The role of language in the development of false belief understanding: a training study.
The current study used a training methodology to determine whether different kinds of linguistic interaction play a causal role in children's development of false belief understanding. After 3 training sessions, 3-year-old children improved their false belief understanding both in a training condition involving perspective-shifting discourse about deceptive objects (without mental state terms) and in a condition in which sentential complement syntax was used (without deceptive objects). Children did not improve in a condition in which they were exposed to deceptive objects without accompanying language. Children showed most improvement in a condition using both perspective-shifting discourse and sentential complement syntax, suggesting that each of these types of linguistic experience plays an independent role in the ontogeny of false belief understanding.
Lohmann
Heidemarie
H
Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Tomasello
Michael
M
D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D013663:Teaching