Thinking about false belief: it's not just what children say, but how long it takes them to say it.
We examined 240 children's (3.5-, 4.5-, and 5.5-year-olds) latency to respond to questions on a battery of false-belief tasks. Response latencies exhibited a significant cross-over interaction as a function of age and response type (correct vs. incorrect). 3.5-year-olds'incorrect latencies were faster than their correct latencies, whereas the opposite pattern emerged for 4.5- and 5.5-year-olds. Although these results are most consistent with conceptual change theories of false-belief reasoning, no extant theory fully accounts for our data pattern. We argue that response latency data provide new information about underlying cognitive processes in theory of mind reasoning, and can shed light on concept acquisition more broadly.
Atance
Cristina M
CM
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, 200 Lees Avenue, Room E228, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5. atance@uottawa.ca
Bernstein
Daniel M
DM
Meltzoff
Andrew N
AN
D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology