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Attributing false beliefs about non-obvious properties at 18 months
Rose M Scott1, Renée Baillargeon, Hyun-joo Song
1Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, 603 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820, USA. rmscott2@uiuc.edu
Cognitive Psychology
|November 5, 2010
Summary
Eighteen-month-old infants demonstrate false-belief understanding in a new non-search task. This research shows toddlers can infer false beliefs about object properties, not just locations.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Developmental Psychology
- Theory of Mind
Background:
- Previous research on infant false-belief attribution primarily used search paradigms.
- These studies involved agents searching for objects based on false beliefs about location.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether 18-month-olds demonstrate false-belief understanding using a novel non-search paradigm.
- To explore if infants can attribute false beliefs about non-obvious properties, not just object locations.
Main Methods:
- A non-search paradigm was employed with 18-month-old infants.
- Infants observed an experimenter demonstrate an object's rattling property.
- Infants then observed an agent select a test object after a prompt, allowing for inference or memory-based false belief attribution.
Main Results:
- Infants successfully inferred that the agent held a false belief about which object rattled.
- This understanding was demonstrated through both inference (Experiment 1) and memory (Experiment 2) conditions.
- Results from Experiment 3 further supported these findings and addressed alternative interpretations.
Conclusions:
- Eighteen-month-old infants possess the capacity to attribute false beliefs about non-obvious properties to others.
- False-belief understanding in infants is not limited to search-based paradigms.
- This study provides robust evidence for early developing theory of mind skills.
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