Different accounts for why 3 year olds fail ToM tasks. Flashcards
(18 cards)
What is the appearance-reality distinction?
It is the ability to differentiate between how something appears and what it actually is.
Who studied children’s understanding of the appearance-reality distinction?
Flavell et al. (1983).
What was the method used by Flavell et al. (1983)?
Children were shown a sponge painted to look like a rock and asked what it looked like and what it really was.
How did 3-year-olds perform in Flavell et al.’s study?
They often failed to distinguish between appearance and reality, saying the object was a rock for both questions.
How did 4- to 5-year-olds perform in Flavell et al.’s study?
They correctly said it looked like a rock but was really a sponge, showing an understanding of the appearance-reality distinction.
What does the ability to distinguish appearance from reality reflect?
It reflects growing metacognitive awareness that mental representations can differ from reality.
What developmental shift did Flavell et al. (1983) find?
A shift between ages 3 and 4 years in children’s ability to recognise that appearances can be misleading.
What do conceptual deficit accounts suggest?
They suggest that 3-year-olds lack a full understanding that beliefs can differ from reality and that actions can be based on false beliefs.
What broader difficulty do 3-year-olds face according to conceptual deficit accounts?
They struggle to understand that something can be represented in more than one way.
What is The False Photograph Task?
Zaitchik (1990) created a test to test children’s understanding of non-mental representations. Involves a photograph being taken of an object, then the object is moved. The child is asked where the object is in the picture.
What do the findings of the False Photograph Task show about 3-year-olds?
Most 3-year-olds answer based on the current reality rather than the original photo, showing difficulty with understanding representations.
At what age do most children correctly answer the False Photograph Task?
Around 4 years old.
What do performance accounts suggest?
Performance accounts suggest that tasks underestimate children’s competence due to factors like misunderstanding the questions or the story.
What pragmatic issue might cause 3-year-olds to fail false belief tasks?
According to Lewis & Osborne (1990) children may have difficulty understanding what the experimenter is asking.
How can introducing a temporal marker improve children’s performance on false belief tasks?
Asking questions like “Where will he first look to find his ball?” (Siegal & Peterson, 1994) clarifies the timing and helps children answer correctly.
What narrative-related problem affects 3-year-olds’ performance?
According to Lewis et al. (1994), 3-year-olds often don’t fully understand the story being told in the task.
What cognitive limitation might explain 3-year-olds’ difficulty with false belief tasks?
They may lack the executive function needed to inhibit an incorrect (reality-based) response.
What are two ways researchers have made false belief tasks easier for children?
By making reality less salient (Zaitchik, 1991) and by rehearsing the story premises with the child (Lewis et al., 1994).
