On the Distinction between False Belief Understanding and Subscribing to an Interpretive Theory of Mind

Abstract

2 groups of 5–8‐year‐olds were examined in an effort to explore the developing relations between false belief understanding and an awareness of the individualized nature of personal taste, on the one hand, and, on the other, a maturing grasp of the interpretive character of the knowing process. In Study 1, 20 children between 5 and 8 all behaved in accordance with hypotheses by proving to be indistinguishable in their already good grasp of the possibility of false beliefs and in their common assumption that differences of opinion concerning matters of taste are legitimate expressions of personal preferences. By contrast, only the 7‐ and 8‐year‐old children gave evidence of recognizing that ambiguous stimuli especially allow for warrantable differences of interpretation. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings with a group of 48 5‐8‐year‐old subjects, again showing that while 5‐year‐olds easily pass a standard test of false belief understanding, only children of 7 or 8 ordinarily evidence an appreciation of the interpretive character of the knowing process.

Is There Room for ‘Development’ in Developmental Models of Information Processing Biases to Threat in Children and Adolescents?

“…Carpendale and Chandler (1996) argue that ToM insufficiently explains the complex process of understanding the interpretative nature of knowledge. They argue that an interpretive theory of mind does not develop at the age of 4-5 years as suggested by ToM tasks, but instead begins to emerge only at 6-8 years and is by no means complete at this age.…”

A new paper and pencil task reveals adult false belief reasoning bias

“…By age 6, the majority of typically developing children pass this task, leading to the assumption that children older than age 6 have developed a first-order ToM understanding (Wellman et al, 2001). However, few studies have tested the assumption that children older than six have first-order ToM using age-appropriate measures for first-order ToM (Miller, 2009; although see Carpendale & Chandler, 1996). Interestingly, the studies that use appropriate measures to focus on first-order ToM in normal adults generally reveal perspective-taking errors: Adults show an egocentric bias (a tendency to err according to privileged knowledge) in their responses, indicating a failure in first-order ToM (Keysar, Lin, & Barr, 2003;Surtees & Apperly, 2012).…”

Children talk about learning to draw

“…Successively, in a process extending to middle childhood, children begin to integrate the role of a growing variety of epistemic mental processes, including remembering, memorising, understanding, interpreting and inferring (Perner, 1991;Pramling, 1983Pramling, , 1996Schwanenflugel, Fabricius, & Alexander, 1994;Schwanenflugel, Fabricius, & Noyes, 1996;Wellman, 1990). Moreover, children gradually come to view the results of such activities as interpretative products, rather than as copies of reality (Carpendale & Chandler, 1996).…”