Karen Bartsch

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.

Individual differences in children's developing theory of mind and implications for metacognition

Abstract For readers interested in metacognition broadly, this review article introduces some of the recent research and theory concerning childrens developing understanding of mental states, focusing particularly on attempts to understand individual differences in development. We contend that the conceptual developments investigated by “theory of mind” researchers constitute a foundation for later metacognition. We examine studies that have focused on individual differences in childrens developing understanding of mental states, particularly those investigating its antecedents in early social interactions. Implications from theory-of-mind research for an understanding of metacognition are articulated.

Young children's talk about learning events

Abstract In order to understand children’s conception of knowledge acquisition better, everyday uses of the terms “learn” and “teach” were examined. Longitudinal data obtained from CHILDES (MacWhinney & Snow, 1990) included 329 target term uses and related references by children (N=5, aged 2;4–7;3) and 431 by adults talking with them. Each reference was coded for mention of what was learned, when, how, and where learning occurred, who learned, and who taught/told, among other topics. Children and adults referred most frequently to what was learned and who learned/taught, and less frequently to when, how, and where learning occurred, a pattern that did not change as children aged. Consistent with earlier experimental reports, children talked mostly about their own learning, rarely mentioning sources of knowledge besides other people (e.g., teachers). Behavior learning was mentioned more than fact learning. Implications for characterizations of children’s developing conceptions of knowledge acquisition, for past and future experimental research, and for education were discussed.

The role of experience in children's developing folk epistemology: review and analysis from the theory–theory perspective

Abstract The role of experience in childrens developing folk epistemology, specifically in their acquisition of an understanding of belief, is explored from the theory–theory perspective (i.e., the perspective claiming that childrens conceptual development can be viewed as analogous to scientific theory development) through a selective review and analysis of extant empirical literature. Three types of investigations are identified: examinations of observed relationships between social experiences and belief understanding, attempts to facilitate the reasoning of children on the verge of belief understanding through experiences intended to compel children to face reasoning inconsistencies; and training studies demonstrating that children can be trained to understand belief over time through specific feedback experiences. A comparison of these studies reveals that experience is defined differently across them, resulting in varying and sometimes ambiguous implications for a theory–theory perspective on development. Implications for future research are discussed.

Why Else Does Jenny Run? Young Children's Extended Psychological Explanations

A method for eliciting extended explanations was used to evaluate predictions from the “theory-theory” account of developing psychological reasoning. Children were repeatedly asked to explain the actions or emotions of story characters with false beliefs. Questioning elicited false belief attributions in half of 3-year-olds (Study 1, N = 16, age M = 3;6) and most 4-year-olds who failed belief prediction tasks (Study 2, N = 30, M = 4;5). In Study 3, 30 prediction failers (M = 5;1) gave significantly more false belief explanations for emotions than for actions. Across the studies, desire and emotion explanations emerged early and often, reflecting the primacy of these constructs in the childrens understanding of psychological causality. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for developmental mechanism.

Portraits of Early Moral Sensibility in Two Children's Everyday Conversations

Two childrens conversations with adults were examined for reference to moral issues using transcripts of archived at-home family talk from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database (MacWhinney, 2000). Through target words (e.g., good, wrong, mean) in transcripts of two children between ages 2.5 and 5.0 years, 1,333 moral conversations were identified. Conversations were examined for whether and when children discussed moral issues, how they used moral words (e.g., to communicate feelings, ask for reasons, etc.), what was discussed and in what contexts, and whether children were active or passive contributors. The resulting case study portraits of early moral sensibility extend and challenge extant findings, revealing substantive differences between the two childrens moral sensibilities as well as commonalities, including a tendency to be active rather than passive in moral conversation, to focus on the dispositions/behaviors of others, and to engage in moral conversation primarily to give/ask for reasons, communicate feelings, and (dis)approve.

False Belief Prediction and Explanation: Which Develops First and Why it Matters:

In response to Wimmer and Mayringer’s (this issue) report “False belief understanding in young children: Explanations do not develop before predictions”, the theoretical importance of the explanation versus prediction issue is expanded and the empirical conclusion of the report is questioned.

Reasoning Asymmetries Do Not Invalidate Theory-Theory

In this commentary we suggest that asymmetries in reasoning associated with moral judgment do not necessarily invalidate a theory-theory account of naive psychological reasoning. The asymmetries may reflect a core knowledge assumption that human nature is prosocial, an assumption that heightens vigilance for antisocial dispositions, which in turn leads to differing assumptions about what is the presumed topic of conversation.

Why we assume it's all good: the role of theory of mind in early inherent feature inferences.

Cimpian & Salomons (C&Ss) characterization of a domain-general inherence heuristic, available to young children, underplays the importance of our early interest in and recognition of agency, intentionality, and mental life. A consideration of the centrality of desires, goals, and agency in our earliest reasoning suggests an alternative, perhaps complementary, account of our tendency to be satisfied with the status quo.

Constraining the brain: The role of developmental psychology in developmental cognitive neuroscience

Developmental psychology should play an essential constraining role in developmental cognitive neuroscience. Theories of neural development must account explicitly for the early emergence of knowledge and abilities in infants and young children documented in developmental research. Especially in need of explanation at the neural level is the early emergence of meta-representation.