False belief test
I heard about the false belief test before my daughter was born. It seems right that it ought to be possible to test at what point children are able to understand the concept of someone else having false beliefs. However, having now tried the test out a couple of times on my daughter, I feel somewhat uneasy about whether I have managed to test that very question. She is almost four years old, the normal time at which children ‘pass’ the test, and has failed both times I’ve tried the test on her. So, she’s fairly normal. Yet, at least in the unprofessional way that I ran the test, I am not at all sure that her failure was due to the lack of her comprehension about another person’s beliefs and not to her failure to understand the instruction. The second possibility would explain just as well, it seems to me, why children are around four years before they do manage the task. Of course, I am hardly the first person to raise such doubts about the significance of the false belief test but actually seeing how my daughter reacts to being asked to play this ‘game’ makes the worry ‘live’ for me. If it keeps bothering me I’ll take the logical next step and read up on the professional literature to see how researchers have tried to deal with possible confounds. Either that or I’ll buy a developmental psychologist a beer and ask.
Hi Konrad,
As someone who studies false belief (actually it is my post-doc, Dr. Sara Baker) I would not read too much into your home findings. First, children behave very differently with experimenters in comparison to parents, second Sara has shown that performance on ToM (theory of mind) tasks is much more variable than commonly assumed and finally, a number of us including Jim Russell from Cambridge think that many tasks at this age are really tapping executive function.. the ability to control and regulate ones own behavior and thought processes rather than take another’s perspective as ToM tasks are supposed to show.
Best
Bruce
Thanks for the comments on http://www.brucemhood.com
Thanks, Bruce. I owe you a beer. You’ve made concrete the vague worries I had. Mind you, the answers raise questions of their own (as per usual in science). For one, do you mean executive function or functions, in the plural? The difference seems quite important (from a philosopher’s point of view). Secondly, would a ToM still be required for the executive function to make use of in order to ‘pass’ the false belief test? Finally, should I stop asking questions before I run out of beer-money?