Theory of puppets?: A critique of the use of puppets as stimulus materials in psychological research with young children

• Published in: Cognitive development Vol. 61; p. 101146
• Main Authors: Packer, Martin J., Moreno-Dulcey, Fernando A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.01.2022
• ISSN: 0885-2014; 1879-226X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101146

Much research exploring young children’s capacity to understand the actions of other people, either in terms of mental states such as beliefs and desires or in terms of deontic powers such as rights and responsibilities, uses puppets, toys, or fictional characters in stories or cartoons as stimulus materials. This is puzzling, since puppets, toys and cartoon characters have neither beliefs and desires nor rights and responsibilities. In this article we explore this practice and point out that the experimental task is being “framed” as pretense. This framing makes it difficult to interpret the results of such research, reduces its ecological validity, and reveals an odd relationship between the ethnopsychology that is studied and the scientific psychology that is employed. All this raises the concern that what this research actually discloses is young children’s “theory of puppets.” •Young children’s capacity to understand the actions of other people is a popular research topic.•Understanding may involve mental states such as beliefs and desires or deontic powers such as rights and responsibilities.•This research often uses puppets as stimulus materials which is puzzling since they have no mental states or deontic powers.•This “framing” as pretense makes it difficult to interpret the results of the research.•Does such research in fact disclose young children’s “theory of puppets”?