of the Maxi test?
3 year olds fail
4-5 year olds pass
What 2 things do children need to understand in order to pass the Maxi test?
Another person can have a false belief about the state of the world
Behaviour is explained by a person’s beliefs rather than reality
What do findings from false belief tasks suggest about 3 year olds understanding?
3 year olds understanding of mental states if fundamentally different/inferior.
They struggle to grasp that a person’s beliefs are not a direct reflection of reality.
What happens in an unexpected transfer false belief test?
An object is unexpectedly transferred from location to another without the knowledge of the main protagonist.
What happens in an unexpected contents false belief test?
Child is asked what is in a smarties tube. They are then showed that it actually contains pencils and are surprised. They are asked what someone else will think is in the tube.
What are findings of unexpected contents false belief test?
3 year olds struggled and said pencils
4 year olds say smarties
Do 3 year olds pass false belief tests?
No. Even with modifications such as use of pictures etc. children still struggled.
What do we know about false belief understanding across cultures?
Across cultures:
3 year olds can’t pass the test.
Some 4 year olds passed.
Most 5 year olds passed.