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

• Published in: Child development Vol. 84; no. 6; pp. 1846 - 1854
• Main Authors: Sommerville, Jessica A., Bernstein, Daniel M., Meltzoff, Andrew N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• 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

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...