False-belief reasoning from 3 to 92 years of age

Abstract

False-belief reasoning, defined as the ability to reason about another person’s beliefs and appreciate that beliefs can differ from reality, is an important aspect of perspective taking. We tested 266 individuals, at various ages ranging from 3 to 92 years, on a continuous measure of false-belief reasoning (the Sandbox task). All age groups had difficulty suppressing their own knowledge when estimating what a naïve person knew. After controlling for task-specific memory, our results showed similar false-belief reasoning abilities across the preschool years and from older childhood to younger adulthood, followed by a small reduction in this ability from younger to older adulthood. These results highlight the relative similarity in false-belief reasoning abilities at different developmental periods across the lifespan.

The unreliability of egocentric bias across self–other and memory–belief distinctions in the Sandbox Task

“…Although these results appear surprising in the context of our previous findings, as well as those of other studies with young adults ([9] (experiments 1 and 2), [10,11] (experiments 1 and 2)), an absence of a difference between control and false belief trials is not unheard of in the literature. The study by Bernstein et al .…”

“…[12], also with children, who reported bias on memory trials larger even than the difference between bias on false belief trials and memory trials. In adults too, there are suggestions in the raw data of bias towards the true location even on control trials ([7,9] (experiment 1), [10,11]). This bias is not merely greater dispersion of responses around a point; it is directional (i.e.…”

“…Egocentric bias is measured as the distance from the original location (Location A) towards the current location (Location B) of the item that the participant indicates. Adult participants have been found to show egocentric bias on this task, and more crucially still, they show greater egocentric bias when asked to reason about another person's belief about where an object is than when they are asked to simply indicate Location A based on their own memory [6,[9][10][11]. In other words, participants are more biased by their own knowledge when they are asked to indicate where a protagonist thinks the item is (i.e.…”

“…One recent candidate is the Sandbox Task [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Based on a paradigm originally developed by Huttenlocher et al [13], the Sandbox Task retains the conceptual content of classic false belief tasks but allows for a continuous rather than dichotomous response.…”

“…7The descriptive results of the study by Bernstein and colleagues [10] also suggested that bias was greater on false belief than memory trials, and in all age groups tested, but statistical tests of the difference were not provided. We analysed the data, which was made available with the publication.…”