Does acting on a false belief aid in false belief retrieval in 3-year-olds?

Abstract

Although previous studies have examined whether 3-year-old children can appeal to a false belief to explain another person's misguided action (e.g., Bartsch & Wellan, 1989; Wimmer & Weichbold, 1994; Wimmer & Mayringer, 1998), there exist no studies that have examined how children explain their own actions that were premised on a false belief. The goal of this dissertation is to determine whether 3-year-old children, who are typically unable to reason in terms of false belief, will appeal to a false belief to explain their own misguided actions.

In Experiment 1, 3-year-old children were given an action task in which they were required to act on the basis of a false belief. For instance, children were shown a crayon box and were asked to state what they thought was inside. After stating their belief, children went to get a piece of paper to draw on. The unexpected contents of the box were then revealed, and children were asked both a false belief question (i.e., "Before, when you first saw the box all closed up like this, what did you think was inside?") and an action explanation question (i.e., "Why did you go get the paper [then]?") Results revealed that children who answered the false belief question incorrectly were rarely able to explain their action in terms of a false belief. However, despite incorrect responses to both questions, the manner in which children answered the action explanation question differed in important respects from how they answered the false belief question. These differences are discussed with respect to both the "reality bias,"and the theory-theory view of development.

In a second experiment, children's performance on the action task was directly compared to their performance on a standard unexpected contents task (e.g., Gopnik & Astington, 1988). In addition, a third task (planning + action task) was devised in which children planned and then acted on the basis of their false belief. Results indicated that children were able to retrieve their false belief significantly more often in the planning + action task, as compared to the standard unexpected contents task. Once again though, children who answered the false belief question incorrectly were similarly unable to appeal to a false belief to explain their action.

Consistent with previous research, the results of both Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that 3-year-old children have substantial difficulty reasoning in terms of false belief. However, results also indicated that planning and acting on a false belief may enable better retrieval. Finally, these studies highlight the fact that asking children to explain an action of theirs that was premised on a false belief, differs in many respects from simply asking children to retrieve a false belief.