Henry M. Wellman

The acquisition of mental verbs: A systematic investigation of the first reference to mental state

l’t is generally recognized that the ability to contemplate and communicate about the knowledge, beliefs, and goals of oneself and others is a benchmark of human cognition. Yet, little is known about the beginnings of this ability, in large measure because methods for accurately assessing very young children’s ubility have been unavailable. Here we present the results of using a method of convergent analyses of naturally occurring speech to assess the young child’s ability to contemplate and communicate about mental state. The first study describes the frequency and function of verbs of mental reference such as think and know in the speech of one child from 2;4 to 4;O. The second examines shorter samples of speech collected from 30 two-year-olds ol*er a 6 m.onth period. Results from both studies suggest that the earliest uses of mental verbs are for conversational functions rather than for mental refe,rence. First attempts at mental reference begin to appear in some children’s speech in the second half of the third year. Since most of the children studied exhibited the linguistic knowledge necessary to make reference to mental states, we conclude that the absence of such reference earlier suggests that still younger children lack awareness of such states, or at the very least, an understandl’ng of their appropriateness as topics of conversation .

Mapping the mind: The theory theory

This is a book about domain-specific cognition – the proposal that at least some human conceptual abilities are specialized for some types of contents and not for others. In this chapter we address the development of a single domain: everyday understanding of the mind. We suggest that this development is best understood as the formulation of a succession of naive theories. Moreover, this “theory theory” can help to characterize cognitive domains more generally and to explain domain-specific development. Our chapter, therefore, joins company with a number of recent discussions drawing parallels between theory change in science and cognitive development (Carey, 1985, 1988; Gopnik, 1984, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith & Inhelder, 1974; Keil, 1987; Wellman, 1985, 1990). Theory of mind In the past five years there has been an explosion of interest in childrens early understanding of the mind (Butterworth, Harris, Leslie & Wellman, 1991; Astington, Harris, & Olson, 1988; Frye & Moore, 1991; Whiten, 1991). The research tackling this question has come to be called “childrens theory of mind.” This title reflects a leading explanatory position among investigators in this area. According to this position, our everyday conception of the mind is an implicit naive theory; childrens early conceptions of the mind are also implicit theories, and changes in those conceptions are theory changes. We refer to this explanatory position as the “theory theory.” If the theory theory has any content, it should be falsifiable. It should lead to empirical predictions about the course of development, and these predictions should be different from those of alternative accounts.

From simple desires to ordinary beliefs: The early development of everyday psychology ☆

We provide evidence for the claim that before young children construe human action in terms of beliefs and desires they understand action only in terms of simple desires. This type of naive psychology--a simple desire psychology--constitutes a coherent understanding of human action, but it differs from the belief--desire psychology of slightly older children and adults. In this paper we characterize what we mean by a simple desire psychology and report two experiments. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that 2-year-old can predict actions and reactions related to simple desires. In Experiment 2 we demonstrate that many 2-year-old pass desire reasoning tasks while at the same time failing belief reasoning tasks that are passed by slightly older children, and that are as comparable as possible to the desire tasks they pass with ease.

Insides and essences: Early understandings of the non-obvious

Insides and essences are both critical concepts for appreciating the importance of non-obvious entities: neither are observable, both contrast with external appearances, and both can be more important than external appearances. The present research examined understandings of insides and essences in 3- to 5-year-old children. In Study 1, children were asked questions requiring them to think about both the insides and the outer appearances of a series of objects. In Study 2, children were tested on their understanding that insides are typically more important than outer surfaces for an objects identity and functioning. In Studies 3, 4, and 5, children were tested on their understanding of innate potential, a concept that reflects understanding of an inborn essence. Contrary to the traditional view of children as externalists (cf. Piaget, 1951), these studies demonstrate that by age 4 children have a firm grasp of the importance of both insides and essences. Even by age 3 children reason clearly about the inside-outside distinction. These results suggest that preschool children attend to non-obvious features and realize their privileged status. They may also indicate a more basic predisposition toward psychological essentialism in young children.

Young children's attribution of action to beliefs and desires.

When and how children understand beliefs and desires is central to whether they are ever childhood realists and when they evidence a theory of mind. Adults typically construe human action as resulting from an actors beliefs and desires, a mentalistic interpretation that represents a common and fundamental form of psychological explanation. We investigated childrens ability to do likewise. In Experiment 1, 60 subjects were asked to explain why story characters performed simple actions, such as looking under a piano for a kitten. Both preschoolers and adults gave predominantly psychological explanations, attributing the actions to the actors beliefs and desires. Even 3-year-olds attributed actions to beliefs and false beliefs, demonstrating an understanding of belief not evident in previous research. In Experiment 2, 24 3-year-olds were tested further on their understanding of false belief. They were given both false belief prediction and explanation tasks. Children performed well on explanation taks, attributing an anomalous action to the actors false belief, even when they failed to predict correctly what action would follow from a false belief. We concluded that 3-year-olds and adults share a fundamentally similar construal of human action in terms of beliefs and desires, even false beliefs.

Young children's reasoning about beliefs

Abstract We present three investigations of childrens early understanding of belief, that is, their knowledge of such internal mental attitudes as thinking, knowing, and guessing. The findings demonstrate that even quite young children, 3-year-olds, understand beliefs as internal mental states separate from desires but joined with desires in a larger belief–desire reasoning scheme. Such young children can appropriately predict actions given information as to a characters beliefs and desires, understand that information about beliefs is a necessary addition to information about desires to explain or predict actions, can appropriately infer the presence or absence of belief given information as to a characters seeing or not seeing a relevant situation, and can predict the appropriate emotional reaction to the outcomes of belief–desire caused actions. The results are situated in a larger description of young childrens mentalistic naive psychology.

Developmental foundations of externalizing problems in young children: the role of effortful control.

Examined associations between effortful control temperament and externalizing problems in 220 3-year-old boys and girls, controlling for co-occurring cognitive and social risk factors. We also considered possible additive and/or interactive contributions of child dispositional anger and psychosocial adversity, and whether relations between effortful control and early externalizing problems were moderated by child gender. Individual differences in childrens effortful control abilities, assessed using behavioral and parent rating measures, were negatively associated with child externalizing problems reported by mothers, fathers, and preschool teachers. These associations were not overshadowed by other cognitive or social risk factors, or by other relevant child temperament traits such as proneness to irritability. Further analyses revealed that associations between externalizing problem behavior and effortful control were specific to components of child problem behavior indexing impulsive-inattentive symptoms. Thus, childrens effortful control skills were important correlates of childrens early disruptive behavior, a finding that may provide insight into the developmental origins of chronic behavioral maladjustment.

Infants' Ability To Connect Gaze and Emotional Expression to Intentional Action.

Four studies investigated whether and when infants connect information about an actors affect and perception to their action. Arguably, this may be a crucial way in which infants come to recognize the intentional behaviors of others. In Study 1 an actor grasped one of two objects in a situation where cues from the actors gaze and expression could serve to determine which object would be grasped, specifically the actor first looked at and emoted positively about one object but not the other. Twelve-month-olds, but not 8-month-olds, recognized that the actor was likely to grasp the object which she had visually regarded with positive affect. Studies 2, 3, and 4 replicated the main finding from Study 1 with 12- and 14-month-olds and included several contrasting conditions and controls. These studies provide evidence that the ability to use information about an adults direction of gaze and emotional expression to predict action is both present, and developing at the end of the first year of life.

Theory of Mind Development in Chinese Children: A Meta-Analysis of False-Belief Understanding Across Cultures and Languages

Theory of mind is claimed to develop universally among humans across cultures with vastly different folk psychologies. However, in the attempt to test and confirm a claim of universality, individual studies have been limited by small sample sizes, sample specificities, and an overwhelming focus on Anglo- European children. The current meta-analysis of childrens false-belief performance provides the most comprehensive examination to date of theory-of-mind development in a population of non-Western children speaking non-Indo-European languages (i.e., Mandarin and Cantonese). The meta-analysis consisted of 196 Chinese conditions (127 from mainland China and 69 from Hong Kong), representing responses from more than 3,000 children, compared with 155 similar North American conditions (83 conditions from the United States and 72 conditions from Canada). The findings show parallel developmental trajectories of false-belief understanding for children in China and North America coupled with significant differences in the timing of development across communities-childrens false-belief performance varied across different locales by as much as 2 or more years. These data support the importance of both universal trajectories and specific experiential factors in the development of theory of mind.

Early understanding of emotion: Evidence from natural language

Abstract Young childrens early understanding of emotion was investigated by examining their use of emotion terms such as happy, sad, mud, and cry. Five childrens emotion language was examined longitudinally from the age of 2 to 5 years, and as a comparison their reference to pains via such terms as burn, sting, and hurt was also examined. In Phase 1 we confirmed and extended prior findings demonstrating that by 2 years of age terms for the basic emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear are commonly used by children as are terms for such related states as crying and hurting. At this early age children produce such terms to refer to self and to others, and to past and future as well as to present states. Over the years from 2 to 5 childrens emotion vocabulary expands, their discussion of hypothetical emotions gets underway, and the complexity of their emotion utterances increases. In Phase 2 our analyses go beyond childrens production of emotion terms to analyses of their conception of emotion. W...