Young children's preference for mental state versus behavioral descriptions of human action

Young children have traditionally been conceived of as little behaviorists who focus on the external and lack knowledge of internal states. In contrast, some recent research suggests that they do have a fundamentally correct understanding of mental life. Children may often focus on the external, not because they are unaware of the internal but because in test situations the external has been more cognitively available to them. Our studies asked whether 3-year-olds prefer to describe human action in behavioral terms when a mental state description is made equally available and salient. 3-year-olds were presented with 3 differently colored photocopies of the same picture. The first copy was described with reference to the mental state of the person in the picture, and the second copy was described with reference to the person's behavior, or vice versa. Then the third copy was presented, and the child was asked to tell a puppet about this picture--effectively, to choose between the mental state description and the behavioral description. In each of 2 studies, 20 3-year-olds made 12 such choices. In both studies, children tended to choose mentalistic descriptions significantly more often than behavioral ones, even when there was better pictorial support for the behavioral ones. These findings suggest that, given equally available options, young children may prefer to describe people in terms of their mental states rather than their behaviors.