Removing shared information improves 3- and 4-year-olds' performance on a change-of-location explicit false belief...

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Development
• Theory of Mind
• Social Cognition

Background:

• The standard change-of-location false belief task question may inadvertently draw attention to the object's true location.
• Previous explanations suggest children's own knowledge biases their answers in false belief tasks.
• An alternative hypothesis proposes that memory for shared information influences performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether a bias toward shared information, rather than just egocentric bias, affects children's performance on the change-of-location false belief task.
• To examine the role of experimenter continuity in influencing children's responses by manipulating shared information.

Main Methods:

• Children (3-4 years old) participated in a change-of-location false belief task.
• An experimental group featured a new experimenter for the test question, disrupting shared experience.
• A control group had a single experimenter throughout; inhibitory control was also assessed.

Main Results:

• Children in the experimental group (new experimenter) showed significantly higher success rates (63%) compared to the control group (32%).
• Performance differences were not attributable to variations in inhibitory control.
• The experimental condition was the sole significant predictor of performance.

Conclusions:

• A bias to rely on shared information, prompted by experimenter continuity, significantly impacts children's performance on standard false belief tasks.
• This finding suggests that memory-based retrieval of shared experiences plays a crucial role in children's apparent difficulties with false belief reasoning.