Psychological Reasoning in Infancy

Baillargeon, Renée; Scott, Rose M.; Bian, Lin

doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115033

Cited by 199 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 176 publications

(200 reference statements)

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“…This growing body of evidence casts doubt on the notion that infants' successful performance in falsebelief tasks is the result of primitive abilities that apply to only a limited range of situations and behaviors. Such findings instead support recent mentalistic accounts, which propose that infants make sense of agents' behavior by reasoning about their motivational, epistemic, and counterfactual states (e.g., Baillargeon, Scott, & Bian, 2016;Baillargeon et al, 2010;Barrett et al, 2013;Buttelmann et al, 2009;Carruthers, 2013;Kovács et al, 2010;Luo, 2011;Scott et al, 2010;Southgate et al, 2007;Surian et al, 2007).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Surprise! 20-month-old infants understand the emotional consequences of false beliefs

Scott

2017

Cognition

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Recent studies suggest that by the second year of life, infants can attribute false beliefs to agents.However, prior studies have largely focused on infants' ability to predict a mistaken agent's physical actions on objects. The present research investigated whether 20-month-old infants could also reason about belief-based emotional displays. In Experiments 1 and 2, infants viewed an agent who shook two objects: one rattled and the other was silent. Infants expected the agent to express surprise at the silent object if she had a false belief that both objects rattled, but not if she was merely ignorant about the objects' properties. Experiment 3 replicated and extended these findings: if an agent falsely believed that two containers held toy bears (when only one did so), infants expected the agent to express surprise at the empty, but not the full, container.Together, these results provide the first evidence that infants in the second year of life understand the causal relationship between beliefs and emotional displays. These findings thus provide new evidence for false-belief understanding in infancy and suggest that infants, like older children, possess a robust understanding of belief that applies to a broad range of belief-based responses.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Surprise! 20-month-old infants understand the emotional consequences of false beliefs

Scott

2017

Cognition

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“…By the same token, our results also cast doubt on the view that a fundamental change in children's false-belief understanding takes place around age 4 y and makes possible success at these tasks. When processing demands are sufficiently reduced, even 2.5-y-olds succeed at a traditional task, suggesting that a single psychological-reasoning system, capable of attributing counterfactual states as well as motivational and epistemic states, exists from infancy onward (1,31,52,53).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nontraditional tasks can be divided into spontaneous-response and elicited-intervention tasks (1). In spontaneous-response tasks, children watch a scene in which an agent comes to hold a false belief, and their false-belief understanding is assessed via their spontaneous responses to the unfolding scene.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Two-and-a-half-year-olds succeed at a traditional false-belief task with reduced processing demands

Setoh

Scott

Baillargeon

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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When tested with traditional false-belief tasks, which require answering a standard question about the likely behavior of an agent with a false belief, children perform below chance until age 4 y or later. When tested without such questions, however, children give evidence of false-belief understanding much earlier. Are traditional tasks difficult because they tap a more advanced form of false-belief understanding (fundamental-change view) or because they impose greater processing demands (processing-demands view)? Evidence that young children succeed at traditional false-belief tasks when processing demands are reduced would support the latter view. In prior research, reductions in inhibitory-control demands led to improvements in young children's performance, but often only to chance (instead of below-chance) levels. Here we examined whether further reductions in processing demands might lead to success. We speculated that: (i) young children could respond randomly in a traditional low-inhibition task because their limited information-processing resources are overwhelmed by the total concurrent processing demands in the task; and (ii) these demands include those from the response-generation process activated by the standard question. This analysis suggested that 2.5-y-old toddlers might succeed at a traditional low-inhibition task if response-generation demands were also reduced via practice trials. As predicted, toddlers performed above chance following two response-generation practice trials; toddlers failed when these trials either were rendered less effective or were used in a high-inhibition task. These results support the processing-demands view: Even toddlers succeed at a traditional false-belief task when overall processing demands are reduced.theory of mind | psychological reasoning | false-belief understanding | inhibitory control | information-processing resources

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“…Even though similar findings relating to mind reading (Heyes & Frith, 2014) during the pre-school years have been reported from several cultural settings (Wellman, 2014), there also seems to be some cultural diversity (Heyes & Frith, 2014;Wellman, 2014) which suggests that ambient culture influences how children learn to read minds. Also, there is currently much debate concerning whether or not evidence of ToM can be observed during the first year of life (e.g., Baillargeon, Scott, & Bian, 2016;Perner, 2014;Ruffman, 2014). For example, during the first year of life, infants react to violations related to other individuals' goal directed behaviors and preferences, and they seem to be able to predict actions (for a review, see Baillargeon et al, 2016).…”

Section: Development Of Theory Of Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also, there is currently much debate concerning whether or not evidence of ToM can be observed during the first year of life (e.g., Baillargeon, Scott, & Bian, 2016;Perner, 2014;Ruffman, 2014). For example, during the first year of life, infants react to violations related to other individuals' goal directed behaviors and preferences, and they seem to be able to predict actions (for a review, see Baillargeon et al, 2016).…”

Section: Development Of Theory Of Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signs for Developing Reading : Sign Language and Reading Development in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

Holmer¹

2016

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Reading development is supported by strong language skills, not least in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. Regional Special Needs Schools (RSNS) in Sweden have a bilingual curriculum, that is, DHH pupils at these schools learn Swedish Sign Language and written and/or spoken Swedish. The work in the present thesis investigates reading development in DHH children who attend these schools and who are learning to read. The primary aim of the present work was to investigate whether the reading skills of DHH signing children can be improved via computerized sign language based literacy training aimed at strengthening the connections between sign language and written language. Another aim was to investigate concurrent and longitudinal associations between skills in reading, sign language, and cognition in this population. The results indicate that sign language skills support developing reading skills in RSNS pupils (Paper I and Paper IV). In particular, sign language based literacy training appears to support development of word reading (Paper IV). In addition, awareness of the sublexical structure of sign language seems to assist word reading (Paper I). Interestingly, the ability to imitate manual gestures was related to reading skills. More specifically, precision of imitation of unfamiliar signs was associated with development of word reading (Paper IV) and precision of imitation of familiar signs, i.e., vocabulary, seemed to be associated with developing reading comprehension (Paper IV). Results also suggest that working memory and Theory of Mind (ToM) are related to reading comprehension in RSNS pupils (Paper III). In addition to these findings relating to reading development, results also suggest that sign language experience enhance the establishment of representations of manual gestures (Paper II), and that progression in ToM seem to be typical, although delayed, in RSNS pupils who are learning to read (Paper III). Taken together, the associations revealed between sign language skills and reading development support the notion that sign language skills may provide a foundation for promotion of reading skills in DHH signing children. Thus, interventions that support development of sign-based representations and their manipulation and use in written language processing, may improve reading skills in this population. To account for the present findings, a model of written language processing is proposed. Working memory has a central role in integrating environmental stimuli and language-mediated representations, and thereby provides a platform for cross-modal language processing and multimodal language development. SammanfattningEn god språklig förmåga bidrar till god läsutveckling, inte minst hos döva och hörselskadade barn. Specialpedagogiska skolmyndighetens specialskolor för döva och hörselskadade (D/H) barn har en tvåspråkig läroplan som innebär att elever på dessa skolor lär sig både svenskt teckenspråk och skriven och/eller talad svenska. De fyra arbeten som ingår i avhandlingen undersöker l...

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Psychological Reasoning in Infancy

Cited by 199 publications

References 176 publications

Surprise! 20-month-old infants understand the emotional consequences of false beliefs

Surprise! 20-month-old infants understand the emotional consequences of false beliefs

Two-and-a-half-year-olds succeed at a traditional false-belief task with reduced processing demands

Signs for Developing Reading : Sign Language and Reading Development in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

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