The Ability of Young Children to Use Conflicting Information About Desires, Beliefs, and Reality to Solve Theory of Mind Problems
Date
2000
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
The relationship between desire and belief understanding in the context of children's theory of mind is not yet entirely substantiated. The prominent view, proposed by Wellman (1989), claims that before children understand that beliefs are central to reasoning about desires they will either disregard belief information or use it only when it suggests a route to desire satisfaction. Recent research by Cassidy (1998), however, suggests that children's ability to demonstrate the full extent of their desire and belief understanding is limited by certain biases. The current study used a sample of 23 three, four, and five year olds to test the hypothesis that even young children are able to reason appropriately about desires and beliefs in the absence of reality and egocentric biases. As predicted, children demonstrated success on two separate tasks of desire and belief understanding that was independent of their ability to reason about false beliefs. Evidence from the current study that (in the absence of particular biases) children understand that belief information is central to reasoning about desires contradicts a prominent view of desire understanding (Wellman, 1990), and suggests that children may in fact have a representational understanding of desire. This possibility is further supported by our finding that children were able to understand a representational construct of desire. Implications of our findings for research concerning desire and belief understanding are discussed.