Does children’s developing understanding of other people’s minds emerge gradually over
many years?
The question of whether children gradually develop an understanding of the minds of others
over many years is one of major interest in the field of developmental psychology. This
essay will examine different perspectives on the theory of mind. This refers to
understanding the differences and similarities between a child's own thoughts and the
thoughts of others. Having a theory of mind allows us to engage in everyday social
interactions through helping us understand that others have unique beliefs and desires that
are different from our own (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). It has also sparked much debate
among theorists as to whether children develop the minds of others gradually over many
years. Empirical theorists suggest that the theory of mind exists at an early stage of
development and that social and environmental influences may help it gradually mature
during childhood. In contrast, Nativists claim that ‘children are born with substantial
knowledge of evolutionarily important domains’ (Spelke & Kinzler, 2007). They also argue
that theory of mind development undergoes a rapid conceptual shift around the age of four.
Nevertheless, most research is consistent with the empiricist view that children’s
development of other people’s minds occurs gradually over many years, instead of being
stage-like.
An experiment conducted by Perner, Leekam and Wimmer (1987) is consistent with the
possibility that children’s developing understanding of other people’s mind is stage-like.
They did this by presenting children with the problem of false beliefs that others believe
that what the child knows is true. The question was whether the child thought that others
would act according to their false beliefs or whether they would act according to the child's
correct understanding of the situation. They did this through developing a new test known
as the ‘deceptive box task’. Infants were shown a box that had a picture of a type of
chocolate- ‘Smarties’. The experimenters then asked the infants what they thought was
inside the box. As you would assume, they said ‘Smarties’. Next, the experimenter opened
the box showing that it contained pencils. Most five-year-olds admitted their surprise. When
they were asked what another child would say if put in the same position as them, they said
that the child would answer ‘Smarties’. However, this was not the case for many three-year-
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, olds as most of them claimed that they always knew what was inside the box. They also
predicted that if another child was shown the box, that child would also believe that the box
contained pencils. Thus, the results indicate that children over the age of five have acquired
a basic understanding of the mind. They can then predict behaviour based on their
assessment of that person's beliefs. However, the three-year-olds had a challenging time
understanding that others are acting on their beliefs, even if those beliefs are different from
what the child already knows. Additionally, this finding is substantiated by a review of 178
studies of children’s understanding of false beliefs which presented similar results with
different forms of the problem, different questions, and different societies (Wellman, Cross,
& Watson, 2001). This allows researchers to generalise their results amongst the population,
increasing its population validity and making the study more representative. This is further
supported by another cross-cultural study where children in Canada, India, Peru, Thailand,
and Samoa were presented with false belief problems. The results disclosed that children’s
accuracy in all societies aged between 3 and 5, significantly improved. Accuracy increased
from 14% correct for 3 years old to 85% correct for 5 years old. No country had more than
25% correct answers for 3-year-olds, and no country had less than 73% correct answers for
5-year-olds (Callaghan et al., 2005). Consequently, implying that a new concept of belief is
acquired at around the age of 4, which is consistent with the view that children’s developing
understanding of other people’s minds is stage-like and does not gradually emerge over
many years.
There is, however, compelling evidence to suggest that there is more to a child’s theory of
mind than passing the false belief task. Some researchers believe that the task is too hard
for one and two-year-olds, as they ‘lack sufficient attentional and linguistic resources to
cope with the experiment’ (Baron-Cohen et al, 1985). Therefore, numerous investigators
have modified the false belief task. For instance, investigators made the questions simpler
(Gopnik & Astington, 1988), gave children a memory aid (German & Leslie, 2000) and so on.
As a result of these studies, they revealed that such altered false belief tasks were
commonly passed by three-year-olds. Therefore, this acknowledges the claim that children
under the age of four have complex conceptual abilities to understand that beliefs may be
false, but that this ability is distorted by inefficient processing power (Garber et al, 2016).
This highlights the fact that there are probably no drastic conceptual changes around the
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