Developmental differences in the understanding of beliefs and desires

• Authors: Putko A.
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Seventy-two children between the ages of 3 and 5 took part in an investigation of the relations between the development of understanding of the two core concepts of theory-of-mind - desires and beliefs. Desire understanding was assessed by tasks requiring fulfilled or unfulfilled desires to be recalled and to predict desire-related emotions. Belief understanding was measured using false-belief task in standard and social version. Results showed that 3-year-olds have difficulty with the understanding of unfulfilled desires and false beliefs. In addition, specific links were found between the understanding of unfulfilled desires and false belief performance. These links suggest that the understanding of unfulfilled desires may be some kind of developmental bridge between the understanding of simple 'contentive' and more complex 'indicative' form of mental representations. The implications of these results for theory-of-mind development are discussed.

Keywords

EN

DESIRE; FALSE BELIEF; MENTAL REPRESENTATION; THEORY-OF-MIND

Discipline

• PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOLOGY

• Publisher: Committee for Psychological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2005
• Volume: 36
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 109-115
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Putko A.

• A. Putko, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, Instytut Psychologii, ul. Szamarzewskiego 89, 60-568 Poznan, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

06PLAAAA01763808