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The Modified Temptation Resistance Task: A Paradigm to Elicit Children's Strategic Lie-telling

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Published on: April 6, 2018

Do children prefer mentalistic descriptions?

Rebecca A Dore, Angeline S Lillard

The Journal of Genetic Psychology

|May 7, 2014

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Children

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Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Cognitive Development
Child Psychology

Background:

Traditional views emphasized childhood realism.
Prior research indicated 3-year-olds prefer mental state descriptions over behaviors.
This study investigates developmental shifts and influencing factors.

Purpose of the Study:

Extend previous findings on children's person descriptions to a new cohort.
Examine age-related changes in preferences from 3 to 4 years.
Explore links between these preferences, theory of mind, and parental mind-mindedness.

Main Methods:

Exploratory study with a cohort of 3-year-old children.
Assessed preferences for mentalistic versus behavioral descriptions.
Measured theory of mind, parental mind-mindedness, and perspective-taking skills.

Main Results:

A developmental shift was observed: 3-year-olds preferred behavioral descriptions, while 4-year-olds preferred mentalistic ones.
Mentalistic preferences showed no concurrent or longitudinal relation to theory of mind or parental mind-mindedness.
Early perspective-taking skills at age 3 predicted increased mentalistic responses by age 4.

Conclusions:

Children's preference for mentalistic descriptions emerges between 3 and 4 years of age.
Theory of mind and parental mind-mindedness do not appear to directly influence this preference in early childhood.
Perspective-taking ability is a significant predictor of developing mentalistic description skills.