期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2016
卷号：113
期号：47
页码：13360-13365
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1609203113
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：SignificanceAmong social scientists interested in the development of childrens ability to infer mental states, an enduring controversy concerns false-belief understanding. When tested with traditional tasks, which require answering questions about the likely actions of agents with false beliefs, children do not succeed until age 4 y or later. When given nontraditional tasks without such questions, however, children succeed much earlier. Are traditional tasks more difficult because they tap an advanced form of false-belief understanding or because they impose greater processing demands? Our experiments support the latter possibility: 2.5-y-old toddlers succeeded at a traditional task when response-generation and inhibitory-control demands were both reduced. Traditional tasks thus assess the same form of false-belief understanding as nontraditional tasks but impose additional processing demands. When tested with traditional false-belief tasks, which require answering a standard question about the likely behavior of an agent with a false belief, children perform below chance until age 4 y or later. When tested without such questions, however, children give evidence of false-belief understanding much earlier. Are traditional tasks difficult because they tap a more advanced form of false-belief understanding (fundamental-change view) or because they impose greater processing demands (processing-demands view)? Evidence that young children succeed at traditional false-belief tasks when processing demands are reduced would support the latter view. In prior research, reductions in inhibitory-control demands led to improvements in young childrens performance, but often only to chance (instead of below-chance) levels. Here we examined whether further reductions in processing demands might lead to success. We speculated that: (i) young children could respond randomly in a traditional low-inhibition task because their limited information-processing resources are overwhelmed by the total concurrent processing demands in the task; and (ii) these demands include those from the response-generation process activated by the standard question. This analysis suggested that 2.5-y-old toddlers might succeed at a traditional low-inhibition task if response-generation demands were also reduced via practice trials. As predicted, toddlers performed above chance following two response-generation practice trials; toddlers failed when these trials either were rendered less effective or were used in a high-inhibition task. These results support the processing-demands view: Even toddlers succeed at a traditional false-belief task when overall processing demands are reduced.
关键词：theory of mind ; psychological reasoning ; false-belief understanding ; inhibitory control ; information-processing resources
