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Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!

The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different inter...

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Autores principales: Baratgin, Jean, Dubois-Sage, Marion, Jacquet, Baptiste, Stilgenbauer, Jean-Louis, Jamet, Frank
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7719623/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33329255
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.593807
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author Baratgin, Jean
Dubois-Sage, Marion
Jacquet, Baptiste
Stilgenbauer, Jean-Louis
Jamet, Frank
author_facet Baratgin, Jean
Dubois-Sage, Marion
Jacquet, Baptiste
Stilgenbauer, Jean-Louis
Jamet, Frank
author_sort Baratgin, Jean
collection PubMed
description The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: “Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one.” The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as “ignorant” and “slow” but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a “mentor” (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task “Maxi and the chocolate,” either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter.
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spelling pubmed-77196232020-12-15 Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question! Baratgin, Jean Dubois-Sage, Marion Jacquet, Baptiste Stilgenbauer, Jean-Louis Jamet, Frank Front Psychol Psychology The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: “Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one.” The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as “ignorant” and “slow” but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a “mentor” (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task “Maxi and the chocolate,” either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-11-23 /pmc/articles/PMC7719623/ /pubmed/33329255 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.593807 Text en Copyright © 2020 Baratgin, Dubois-Sage, Jacquet, Stilgenbauer and Jamet. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Baratgin, Jean
Dubois-Sage, Marion
Jacquet, Baptiste
Stilgenbauer, Jean-Louis
Jamet, Frank
Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!
title Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!
title_full Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!
title_fullStr Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!
title_full_unstemmed Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!
title_short Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!
title_sort pragmatics in the false-belief task: let the robot ask the question!
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7719623/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33329255
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.593807
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