title: Test-retest reliability for false-belief tasks.
abstract: Despite notable variations in children's rate of success on theory of mind tasks and the presumed theoretical implications drawn from a child's success or failure on such tasks, there have been no studies of the test-retest reliability of children's performance on these tasks. Twenty-three children (mean age 49.6 months, SD 8.6) watched three videotaped stories illustrating a false-belief situation: the standard experimenter narrated false-belief task, a minor variant replacing the narration of the story with a dialogue among the characters, and a third version involving a humorous situation. The time elapsed between test and retest was 2-3 weeks and the order of presentation was counterbalanced. Results corroborated previous findings of a developmental trend in the understanding of false-belief questions but, despite a general improvement in children's comprehension of the stories, the test-retest reliability for the false belief questions was poor. Although changes recorded between test-retest sessions frequently occurred in the direction of children answering correctly questions they had previously failed, a subset of children incorrectly answered questions they had initially passed. These findings underscore the need for validation assessments of techniques for studying children's developing theories of mind.
authors.affiliation: Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
authors.forename: L C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Mayes
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Klin
authors.forename: K P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Tercyak
authors.forename: D V
authors.initials: DV
authors.lastname: Cicchetti
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Cohen
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D002666:Psychology, Child; D011897:Random Allocation; D014743:Videotape Recording