Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 6, 2026

Exploring the Role of Deontic Reasoning and World Knowledge in Wason´s Selection Task
Published on: July 22, 2025
Thinking about representations: the case of opaque contexts
Deepthi Kamawar1, David R Olson
1Institute of Cognitive Science and Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 5B7. deepthi_kamawar@carleton.ca
Abstract:
To address the question of whether young children are differentially sensitive to referential opacity, an advanced Theory of Mind skill, we assessed 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds on three types of opaque contexts: epistemic, quotational, and intentional. Children's performance improved as a function of age and varied significantly by opacity type. Performance was best for epistemic opacity (using the verb "know") and poorest for intentional opacity (using "mean to"), with quotational opacity (using "said") falling in-between. Importantly, the current results suggest that children's sensitivity to referential opacity is not an all-or-nothing competence but rather one that varies across the contexts examined. Possible reasons for this variability are discussed.
Related Concept Videos
The Representativeness Heuristic
Control Volume and System Representations
The control volume approach considers a stationary region in space through which fluid flows. This region is bounded by a control surface. For instance, in the case of water flowing...
Counterfactual Thinking
Concepts and Prototypes
The brain organizes this information using concepts, which are mental categories grouping linguistic data,...
Hindsight Biases
Cognitivism
Previously dominated by behaviorism, which prioritized observable behaviors and largely ignored mental processes, psychology transformed in the 1950s. Cognitive psychologists argue that understanding how we think and process information is...

