Five-Year-Old Children's Difficulty with False Belief when the Sought Entity Is a Person

Autor/inn/en	Rai, Roshan; Mitchell, Peter
Titel	Five-Year-Old Children's Difficulty with False Belief when the Sought Entity Is a Person
Quelle	In: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 89 (2004) 2, S.112-126 (15 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0022-0965
DOI	10.1016/j.jecp.2004.05.003
Schlagwörter	Young Children; Beliefs; Inferences; Performance + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Frühe Kindheit; Belief; Glaube; Inference; Inferenz; Achievement; Leistung
Abstract	A total of 153 children (excluding those who erred on control questions), mainly 5 and 7 years of age, participated in two experiments that involved tests of false belief. In the task, the sought entity was first at Location 1 and then, unknown to the searching protagonist, it moved to Location 2. In Experiment 1, performance was well below ceiling in 5-year-olds when the sought entity was a person, and this contrasted with a task in which the sought entity was a physical object. Performance was especially inaccurate when the sought person moved of his or her own volition rather than when the sought person was requested to move by a third party. Interestingly, 5-year-olds were more likely to nominate Location 1 when asked where the searching protagonist would look first than when asked what he or she would do next. In Experiment 2, however, 5-year-olds also tended to nominate Location 1 following a question that included the word ''first'' even in a test of true belief--a patently incorrect response. Altogether, the results suggest that 5-year-old children have considerable difficulty with a test of false belief when the sought entity is a person acting under his or her own volition. This suggests that 5-year-olds' handle on states of belief is surprisingly fragile in this kind of task. (Author).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10