Early False-Belief Understanding

Scott, Rose M.; Baillargeon, Renée

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2017.01.012

Cited by 241 publications

(172 citation statements)

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“…This mentalistic account posits that this ability is masked by the high task demands of the standard false belief task, which requires well‐developed executive functioning abilities and verbal skills (Baillargeon, Scott, & He, ; Scott, ). Over the past decade, a large number of experiments have replicated and extended the original findings using a range of procedures all based on spontaneous responses, including anticipatory looking and prompted helping (see Scott & Baillargeon, for a review). However, a number of recent studies have failed to replicate the original VOE findings with human infants, calling into question the robustness of false belief understanding in infancy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…A decade ago, this conceptual shift was challenged in a landmark study reporting false belief understanding in 15‐month‐old infants using the violation‐of‐expectation (VOE) paradigm (Onishi & Baillargeon, ). This striking finding led to the conclusion that ‘infants already attribute false beliefs to agents, calling into question the conclusion that false‐belief understanding is not achieved until about 4 years of age’ (page 238) and that ‘false‐belief understanding emerges early in life and is robust and sophisticated ’ (Scott & Baillargeon, , page 246). This mentalistic account posits that this ability is masked by the high task demands of the standard false belief task, which requires well‐developed executive functioning abilities and verbal skills (Baillargeon, Scott, & He, ; Scott, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Infants attribute false beliefs to a toy crane

Burnside

Severdija

Poulin‐Dubois

2019

Developmental Science

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The mentalistic view of early theory of mind posits that infants possess a robust and sophisticated understanding of false belief that is masked by the demands of traditional explicit tasks. Much of the evidence supporting this mentalistic view comes from infants’ looking time at events that violate their expectations about the beliefs of a human agent. We conducted a replication of the violation‐of‐expectation procedure, except that the human agent was replaced by an inanimate agent. Infants watched a toy crane repeatedly move toward a box containing an object. In the absence of the crane, the object changed location. When the crane returned, 16‐month‐old infants looked longer when it turned toward the object's new location, consistent with the attribution of a false belief to the crane. These results suggest that infants spontaneously attribute false beliefs to inanimate agents. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/qqEPPhd9FDo

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants attribute false beliefs to a toy crane

Burnside

Severdija

Poulin‐Dubois

2019

Developmental Science

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“…Many more nonlinguistic mindreading studies have been published since the first round of experiments. For a recent overview, see Scott and Baillargeon (). These studies seem to show that very young infants attribute mental states months and even years before was previously thought.…”

Section: The Narrow Conception Of Mindreadingmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is mindreading?

Spaulding

2019

WIRES Cognitive Science

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Theory of mind, also known as mindreading, refers to our ability to attribute mental states to agents in order to make sense of and interact with other agents. Recently, theorists in this literature have advanced a broad conception of mindreading. In particular, psychologists and philosophers have examined how we attribute knowledge, intention, mentalistically loaded stereotypes, and personality traits to others. Moreover, the diversity of our goals in a social interaction—precision, efficiency, self/in‐group protection—generates diversity in the mindreading processes we employ. Finally, the products of mindreading are varied, as well. We produce different sorts of mindreading explanations depending on our epistemic goals and the situational context. In this article, I piece together these different strands of research to present a broad conception of mindreading that is complex, messy, and interesting. This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Knowledge and Belief Philosophy > Psychological Capacities

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“…At this point in development, children start being able to make explicit predictions and inferences about people's false beliefs. While there is growing evidence of implicit false belief understanding in infants (e.g., Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005; for a review, see Scott & Baillargeon, 2017), the focus of the current studies is on (1) the explicit expression of false belief understanding and (2) the application of that understanding to first-person social interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental evidence for enhanced theory of mind for competitive versus cooperative contexts

Tsoi¹,

Hamlin²,

Waytz³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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There is a debate regarding the function of theory of mind (ToM), the capacity to infer, attribute, and reason about mental states. On the one hand are evolutionary and psychological work suggesting that ToM is greater for competition than cooperation. On the other hand are findings and theories promoting greater ToM for cooperation than competition. We investigate the question of whether ToM is greater for competition than cooperation or vice versa by examining the period of development during which explicit ToM comes online. In two studies, we examined preschool children's abilities to explicitly express an understanding of false beliefs-a key marker of ToM-and ability to apply that understanding in first-person social interactions in competitive and cooperative contexts. Our findings reveal that preschool children are better at understanding false beliefs and applying that understanding in competitive contexts than in cooperative contexts.

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Early False-Belief Understanding

Cited by 241 publications

References 100 publications

Infants attribute false beliefs to a toy crane

Infants attribute false beliefs to a toy crane

What is mindreading?

Developmental evidence for enhanced theory of mind for competitive versus cooperative contexts

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