Differential development of object and location processing is a critical factor to a child’s passing or failing explicit false-belief tasks Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

It is well-documented that children 5 years of age consistently pass explicit false-belief tasks, while children around 3 years of age (and some even at 4 years of age) do not – suggesting that children younger than 5 years of age may not have “Theory of Mind” (ToM). Traditionally, false-belief tasks have included scenarios with location changes (e.g., the Sally-Anne task), object changes (e.g., the Smarties task), or both. However, location information and object information are prioritized differentially throughout development, such that preschoolers weight cues about object identification over location information. As such, here we ask whether the traditional false-belief tasks may have critically ignored developmental differences in location and object processing, and thus may affect such claims as children younger than 5 years of age do not have ToM. To directly test this hypothesis, we tested children between 3 and 5 (27 3-year-olds; 28 4-year-olds; 28 5-year-olds) on a novel false-belief task involving an equal number of independent location- and object-change scenarios. Not surprisingly, 5-year-olds pass the explicit false-belief tasks involving both location- and object-change scenarios, yet performed significantly better on object-change scenarios compared to the location-change scenarios. By contrast, the 4-year-olds pass the explicit false-belief task involving an object change, yet fail on the location change, with a significant difference between the two scenarios. Finally, while 3-year-olds fail the explicit false-belief tasks involving both location- and object-change scenarios, they nonetheless performed significantly better on the object-change scenarios compared to the location-change scenarios. These results reveal that when testing the development of false-belief, one must first consider potential developmental differences in information processing, since such differences reveal opposite answers (e.g., 4-year-olds pass false-belief tasks on object changes, but not on location changes) and opposite conclusions (e.g., 4-year-olds do have ToM versus 4-year-olds do not have ToM). 

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction .......................................................................................... 1

1.1. Theory of Mind ................................................................................ 1

1.2. Assessing Theory of Mind in Children ............................................... 2

1.3. Inconsistent Conclusions Across Explicit False-Belief Studies ............. 6

1.4. Explicit False-Belief Task Content ................................................ .... 7

1.5. Differential Prioritization of Information Processing ..................... .... 8

1.6. Hypotheses ............................................................................. .. ..... 9

Methods .............................................................................................. 10

2.1. Participants ................................................................................... 10

2.2. Materials ....................................................................................... 11

2.3. Procedure and Design ..................................................................... 12

Results ................................................................................................ 12

3.1. Aim One ........................................................................................ 12

3.2. Aim Two ................................................................................... .... 14

3.3. Exploratory and Post-Hoc Analyses ..................................................17

Discussion ....................................................................................... ... 18

4.1. Implications .................................................................................. 20

4.2. Future Directions ........................................................................... 21

4.3. Conclusion .................................................................................... 22

References ................................................................................... ....... 24

Appendix ............................................................................................ 28 

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Psychology
Degree	B.S.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Social
Mot-clé	Theory of Mind Differential Prioritization Object Processing False-Belief Location Processing
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Lourenco, Stella, Emory University Dilks, Daniel, Emory University Schreiber, Michele, Emory University

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