Are Infants' Theory-of-Mind Abilities Well Integrated? Implicit Understanding of Intentions, Desires, and Beliefs

The development of theory of mind (ToM) in infancy has been mainly documented through studies conducted on a single age group with a single task. Very few studies have examined ToM abilities other than false belief, and very few studies have used a within-subjects design. During 2 testing sessions,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cognition and development 2016-10, Vol.17 (5), p.683-698
Main Authors: Yott, Jessica, Poulin-Dubois, Diane
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Differences
Babies
Beliefs
Child development
Child psychology
Coding
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive Ability
Comparative Analysis
Correlation
Eye Movements
Infant Behavior
Infants
Intention
Reliability
Statistical Analysis
Task Analysis
Theory of Mind
Young Children
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Summary:The development of theory of mind (ToM) in infancy has been mainly documented through studies conducted on a single age group with a single task. Very few studies have examined ToM abilities other than false belief, and very few studies have used a within-subjects design. During 2 testing sessions, infants aged 14 and 18 months old were administered ToM tasks based on the violation-of-expectation paradigm which measured intention, true belief, desire, and false-belief understanding. Infants' looking times at the congruent and incongruent test trials of each task were compared, and results revealed that both groups of infants looked significantly longer at the incongruent trial on the intention and true-belief tasks. In contrast, only 18-month-olds looked significantly longer at the incongruent trial of the desire task and neither age group looked significantly longer at the incongruent trial on the false-belief task. Additionally, intertask comparisons revealed only a significant relation between performance on the false-belief and intention task. These findings suggest that implicit intention and true-belief understanding emerge earlier than desire and false-belief understanding and that ToM constructs do not appear to be integrated, as is the case for explicit ToM.
ISSN:1524-8372
1532-7647
DOI:10.1080/15248372.2015.1086771