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How do children overcome their pragmatic performance problems in the true belief task? The role of advanced pragmatics and higher-order theory of mind
The true belief (TB) control condition of the classical location-change task asks children to ascribe a veridical belief to an agent to predict her action (analog to the false belief (FB) condition to test Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities). Studies that administered TB tasks to a broad age range of ch...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9045612/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35476636 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266959 |
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author | Schidelko, Lydia Paulin Proft, Marina Rakoczy, Hannes |
author_facet | Schidelko, Lydia Paulin Proft, Marina Rakoczy, Hannes |
author_sort | Schidelko, Lydia Paulin |
collection | PubMed |
description | The true belief (TB) control condition of the classical location-change task asks children to ascribe a veridical belief to an agent to predict her action (analog to the false belief (FB) condition to test Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities). Studies that administered TB tasks to a broad age range of children yielded surprising findings of a U-shaped performance curve in this seemingly trivial task. Children before age four perform competently in the TB condition. Children who begin to solve the FB condition at age four, however, fail the TB condition and only from around age 10, children succeed again. New evidence suggests that the decline in performance around age four reflects pragmatic confusions caused by the triviality of the task rather than real competence deficits in ToM. Based on these results, it can be hypothesized that the recovery of performance at the end of the U-shaped curve reflects underlying developments in children’s growing pragmatic awareness. The aim of the current set of studies, therefore, was to test whether the developmental change at the end of the U-shaped performance curve can be explained by changes in children’s pragmatic understanding and by more general underlying developmental changes in recursive ToM or recursive thinking in general. Results from Study 1 (N = 81, 6–10 years) suggest that children’s recursive ToM, but not their advanced pragmatic understanding or general recursive thinking abilities predict their TB performance. However, this relationship could not be replicated in Study 2 (N = 87, 6–10 years) and Study 3 (N = 64, 6–10 years) in which neither recursive ToM nor advanced pragmatic understanding or recursive thinking explained children’s performance in the TB task. The studies therefore remain inconclusive regarding explanations for the end of the U-shaped performance curve. Future research needs to investigate potential pragmatic and general cognitive foundations of this developmental change more thoroughly. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9045612 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-90456122022-04-28 How do children overcome their pragmatic performance problems in the true belief task? The role of advanced pragmatics and higher-order theory of mind Schidelko, Lydia Paulin Proft, Marina Rakoczy, Hannes PLoS One Research Article The true belief (TB) control condition of the classical location-change task asks children to ascribe a veridical belief to an agent to predict her action (analog to the false belief (FB) condition to test Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities). Studies that administered TB tasks to a broad age range of children yielded surprising findings of a U-shaped performance curve in this seemingly trivial task. Children before age four perform competently in the TB condition. Children who begin to solve the FB condition at age four, however, fail the TB condition and only from around age 10, children succeed again. New evidence suggests that the decline in performance around age four reflects pragmatic confusions caused by the triviality of the task rather than real competence deficits in ToM. Based on these results, it can be hypothesized that the recovery of performance at the end of the U-shaped curve reflects underlying developments in children’s growing pragmatic awareness. The aim of the current set of studies, therefore, was to test whether the developmental change at the end of the U-shaped performance curve can be explained by changes in children’s pragmatic understanding and by more general underlying developmental changes in recursive ToM or recursive thinking in general. Results from Study 1 (N = 81, 6–10 years) suggest that children’s recursive ToM, but not their advanced pragmatic understanding or general recursive thinking abilities predict their TB performance. However, this relationship could not be replicated in Study 2 (N = 87, 6–10 years) and Study 3 (N = 64, 6–10 years) in which neither recursive ToM nor advanced pragmatic understanding or recursive thinking explained children’s performance in the TB task. The studies therefore remain inconclusive regarding explanations for the end of the U-shaped performance curve. Future research needs to investigate potential pragmatic and general cognitive foundations of this developmental change more thoroughly. Public Library of Science 2022-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9045612/ /pubmed/35476636 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266959 Text en © 2022 Schidelko et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Schidelko, Lydia Paulin Proft, Marina Rakoczy, Hannes How do children overcome their pragmatic performance problems in the true belief task? The role of advanced pragmatics and higher-order theory of mind |
title | How do children overcome their pragmatic performance problems in the true belief task? The role of advanced pragmatics and higher-order theory of mind |
title_full | How do children overcome their pragmatic performance problems in the true belief task? The role of advanced pragmatics and higher-order theory of mind |
title_fullStr | How do children overcome their pragmatic performance problems in the true belief task? The role of advanced pragmatics and higher-order theory of mind |
title_full_unstemmed | How do children overcome their pragmatic performance problems in the true belief task? The role of advanced pragmatics and higher-order theory of mind |
title_short | How do children overcome their pragmatic performance problems in the true belief task? The role of advanced pragmatics and higher-order theory of mind |
title_sort | how do children overcome their pragmatic performance problems in the true belief task? the role of advanced pragmatics and higher-order theory of mind |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9045612/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35476636 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266959 |
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