PSYC 3440 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5-6: Inductive Reasoning, Precondition, Deductive Reasoning
Document Summary
Children aged 4 years and older pass false belief tasks and children under 3 years fail them. Theories of theory of mind: representational mind theory, ability to understand false beliefs emerges between 4-6 as a result of new cognitive skill the ability to represent two different epistemic states. Children under four are unable to mentally represent both reality and a false view of reality at the same time. The inability to hold two conflicting mental representations is explained as a lack of understanding of mental representations children have not acquired the concept of meta-representation: meta-representation: a representation of a representation. It involves the ability to distinguish between what is being represented and how it is being represented: representational mind theory: the theory that domain-general representational abilities underlie the theory of mind. Around 4 children come to understand meta- representation and are thus able to understand false beliefs.
