Coull, Greig J., Leekam, Susan R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1122-0135 and Bennett, Mark R.
2006.
Simplifying second-order belief attribution: what facilitates children's performance on measures of conceptual understanding?
Social Development
15
(3)
, pp. 548-563.
10.1111/j.1467-9507.2006.00340.x
|
Abstract
This study investigated how 4- to 7-year-old children’s second-order belief attribution might be facilitated by either reducing information processing or varying the sequence of task questions. In Experiment 1, compared with Perner and Wimmer’s (1985) original second-order false-belief task, a new task with reduced information-processing demands promoted better second-order reasoning. In Experiment 2, half the stories included a second-order ignorance question before a second-order belief question. The ignorance question promoted second-order belief understanding, superseding the improvement induced by lowered processing demands. Together, the findings suggest that second-order belief performance can be facilitated if children focus on the concept of ignorance during the sequence of questioning.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Publication |
| Status: | Published |
| Schools: | Schools > Psychology |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | theory of mind; second-order beliefs; second-order ignorance; development |
| Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell |
| ISSN: | 0961-205X |
| Last Modified: | 20 Oct 2022 09:30 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/32233 |
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