Theory of mind and epistemological development: the relation between children's second-order false-belief understanding and their ability to reason about evidence Export

@article{citeulike:2426873, abstract = {The study investigates the hypothesis that children's ability to attribute second-order beliefs facilitates their understanding of evidence, as seen in the ability to distinguish between causes and reasons. Seventy-four children 5-7 yr old were given belief and evidence tests. The belief tests assessed their ability to represent and reason from second-order false-beliefs, and the evidence tests assessed their ability to distinguish between the cause of a situation and a person's reason for believing it. The relation between performance on the two tests was determined, taking into account general language and non-verbal reasoning abilities. Results show that performance on the belief test and on the evidence part of the evidence test improved significantly over the age range, and that a significant proportion of variance in the evidence test scores is accounted for by second-order false-belief understanding, over and above that accounted for by general language and non-verbal abilities. The argument is made that second-order false-belief understanding is fundamental to children's epistemological development, underlying not just their understanding of evidence, but also their understanding of inference and truth.}, author = {Astington, Janet W. and Pelletier, Janette and Homer, Bruce}, citeulike-article-id = {2426873}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0732-118X(02)00005-3}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VD4-46V4HS2-4/2/9856b3c455c2b93350fe61a4e4e31132}, doi = {10.1016/S0732-118X(02)00005-3}, journal = {New Ideas in Psychology}, keywords = {tom}, month = {}, number = {2-3}, pages = {131--144}, posted-at = {2008-02-25 19:28:05}, priority = {2}, title = {Theory of mind and epistemological development: the relation between children's second-order false-belief understanding and their ability to reason about evidence}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0732-118X(02)00005-3}, volume = {20}, year = {2002} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2426873 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2426873 N2 - The study investigates the hypothesis that children's ability to attribute second-order beliefs facilitates their understanding of evidence, as seen in the ability to distinguish between causes and reasons. Seventy-four children 5-7 yr old were given belief and evidence tests. The belief tests assessed their ability to represent and reason from second-order false-beliefs, and the evidence tests assessed their ability to distinguish between the cause of a situation and a person's reason for believing it. The relation between performance on the two tests was determined, taking into account general language and non-verbal reasoning abilities. Results show that performance on the belief test and on the evidence part of the evidence test improved significantly over the age range, and that a significant proportion of variance in the evidence test scores is accounted for by second-order false-belief understanding, over and above that accounted for by general language and non-verbal abilities. The argument is made that second-order false-belief understanding is fundamental to children's epistemological development, underlying not just their understanding of evidence, but also their understanding of inference and truth. IS - 2-3 JF - New Ideas in Psychology EP - 144 TI - Theory of mind and epistemological development: the relation between children's second-order false-belief understanding and their ability to reason about evidence VL - 20 SP - 131 KW - tom AU - Astington, Janet AU - Pelletier, Janette AU - Homer, Bruce PY - 2002/0// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0732-118X(02)00005-3 ER -