Measuring Beliefs in Centimeters: Private Knowledge Biases Preschoolers' and Adults' Representation of Others' Beliefs

A novel task, using a continuous spatial layout, was created to investigate the degree to which (in centimeters) 3-year-old children's (N = 63), 5-year-old children's (N = 60), and adults' (N = 60) own privileged knowledge of the location of an object biased their representation of a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inChild development Vol. 84; no. 6; pp. 1846 - 1854
Main Authors Sommerville, Jessica A., Bernstein, Daniel M., Meltzoff, Andrew N.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Malden, MA Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.11.2013
Wiley for the Society for Research in Child Development
Wiley-Blackwell
Subjects
Adult
Adults
Age
Age discrimination
Age groups
Analysis of Variance
Attention
Attitude
Belief & doubt
Beliefs
Bias
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Child psychology
Child, Preschool
Children
Comprehension - physiology
Correlation
Developmental psychology
EMPIRICAL REPORTS
Experimentation
False beliefs
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Geographic Location
Humans
Judgment
Knowledge
Knowledge Level
Legal objections
Male
Measurement
Memory
Mental objects
Preschool Children
Protagonists
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychomotor Performance
Space Perception - physiology
Task performance
Theory of Mind - physiology
Human
Preschool age
Belief
Mental representation
Adult
Cognition
Cognitive development
Child
Age
Cognitive bias
Object location
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Summary:A novel task, using a continuous spatial layout, was created to investigate the degree to which (in centimeters) 3-year-old children's (N = 63), 5-year-old children's (N = 60), and adults' (N = 60) own privileged knowledge of the location of an object biased their representation of a protagonist's false belief about the object's location. At all ages, participants' knowledge of the object's actual location biased their search estimates, independent of the attentional or memory demands of the task. Children's degree of bias correlated with their performance on a classic change-of-location false belief task, controlling for age. This task is a novel tool for providing a quantitative measurement of the degree to which self-knowledge can bias estimates of others' beliefs.
Bibliography:National Science Foundation - No. SBE-0354453
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ArticleID:CDEV12110
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada - No. SSHRC 410-2008-1681
This work was generously supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SBE‐0354453) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC 410‐2008‐1681). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in the study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF or SSHRC. We are grateful to the parents and children who participated in this research. We would like to thank Joy Durham, Jill Huynh, Reema Jayaker, Leah Lee, Jacque Mullen, Atsuko Ishida, and Sarah Zebrowski for their assistance with the study, and Betty Repacholi, Yuichi Shoda, and Cheryl Kaiser for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
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ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
DOI:10.1111/cdev.12110