False-Belief Task

Children achieve a complete representational theory of the mind (ToM) once they are able to develop a fully-fledged understanding of beliefs. This occurs once they reach between 3 to 4 years of age. (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). Between the ages of 3 years and 18 months, they begin to comprehend visual perspective taking. Appearance–reality distinction is a very important achievement concerning this domain. In an effort of achieving this milestone, researches have developed various false-belief task (Alibali & Siegler, 2005). An example is one that involves two children, Anne and Sally, who have a box and basket respectively. Sally places a marble in her basket before leaving the room. Anne then transfers the marble to the box. The experimenter asks the child where Sally will choose look for the marble upon her return. If the child answers that Sally will look into the basket, she passes; however, if she says the box, the child will fail (Sodian, Taylor, Harris & Perner, 1991). To pass, a child should be able to comprehend that people’s mental representation of a situation can be different from their own.

A child’s poor performance on false-belief task may be because she has a limited beginning understanding. Her comprehension is fragile, information processing among other limitations obstruct its expression. A child rarely accesses it spontaneously in her everyday life. Lastly, her understanding may be different to that possessed by an older child (Flavell & Miller, 1998).

Additional research and experimentation has found that various factors can enhance a child’s performance on social belief-task.  One of these is the use of nonverbal versions in carrying out the task. Experimental records have shown that nonverbal designs allow children under four years to keep track of the perspective of the protagonist over a course of events (Sodian, Taylor, Harris & Perner, 1991). On the other hand, verbal designs disrupt the perspective-tracking process.

Another factor that enhances ToM development is early bilingualism. Bilinguals have an advantage in carrying out ToM tasks to their counterparts, monolingual. This is because they have better executive inhibitory abilities. The success of bilingual is associated with their enhanced control functions. Monitoring and selecting of languages allows these functions to become well-developed (Astington & Jenkins, 1999).

Preschool teachers should offer nonverbal versions of the task to enhance the students’ performance. The instructions should offer minimal disruption. The reason behind this is that infants can pass verbal false-belief task provided they are allowed to keep track of the protagonists’ perspective without too much disruption.

References

Alibali, M.W. & Siegler, R.S. (2005). Language Development. In J. Gilliand, L. Jewell, & C.

            Sabooni (Eds.), Children’s Thinking (pp. 184-226). Pearson Learning Solutions: Prentice

            Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458. Retrieved February 16, 2014 from

            VitalBook file.

Astington, J.W., & Jenkins, J.M. (1999). A longitudinal study of the relation between language and theory-of-mind development. Development Psychology, 35, 1311-1320

Flavell, J.H., & Miller, P.H. (1998). Social cognition. In D. Kuhn & R.S. Siegler (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 2. Cognition, perception & language (5th ed.). New York: Wiley.

Sodian, B., Taylor, C., Harris, P.L., & Perner, J. (1991). Early deception and the child’s theory of mind . Child development, 62, 468-483.

Wellman, H.M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false belief. Child Development, 72, 655-684.