How do children overcome their pragmatic performance problems in the true belief task? The role of advanced pragmatics and higher-order theory of mind.

ABSTRACT: 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 th

SUBMITTER: Schidelko LP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9045612 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature