Two-and-a-half-year-olds succeed at a traditional false-belief task with reduced processing demands.
When tested with traditional false-belief tasks, which require answering a standard question about the likely behavior of an agent with a false belief, children perform below chance until age 4 y or later. When tested without such questions, however, children give evidence of false-belief understanding much earlier. Are traditional tasks difficult because they tap a more advanced form of false-belief understanding (fundamental-change view) or because they impose greater processing demands (processing-demands view)? Evidence that young children succeed at traditional false-belief tasks when processing demands are reduced would support the latter view. In prior research, reductions in inhibitory-control demands led to improvements in young children's performance, but often only to chance (instead of below-chance) levels. Here we examined whether further reductions in processing demands might lead to success. We speculated that: (i) young children could respond randomly in a traditional low-inhibition task because their limited information-processing resources are overwhelmed by the total concurrent processing demands in the task; and (ii) these demands include those from the response-generation process activated by the standard question. This analysis suggested that 2.5-y-old toddlers might succeed at a traditional low-inhibition task if response-generation demands were also reduced via practice trials. As predicted, toddlers performed above chance following two response-generation practice trials; toddlers failed when these trials either were rendered less effective or were used in a high-inhibition task. These results support the processing-demands view: Even toddlers succeed at a traditional false-belief task when overall processing demands are reduced.
Division of Psychology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637332; psetoh@ntu.edu.sg rscott@ucmerced.edu rbaillar@illinois.edu.
Peipei
0000-0002-7830-5977
P
Setoh
Psychological Sciences, University of California Merced, Merced, CA 95343; psetoh@ntu.edu.sg rscott@ucmerced.edu rbaillar@illinois.edu.
Rose M
RM
Scott
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820 psetoh@ntu.edu.sg rscott@ucmerced.edu rbaillar@illinois.edu.
Renée
R
Baillargeon
D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D002666:Psychology, Child / Q000379:methods*
false-belief understanding; information-processing resources; inhibitory control; psychological reasoning; theory of mind