Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Lydia P. Schidelko, Michael Huemer, Lara M. Schroeder, Anna S. Lueb, Josef Perner, Hannes Rakoczy
Summary: The study tests the pragmatic account of the performance pattern in true belief (TB) control tasks by administering TB and false belief (FB) tasks to 3- to 6-year-olds. The results show a parallel and correlated development in FB and false sign (FS) tasks, replicating the puzzling performance pattern in TB tasks. This supports the pragmatic performance account.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Catherine M. Sayer, Martin J. Doherty
Summary: In two experiments with preschool children, it was found that younger children performed well on a scale model task but poorly on distinguishing objects using spatial layout. Performance was specifically associated with the Copy task but not the False Belief task, thus questioning the general component of understanding relational correspondence in representational understanding.
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Marta Bialecka-Pikul, Arkadiusz Bialek, Magdalena Kosno, Malgorzata Stepien-Nycz, Mateusz Blukacz, Julian Zubek
Summary: The study aimed to construct a developmentally sensitive mindreading scale through testing over 300 Polish children, confirming its reliability and validity, and observing the continuous development of mindreading ability in children aged 1 to 3.5 years.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Pamela Barone, Lisa Wenzel, Marina Proft, Hannes Rakoczy
Summary: This study aimed to answer three questions regarding the implicit measures of false belief understanding in young children. The researchers conducted a conceptual replication of a previous task and measured children's anticipatory looking and interactive behaviors. The findings showed that children's looking and interactive behavior differed according to the agent's true or false belief, but they mostly did not differentiate between false belief and ignorance conditions in measures of anticipation and uncertainty. Furthermore, the implicit measures were related to each other but not largely related to performance in the standard false belief task.
ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Pamela Barone, Antoni Gomila
Summary: Research challenges the idea that false belief attribution develops at 4 years old, suggesting evidence of this ability in infants as young as the second year. Tasks focusing on object and agent positions, trajectories, and attention are necessary for passing these tasks, suggesting a possible explanation in terms of second-person attributions. These attributions may also explain mentalizing abilities in primates as shown in similar tasks.
WILEY INTERDISCIPLINARY REVIEWS-COGNITIVE SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Jonathan Phillips, Wesley Buckwalter, Fiery Cushman, Ori Friedman, Alia Martin, John Turri, Laurie Santos, Joshua Knobe
Summary: Research indicates that nonhuman primates attribute knowledge but not belief, knowledge representations emerge earlier in human development than belief representations, and individuals may maintain the capacity to represent knowledge even when belief representation is disrupted. The attribution of knowledge may be automatic and quicker than belief attributions.
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Ciara M. Greene, Gillian Murphy
Summary: In recent years, there has been a surge of research on misinformation conducted through experiments with participants exposed to fake news stories. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of debriefing procedures in eradicating the influence of misinformation. The results showed that debriefing successfully reduced false memories and beliefs for both previously-seen and novel fake stories, indicating a wider impact on participants' acceptance of misinformation.
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Michael Huemer, Lara M. Schroeder, Sarah J. Leikard, Sara Gruber, Anna Mangstl, Josef Perner
Summary: This study systematically investigated a puzzling phenomenon in the development of theory of mind in children and identified the underlying reasons behind it. The research found that some false belief achievers make errors in knowledge tasks, but these errors can be reduced when they understand the protagonist's awareness of the relevant event.
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Steven Samuel, Geoff G. Cole, Madeline J. Eacott, Rebecca Edwardson, Hattie Course
Summary: This study found that people process others' false beliefs faster than equivalent false photos, supporting the idea of specialized processes for mental states. However, there was no evidence that people process others' true beliefs about something faster than their own personal knowledge about the same event. Possible alternative explanations, such as practice effects, cannot be ruled out.
Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Ramon de Elia, Juan Jose Ruiz, Veronica Francce, Pedro Lohigorry, Marcos Saucedo, Matias Menalled, Daniela D'Amen
Summary: This work introduces a formalism to emphasize the decision-making process in the setup of early warning systems (EWSs) and its impact on loss avoidance for end users. The formalism combines EWS verification scores with traditional risk expressions from the user's point of view, providing a conceptual framework for understanding various perspectives involved in the EWS chain. The proposed decision model can help gain insight into the benefits experienced by users and promote transparency and dialogue between issuers and users in order to reduce losses.
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Xiaowen Zhang, Peng Zhou
Summary: The study found that 4-year-old children were able to distinguish between different types of mental verbs based on verb factivity, and that using strong negatively biased mental verbs improved children's understanding of belief-reporting sentences. This indicates that linguistic cues, such as verb factivity, play a role in facilitating children's comprehension of belief-reporting sentences.
Article
History & Philosophy Of Science
Miloud Belkoniene
Summary: This paper examines the argument against the requirement of justification for understanding and concludes that justification remains a plausible requirement for understanding.
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Silke Brandt, Stephanie Hargreaves, Anna Theakston
Summary: The type of task used is a key factor that affects children's understanding of false belief and complement-clause constructions. In this study, we investigated whether children understand that a story character's belief can be true or false in an implicit/indirect way, and whether this understanding influences their linguistic structure choice for describing or explaining the character's belief-based action. We also measured children's understanding of false belief in explicit false-belief tasks. The results indicated that task characteristics and individual differences in short-term memory affect children's ability to demonstrate false-belief understanding and to express this understanding linguistically.
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Yan Li, Zhiwei Liu, Xiping Liu
Summary: Research has shown that deceptive responses can disrupt item and source memories, and previous studies often restricted participants' response options. Additionally, destination memory has received little attention in prior research. Using a real-life scenario, this study examined the effects of deception on memory. Participants were given the choice to tell the truth or lie during an interview and were encouraged to respond naturally. Results revealed impaired source and destination memories for liars, while item memories remained unaffected.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH-PSYCHOLOGISCHE FORSCHUNG
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Sean Trott, Cameron Jones, Tyler Chang, James Michaelov, Benjamin Bergen
Summary: The study examines the language exposure hypothesis and finds that language exposure can partly explain how humans develop the ability to understand others' mental states, but there are also other mechanisms at play.