ERIC Number: EJ989445
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Mar
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
Reference Count: 51
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0261-510X
Breaking the Rules: Do Infants Have a True Understanding of False Belief?
Yott, Jessica; Poulin-Dubois, Diane
British Journal of Developmental Psychology, v30 n1 p156-171 Mar 2012
It has been suggested that infants' performance on the false belief task can be explained by the use of behavioural rules. To test this hypothesis, 18-month-old infants were trained to learn the new rule that an object that disappeared in location A could be found in location B. Infants were then administered a false belief task based on the violation of expectation (VOE) paradigm, an intention understanding task, and a modified detour-reaching task. Results revealed that infants looked significantly longer at the display when the experimenter looked for the toy in the full box (box with the toy) compared to infants who observed the experimenter search in the empty box (box without the toy). Results also revealed significant correlations between infants' looking time at the display and their scores on the intention task and on the detour-reaching task. Taken together, these findings suggest that infants possess an implicit understanding of false belief. In addition, they challenge the view that success on the implicit false belief task does not require executive functioning abilities. (Contains 3 figures and 2 tables.)
Descriptors: Infants, Beliefs, Theory of Mind, Executive Function, Training, Behavior, Eye Movements
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers: N/A

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