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Huang Q, Liu X. Verbal Perceptual Prompts Facilitate Children's Sensitivity to False Beliefs. J Intell 2024; 12:73. [PMID: 39195120 DOI: 10.3390/jintelligence12080073] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/28/2024] [Revised: 07/19/2024] [Accepted: 07/26/2024] [Indexed: 08/29/2024] Open
Abstract
False belief understanding is always regarded as a milestone of Theory of Mind (ToM), which is an important aspect of social intelligence. Recently, some researchers have suggested the existence of two ToM systems in individuals: one that explicitly guides false belief understanding and another that implicitly directs sensitivity to false beliefs. However, studies on sensitivity to false beliefs have encountered challenges with replicability, and the factors influencing the manifestation of sensitivity to false beliefs remain to be explored. Based on the anticipatory looking task, we investigated whether verbal perceptual prompts could improve children's performance of sensitivity to false beliefs. Fifty-eight children aged 5 to 6 were randomly assigned tasks with or without verbal perceptual prompts, involving verbal descriptions and explanations of the protagonist's perceptual state. The findings showed that verbal perceptual prompts could slightly reduce children's propensity to look at the actual location of the object in false belief situations and increase the likelihood of exhibiting accurate anticipatory looking patterns across false belief and true belief situations. The results suggest that children's sensitivity to false beliefs may be situation-dependent, yet further investigation is needed to determine which situational factors can most effectively trigger robust sensitivity to false beliefs in children. The results enlighten educational practice, indicating that introducing cues in social environments that convey insights into others' mental states, akin to the use of learning scaffolding, is advantageous for the development of children's social cognitive abilities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qiyu Huang
- School of Psychology, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
| | - Xiuli Liu
- School of Psychology, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
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Carruthers P, Williams DM. Model-free metacognition. Cognition 2022; 225:105117. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2021] [Revised: 03/25/2022] [Accepted: 03/31/2022] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
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Baier J, Wöllner C, Wolf A. Interpersonal Musical Synchronization and Prosocial Behavior in Children: No Effects in a Controlled Field Experiment. Front Psychol 2021; 12:784255. [PMID: 34956007 PMCID: PMC8707737 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.784255] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/27/2021] [Accepted: 11/17/2021] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Prosocial effects of music have recently attracted increased attention in research and media. An often-cited experiment, carried out by Kirschner and Tomasello in 2010 under laboratory conditions, found that children at the age of four years were more willing to help each other after they had engaged in synchronous musical activities. The aim of the current study was to replicate this research under controlled field conditions in the children's social environment, and to disentangle the musical synchronization effect by introducing a verbal interaction (singing together) and a motor interaction (tapping together) task, contrasted by an asynchronous control condition. In a between-participants design, no effects of musical synchronization nor the children's gender were found. Furthermore, age was not related to prosocial behavior. Explanations are systematically discussed, yet it remains possible that the original effect found in 2010 might be overestimated and less consistently reproducible as previously assumed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Janina Baier
- Institute for Systematic Musicology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
| | - Clemens Wöllner
- Institute for Systematic Musicology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
| | - Anna Wolf
- Institute for Systematic Musicology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
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Baratgin J, Dubois-Sage M, Jacquet B, Stilgenbauer JL, Jamet F. Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question! Front Psychol 2020; 11:593807. [PMID: 33329255 PMCID: PMC7719623 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.593807] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/11/2020] [Accepted: 10/28/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task "Maxi and the chocolate" is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: "Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one." The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as "ignorant" and "slow" but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a "mentor" (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task "Maxi and the chocolate," either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jean Baratgin
- Laboratoire Cognition Humaine et Artificielle, Université Paris 8, Paris, France
- Probability, Assessment, Reasoning and Inferences Studies (P-A-R-I-S) Association, Paris, France
| | - Marion Dubois-Sage
- Laboratoire Cognition Humaine et Artificielle, Université Paris 8, Paris, France
- Probability, Assessment, Reasoning and Inferences Studies (P-A-R-I-S) Association, Paris, France
| | - Baptiste Jacquet
- Laboratoire Cognition Humaine et Artificielle, Université Paris 8, Paris, France
- Probability, Assessment, Reasoning and Inferences Studies (P-A-R-I-S) Association, Paris, France
| | - Jean-Louis Stilgenbauer
- Laboratoire Cognition Humaine et Artificielle, Université Paris 8, Paris, France
- Probability, Assessment, Reasoning and Inferences Studies (P-A-R-I-S) Association, Paris, France
- Facultés Libres de Philosophie et de Psychologie (IPC), Paris, France
| | - Frank Jamet
- Laboratoire Cognition Humaine et Artificielle, Université Paris 8, Paris, France
- Probability, Assessment, Reasoning and Inferences Studies (P-A-R-I-S) Association, Paris, France
- CY Cergy-Paris Université, ESPE de Versailles, Paris, France
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Kim S, Sodian B, Paulus M, Senju A, Okuno A, Ueno M, Itakura S, Proust J. Metacognition and mindreading in young children: A cross-cultural study. Conscious Cogn 2020; 85:103017. [PMID: 32932099 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2020.103017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2020] [Revised: 08/27/2020] [Accepted: 08/31/2020] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
Prior studies document cross cultural variation in the developmental onset of mindreading. In particular, Japanese children are reported to pass a standard false belief task later than children from Western countries. By contrast, we know little about cross-cultural variation in young children's metacognitive abilities. Moreover, one prominent theoretical discussion in developmental psychology focuses on the relation between metacognition and mindreading. Here we investigated the relation between mindreading and metacognition (both implicit and explicit) by testing 4-year-old Japanese and German children. We found no difference in metacognition between the two cultural groups. By contrast, Japanese children showed lower performance than German children replicating cultural differences in mindreading. Finally, metacognition and mindreading were not related in either group. We discuss the findings in light of the existing theoretical accounts of the relation between metacognition and mindreading.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sunae Kim
- Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
| | | | | | - Atsushi Senju
- Center for Brain and Cognitive Development, University of London, Birkbeck, UK
| | - Akiko Okuno
- Center for Baby Science, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Mika Ueno
- Center for Baby Science, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Shoji Itakura
- Center for Baby Science, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
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Abstract
Research on the capacity to understand others' minds has tended to focus on representations of beliefs, which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations of knowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one doesn't even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across cognitive science, we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that non-human primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge (but not belief) attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibit a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind-one that is focused on understanding others' minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it.
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Priewasser B, Fowles F, Schweller K, Perner J. Mistaken max befriends Duplo girl: No difference between a standard and an acted-out false belief task. J Exp Child Psychol 2019; 191:104756. [PMID: 31865246 PMCID: PMC7104353 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104756] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/11/2019] [Revised: 11/06/2019] [Accepted: 11/06/2019] [Indexed: 12/02/2022]
Abstract
With their Duplo task, Rubio-Fernández and Geurts (2013) challenged the assumption that children under 4 years of age cannot pass the standard false belief test. In an attempt to replicate this task on a sample of 73 children aged 32–51 months, we added a standard change of location false belief task as well as a Duplo true belief task. Performance on the latter is crucial for interpreting answers in the Duplo false belief task as to whether they reflect evidence for understanding or merely exhibit a difference in guessing rate. We found (a) a greater variability of response types in both Duplo tasks, (b) no evidence that responses in the Duplo tasks reveal earlier competence than those in the standard false belief test, and (c) a reassuring correlation between false belief tasks, suggesting that the Duplo task does pick up understanding of belief in light of the standard test.
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Affiliation(s)
- Beate Priewasser
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria.
| | - Franziska Fowles
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria
| | - Katharina Schweller
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria
| | - Josef Perner
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria
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Ganglmayer K, Attig M, Daum MM, Paulus M. Infants’ perception of goal-directed actions: A multi-lab replication reveals that infants anticipate paths and not goals. Infant Behav Dev 2019; 57:101340. [DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2019.101340] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2018] [Revised: 03/22/2019] [Accepted: 07/10/2019] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
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Salter G, Breheny R. Removing shared information improves 3- and 4-year-olds' performance on a change-of-location explicit false belief task. J Exp Child Psychol 2019; 187:104665. [PMID: 31409457 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104665] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/09/2019] [Revised: 07/08/2019] [Accepted: 07/09/2019] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
The classic change-of-location explicit false belief task ends with a test question of the form "Where will the [agent] look for the [object]?" It has been proposed that by including mention of the target object, the question creates unwanted attention to the actual object location. A standard explanation is that children are biased to answer according to their own knowledge of reality. We proposed that mention of the target object brings attention to the reality location via memory-based processes that are biased to retrieve previous shared information. We manipulated whether the experimenter who asked the test question had witnessed the change of location with the children. For the experimental group (age range = 3.00-4.17 years, Mage = 3.61 years, SD = 0.36), a second experimenter took the place of the first after the object location was changed. Performance was compared with a control group (age range = 3.00-4.25 years, Mage = 3.66 years, SD = 0.34) in which one experimenter conducted the whole procedure. Participants also undertook the Bear/Dragon task, a test of conflict inhibitory control. In the control group, 6 of 19 children (32%) passed, similar to previous results. In the experimental group, 12 of 19 (63%) passed. The groups did not differ significantly on their inhibitory control scores, and a logistic regression analysis revealed that only condition significantly predicted performance. We conclude that a bias toward shared information is a relevant factor in understanding children's difficulty with the standard test question used in the change-of-location explicit false belief task.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gideon Salter
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK.
| | - Richard Breheny
- Department of Linguistics, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London WC1N 1PF, UK.
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Reliability and generalizability of an acted-out false belief task in 3-year-olds. Infant Behav Dev 2019; 54:13-21. [DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2018.11.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/29/2018] [Revised: 09/21/2018] [Accepted: 11/19/2018] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
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Białecka-Pikul M, Kosno M, Białek A, Szpak M. Let’s do it together! The role of interaction in false belief understanding. J Exp Child Psychol 2019; 177:141-151. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.07.018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/03/2018] [Revised: 07/30/2018] [Accepted: 07/30/2018] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
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Rubio-Fernández P. Memory and inferential processes in false-belief tasks: An investigation of the unexpected-contents paradigm. J Exp Child Psychol 2018; 177:297-312. [PMID: 30269985 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.08.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/26/2018] [Revised: 08/19/2018] [Accepted: 08/20/2018] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
Abstract
This study investigated the extent to which 3- and 4-year-old children may rely on associative memory representations to pass an unexpected-contents false-belief task. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds performed at chance in both a standard Smarties task and a modified version highlighting the secrecy of the contents of the tube. These results were interpreted as evidence that having to infer the answer to a false-belief question (without relying on memory representations) is generally difficult for preschool children. In Experiments 2a, 2b, and 2c, 3-year-olds were tested at 3-month intervals during their first year of preschool and showed better performance in a narrative version of the Smarties task (chance level) than in the standard version (below-chance level). These children performed even better in an associative version of the narrative task (above-chance level) where they could form a memory representation associating the protagonist with the expected contents of a box. The results of a true-belief control suggest that some of these children may have relied on their memory of the protagonist's preference for the original contents of the box (rather than their understanding of what the protagonist was expecting to find inside). This suggests that when 3-year-olds passed the associative unexpected-contents task, some may have been keeping track of the protagonist's initial preference and not only (or not necessarily) of the protagonist's false belief. These results are interpreted in the light of current accounts of Theory of Mind development and failed replications of verbal false-belief tasks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Paula Rubio-Fernández
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Department of Philosophy, University of Oslo, Blindern, NO-0315 Oslo, Norway.
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Paulus M, Kammermeier M. How to deal with a failed replication of the Duplo task? A response to Rubio-Fernández (2019). COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2018. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.07.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
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Rubio-Fernández P. Trying to discredit the Duplo task with a partial replication: Reply to Paulus and Kammermeier (2018). COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2018. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.07.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
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