Young children's psychological explanations and their relationship to perception- and intention-understanding

The present study examined two key aspects of young children's ability to explain human behaviour in a mentalistic way. First, we explored desires that are of a level of difficulty comparable with that of false beliefs. For this purpose, the so-called 'alternative desires' were created. Second, we examined how children's psychological explanations are related to their understanding of perception and intention. A perception-understanding task, an intention-understanding task and a psychological-explanation task were administered to 80 three-year-olds. Results offer support for the thesis that the level of difficulty of belief and desire explanations is comparable. Moreover, children's psychological explanations are related to their understanding of perception and intention. The results lend support to the idea that mentalistic explanations are an explicit manifestation of children's level of theory of mind.

[1]  H. Wellman,et al.  Young children's attribution of action to beliefs and desires. , 1989 .

[2]  M. Terwogt,et al.  Preschoolers' appreciation of uncommon desires and subsequent emotions , 2001 .

[3]  A. Gopnik,et al.  Natural theories of mind: Evolution, development and simulation of everyday mindreading , 2015 .

[4]  Josef Perner,et al.  Implicit Understanding of Belief , 1994 .

[5]  H. Wimmer,et al.  Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception , 1983, Cognition.

[6]  C. Colonnesi,et al.  Precursors of a theory of mind: A longitudinal study , 2008 .

[7]  Thomas R. Shultz,et al.  Development of the ability to distinguish intended actions from mistakes, reflexes, and passive movements , 1980 .

[8]  T. Shultz,et al.  Judging the intentionality of action-outcomes. , 1985 .

[9]  C. Schult,et al.  Children's understanding of the distinction between intentions and desires. , 2002, Child development.

[10]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Fourteen-through 18-month-old infants di eren-tially imitate intentional and accidental actions , 1998 .

[11]  A. Meltzoff.  Understanding the Intentions of Others: Re-Enactment of Intended Acts by 18-Month-Old Children. , 1995, Developmental psychology.

[12]  H. Wellman,et al.  From simple desires to ordinary beliefs: The early development of everyday psychology , 1990, Cognition.

[13]  J. Perner,et al.  Children's changing understanding of wicked desires: From objective to subjective and moral , 1996 .

[14]  H. Wimmer,et al.  False Belief Understanding in Young Children: Explanations do not Develop Before Predictions , 1998 .

[15]  Paul L. Harris,et al.  Psychological and deontic concepts: Separate domains or intimate connection? , 1998 .

[16]  H. Wimmer,et al.  Against the Cartesian view on mind: Young children's difficulty with own false beliefs , 1991 .

[17]  H. Wellman,et al.  Mind and emotion: Children's understanding of the emotional consequences of beliefs and desires , 1991 .

[18]  H. Wellman,et al.  Scaling of theory-of-mind tasks. , 2004, Child development.

[19]  H. Wellman,et al.  Explaining human movements and actions: Children's understanding of the limits of psychological explanation , 1997, Cognition.

[20]  E. Robinson,et al.  Masking of Children's Early Understanding of the Representational Mind: Backwards Explanation versus Prediction , 1995 .

[21]  L. Moses,et al.  Young Children's Understanding of Belief Constraints on Intention. , 1993 .

[22]  J. Flavell,et al.  Cognitive development: children's knowledge about the mind. , 1999, Annual review of psychology.

[23]  D. Poulin-Dubois,et al.  Infants' Ability to Distinguish Between Intentional and Accidental Actions and Its Relation to Internal State Language. , 2005, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[24]  H. Wimmer,et al.  Ignorance versus false belief: a developmental lag in attribution of epistemic states , 1986 .

[25]  H. Wellman,et al.  Infant social attention predicts preschool social cognition. , 2004, Developmental science.

[26]  H. Wellman,et al.  Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: the truth about false belief. , 2001, Child development.

[27]  H. Wimmer,et al.  theory of mind : Fodor ’ s heuristics examined , 2018 .

[28]  J. Dunn,et al.  Understanding others: Evidence from naturalistic studies of children. , 1991 .

[29]  John H. Flavell,et al.  Young Children's Understanding of Intention , 1999 .

[30]  H. Wellman,et al.  Young children's understanding of perception, desire, and emotion. , 2000, Child development.

[31]  K. Lagattuta,et al.  When you shouldn't do what you want to do: young children's understanding of desires, rules, and emotions. , 2005, Child development.

[32]  Sunny Shin,et al.  Do 15-Month-Old Infants Understand False Beliefs ? , 2005 .

[33]  G. Baird,et al.  Testing joint attention, imitation, and play as infancy precursors to language and theory of mind , 2000 .

[34]  Doris Bergen,et al.  The Role of Pretend Play in Children's Cognitive Development. , 2002 .

[35]  H. Wellman,et al.  Children Talk About the Mind , 1995 .

[36]  B. Bower.  A Child's Theory of Mind , 1993 .

[37]  J. Russell,et al.  The role of belief veracity in understanding intentions-in-action: Preschool children's performance on the transparent intentions task , 2001 .

[38]  H. Wellman,et al.  Infants' ability to connect gaze and emotional expression to intentional action , 2002, Cognition.

[39]  J. Flavell,et al.  The early development of inferences about the visual percepts of others. , 1974, Child development.

[40]  R. Baillargeon,et al.  Do 15-Month-Old Infants Understand False Beliefs? , 2005, Science.

[41]  C. Moore,et al.  Conflicting desire and the child's theory of mind , 1995 .

[42]  David R. Olson,et al.  Developing theories of intention : social understanding and self-control , 1999 .

[43]  M. Tomasello,et al.  “This way!”, “No! That way!”—3-year olds know that two people can have mutually incompatible desires , 2007 .

[44]  J. Flavell,et al.  Young children's knowledge about visual perception: Further evidence for the Level 1–Level 2 distinction. , 1981 .

[45]  L J Moses,et al.  Executive accounts of theory-of-mind development. , 2001, Child development.