False-Belief Tasks

Theory of Mind: Cultural Similarities Across cultures, do children develop theory of mind at the same age? Callaghan, Rochat, Lilliard, Claux, Odden, Itakura, Tapanya, and Singh researched this question with children from Canada, India, Peru, Samoa and Thailand (378). Theory of mind was measured by a false-belief task that was slightly from that of past research. As explained in class, false-belief tasks measure a child’s ability to understand that people can have different and possibly incorrect beliefs. False-belief tasks also demonstrate an understanding that people act on their perception of reality and not on reality itself. In class, we watched a video of a false-belief task where researchers used dolls to hide a ball in a box, then when one doll left, the …show more content…
Researchers then asked the child where the doll that had left would look for the ball. A similar false-belief task was used in this study. A researcher hid an interesting object that they identified as their favorite toy under a bowl then left the room to run an errand (379). The child, as prompted by a second researcher, put the toy under a different bowl. The child was then asked where the researcher would look for the toy. Passing this task was defined as pointing to the bowl where the researcher had originally hidden the toy. Failing was defined as pointing to the new hiding space of the toy. The study found that across cultures, most 3 year olds failed this task, about half of the 4 year olds passed, and almost all of the 5 year olds passed the task. Whether these results are due to biological underpinnings, social