How children come to understand false beliefs
In coming to understand minds, the greatest challenge for young children is understanding when others have a false belief. Why is that person searching for the toy over there when it is really over here? There is currently much controversy about when children come to this understanding because experiments of different types yield different results. This paper attempts to resolve the controversy by integrating theory and data in a different way. Specifically, the paper argues that young children do not just come to imagine what is in other minds on their own; rather, they come to this understanding through certain types of social and communicative interactions with others that require them to compare their respective perspectives.
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/34/8491
Reblogged this on Madison Elizabeth Baylis.
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