title: The roles of explanation and feedback in false belief understanding: a microgenetic analysis.
abstract: The authors examined effects of feedback and explanation on false belief performance. Thirty-three children (42-54 months; 15 girls, 18 boys) were randomly assigned to four treatment conditions: explanation, feedback, feedback researcher explains, and feedback child explains. Children completed false belief tasks during pretraining, 8 training sessions, and posttraining across 6 weeks. Language comprehension was assessed at pretraining. The authors hypothesized that children would improve most when training involved feedback and explanation. Generalized estimating equations modeling was used to analyze the data. Children who received feedback and generated explanations for characters' false beliefs improved across training sessions more so than children in other conditions. Children's explanations for false beliefs also were explored. Implications of the findings are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Christopher Newport University, Department of Psychology, Newport News, VA 23606, USA. nguajard@cnu.edu
authors.forename: Nicole R
authors.initials: NR
authors.lastname: Guajardo
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Petersen
authors.forename: Timothy R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Marshall
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011581:Psychological Tests; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*