The Role of Inference and Conflicting Desires in Preschoolers' Action Predictions
Date
1999
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Crew Member
Funder
Rehearsal Director
Concert Coordinator
Moderator
Panelist
Alternative Title
Department
Haverford College. Department of Psychology
Type
Thesis
Original Format
Running Time
File Format
Place of Publication
Date Span
Copyright Date
Award
Language
eng
Note
Table of Contents
Terms of Use
Rights Holder
Access Restrictions
Haverford users only
Terms of Use
Tripod URL
Identifier
Abstract
Moore et al. (1995) suggested that young children's difficulty on theory of mind tasks was due to their inability to inhibit their own strong, conflicting mental states (e.g., desires and beliefs) to infer the mental states of others and make accurate behavioral predictions. In contrast, Wellman (1990) and colleagues maintained that young children's mentalizing abilities included the capacity to deal with mental states that differed from or conflicted with their own. Thus, this study investigated preschoolers' ability to predict story characters' behaviors from information about the characters' desires (that was either explicit or implicit) and when the characters' desires were matched or mismatched with the children's own desires. Results revealed that preschoolers performed poorly on conflicting desire conditions regardless of whether they were explicitly told a story character's desire or were required to infer the character's desire from the story events. These results further supported the claims by Moore et al. (1995) that young children were incapable of resolving mental state conflicts when making action predictions.