What young children think you see when their eyes are closed

Flavell, John H.; Shipstead, Susan G.; Croft, Karen

doi:10.1016/0010-0277(80)90001-3

Cited by 36 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…A number of years ago, John Flavell and his colleagues identified at least two developmental transitions (or levels) in how children understand seeing (see Masangkay et al, 1974;Flavell, Flavell, Green & Wilcox, 1980;Flavell, Shipstead & Croft, 1978;Lempers, Flavell & Flavell, 1977;Flavell, Everett, Croft & Flavell, 1981). Their work suggested that by 2 years of age or so,…”

Section: Seeing and Attention: A Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Science of Other Minds: Escaping the Argument by Analogy

2000

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Since Darwin, the idea of psychological continuity between humans and other animals has dominated theory and research in investigating the minds of other species. Indeed, the field of comparative psychology was founded on two assumptions. First, it was assumed that introspection could provide humans with reliable knowledge about the causal connection between specific mental states and specific behaviors. Second, it was assumed that in those cases in which other species exhibited behaviors similar to our own, similar psychological causes were at work. In this paper. we show how this argument by analogy is flawed with respect to the case of second-order mental states. As a test case, we focus on the question of how other species conceive of visual attention, and in particular whether chimpanzees interpret seeing as a mentalistic event involving internal states of perception, attention, and belief. We conclude that chimpanzees do not reason about seeing in this manner, and indeed, there is considerable reason to suppose that they do not harbor representations of mental states in general. We propose a reinterpretation model in which the majority of the rich social behaviors that humans and other primates share in common emerged long before the human lineage evolved the psychological means of interpreting those behaviors in mentalistic terms. Although humans, chimpanzees, and most other species may be said to possess mental states, humans alone may have evolved a cognitive specialization for reasoning about such states.

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Section: Seeing and Attention: A Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Science of Other Minds: Escaping the Argument by Analogy

2000

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“…From Flavell et al's (1980) data, it seems that the error is nearly as common in third person as it is in first person. For example, in their first study, while 63% of the 3-year-olds said that they were invisible with their eyes closed, a comparable percentage of 56% said that a second experimenter was invisible with her eyes closed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 90%

“…In our first study, we attempt to replicate Flavell et al's (1980) finding that the error spreads across first-and third-person conditions, including a condition in which the child judges what the experimenter can see of a second adult. In our second study, we look systematically at the role of lack of visual experience versus lack of eye visibility.…”

mentioning

confidence: 92%

“…landmark study by Flavell and colleagues (Flavell, Shipstead, & Croft, 1980) showed that they do not. This is because the 2.5-to 4-year-old children in their study, while denying that the experimenter could see them when they had their eyes closed, would affirm that parts of their body were visible.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…In this article, we address a number of issues that naturally arise from this phenomenon, the first two of which received some attention in the original Flavell et al (1980) study. In the first place, we ask whether children in this age range are also inclined to say that other people are rendered invisible when they shut their eyes.…”

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confidence: 99%

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