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Published on: October 5, 2018
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Infants attribute false beliefs to a toy crane
Kimberly Burnside1, Vivianne Severdija1, Diane Poulin-Dubois1
1Centre for Research in Human Development, Concordia University, Montréal, Canada.
Developmental Science
|July 17, 2019
Summary
Infants may attribute false beliefs to inanimate objects, suggesting early theory of mind is more advanced than previously thought. This study explored infant expectations of object-directed actions by inanimate agents.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Infant Cognition
Background:
- The mentalistic view suggests infants understand false beliefs early, but explicit tasks mask this ability.
- Violation-of-expectation (VOE) paradigms using looking time provide indirect evidence for infant cognition.
- Previous VOE studies often focused on human agents' beliefs.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether infants attribute false beliefs to inanimate agents.
- To test if the VOE paradigm can reveal false belief understanding in infants when applied to non-humanoid agents.
- To explore the scope of early theory of mind in attributing mental states.
Main Methods:
- Replication of a VOE procedure using a toy crane as the agent.
- Infants observed an object's location change while an agent (crane) was absent.
- Measured infants' looking time when the crane returned and oriented towards the object's location.
Main Results:
- 16-month-old infants looked longer when the crane oriented towards the object's new location.
- This prolonged looking suggests infants expected the crane to act based on its previous, now false, belief.
- Infants' looking patterns were consistent with attributing a false belief to the inanimate crane.
Conclusions:
- Infants appear to spontaneously attribute false beliefs to inanimate agents.
- This finding supports the idea that early theory of mind capabilities are robust and not solely tied to human-like agents.
- The study implies a broader capacity for mental state attribution in infancy than previously demonstrated.
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