Experiments on Child's Theory of Mind

Children are often perceived as naive or ignorant when understanding the perspectives of different people. Children under the age of 4 may be unable to differentiate between representational changes, or the ability to change a belief of an object due to problem-solving (Gopnik & Astington 1988). Around the age of 4-5, children become better able to attribute false beliefs to different people and realities. They learn the skills to understand that others’ thoughts and behaviors are motivated by internal mental states inconsistent with their own. However, children under 4 often fail these tests of the theory of mind due to limitations to their cognitive developments. This happens because children ages 2-3 often look at the world from their own points of view, limiting their ability to take on another person’s perspectives. When unable to fathom another person’s thoughts, children appear naive for not understanding why someone’s behaviors would lead them to a different belief or response. To apply the theory of mind, children must understand reasons for someone else’s knowledge and have the skills to separate their knowledge from others. This logic and reasoning, unfortunately, does not develop until after the egocentric period of a child’s development, roughly around 4-5 years of age. Research aimed at discovering the development of the theory of mind and representational change is important in trying to understand children. Theory of mind is important to study because it helps children to predict different outcomes more accurately. Also, this allows them to explain or interpret understandings of connections between others’ desires or intentions and their actions. Theory of mind is needed to understand and rationalize that people may have certain beliefs inconsistent with their own. Finally, theory of mind is vital for having successful communication. It is necessary to understand that not every child is capable of understanding other people’s perspectives that help rationalize their behaviors. If a child is not capable of understanding why someone acted in a certain way, they may respond irrationally. When trying to communicate with a child it is important to account for their reliability and without a theory of mind, their statements may not be as valid or reliable, especially in dealing with criminality and witness statements. Because they are less egocentric in nature and better with communication, children 4 and older can understand representational change and understand the theory of mind. We will compose research supporting our argument that Children 4 years or older are better able to understand false belief when tested on different tasks.

These findings have been outlined through multiple studies. In one study conducted by G.-Juergen Hogrefe, Heinz Wimmer, and Josef Perner, the role of ignorance is considered while understanding false belief attributing this inability to a developmental lag in epistemic states. Epistemic states guide our decisions and what to believe in certain situations. They don’t distinguish between what is actually true, but instead what is believed. In this study, 3-6-year-olds were put into real-life situations and were read stories where a character was purposefully left out from certain information. Their ability to attribute lack of knowledge or ignorance was recorded and then compared to their ability in understanding false belief to the other. As a result, they were able to show how “children at a transitional stage (3-4 years old) find it difficult to represent the incompatible propositions describing the true state of affairs and the state of affairs falsely believed to be true by the other” (Hogrefe, Heinz, & Perner 1986). However, this complexity was not necessary for understanding ignorance, but just to represent the true state of affairs.

Similarly in a study by Perner, Liekman, and Wimmer, it was hypothesized that there is a conceptual ‘limitation among 3-year-olds' that makes them have difficulty with false-belief attribution (Wimmer & Perner, 1983)’. In their study, they focused on three different hypotheses including failure to retain essential facts, failure to understand the normal expectations which give rise to false belief, and pragmatic misinterpretation of the test question (Perner, Liekman, & Wimmer 1987). Their results strengthened the original ideas proposed because of the inability to make sense of conflicting beliefs and values to certain propositions.

In another study conducted in 2017, many different and conflicting hypotheses are compared as the researchers claim that results from traditional tasks suggest that false-belief understanding does not emerge until about 4 years of age and constitutes a major developmental milestone in social cognition while results from nontraditional tasks suggest that false-belief understanding is already present in infants (under age 2 years) and toddlers (age 2–3 years) and thus forms an integral part of social cognition from early in life (Scott & Baillargeon 2017). The controversy that surrounds the question of when children are first able to understand the idea of false belief and different points of view are then compared and contrasted as many forms of research are laid out. Ultimately their analysis proved that newer more nontraditional tasks found that early understanding of false belief is because of a wide variety of other cognitive functions, but ultimately young children fail the traditional tasks because of processing limitations rather than the inability to represent false beliefs.

Our research at the Cook Douglass Child Study Center will mirror some of these experiments to test a child's theory of mind. Through two trials we will test a child's understanding of false belief and representational change, by showing them a box of band-aids. After being shown this relatively familiar object to them, we will ask them what they think is inside the box. We will then show them that the box does not in fact have band-aids inside, but instead a toy lion. We will then introduce a stuffed animal friend “Ernie” who did not see what was inside the box. We will then ask the child what they can expect Ernie to think inside the box. After answering this question taking into consideration that Ernie did not see what was inside of the box, we will ask the subject what it looks like is inside the box and then finally what is really in the box. This process will then be repeated with a box of Oreos that is actually filled with plastic spoons to show the child's understanding of false belief. While there is some contradicting research using nontraditional methods that shows some evidence saying false belief attribution is possible in younger children, it is clear that there is a conceptual limitation among children younger than four that make understanding conflicting truths challenging.