Taking account of others' goals in social information use: Developmental changes in 3- to 7-year-old children.

ABSTRACT: The ability to take mental states such as goals into account when interpreting others' behavior has been proposed to be what sets human use of social information apart from that of other animals. If so, children's social information use would be expected to change as their understanding of others' mental states develops. We explored age-related changes in 3- to 7-year-old children's ability to strategically use social information by taking into account another's goal when it was, or was not, aligned with their own. Children observed as a puppet demonstrator selected a capsule, peeked inside, and chose to accept or reject it, following which children made their own selection. Children were able to account for others' conflicting motivations from around 4 years of age and reliably inferred t

SUBMITTER: Blakey KH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8784822 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature