False-belief reasoning from 3 to 92 years of age.

Daniel M Bernstein,Jessica A Sommerville,Ashley L Fischer,Alisha Coolin,Wendy Loken Thornton,Sam Gilbert

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0185345

Daniel M Bernstein, Jessica A Sommerville + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185345

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Abstract

False-belief reasoning, defined as the ability to reason about another person’s beliefs and appreciate that beliefs can differ from reality, is an important aspect of perspective taking. We tested 266 individuals, at various ages ranging from 3 to 92 years, on a continuous measure of false-belief reasoning (the Sandbox task). All age groups had difficulty suppressing their own knowledge when estimating what a naïve person knew. After controlling for task-specific memory, our results showed similar false-belief reasoning abilities across the preschool years and from older childhood to younger adulthood, followed by a small reduction in this ability from younger to older adulthood. These results highlight the relative similarity in false-belief reasoning abilities at different developmental periods across the lifespan.

Highlights

Successful perspective taking requires the ability to represent and reason about another’s beliefs and feelings
The current study focuses on one type of perspective taking: false-belief reasoning, defined as the ability to reason about another person’s beliefs and appreciate that beliefs can differ from reality
Using the Sandbox task, a continuous change-of-location task with multiple trials that controls for task-specific memory, we derived a measure of egocentric bias

Summary

Introduction

Successful perspective taking requires the ability to represent and reason about another’s beliefs and feelings. Central to social cognition and behavior across development, perspective taking relates to variability in outcomes such as academic achievement and socio-emotional adjustment [1,2,3]. Understanding how perspective taking differs across ages is important. The current study focuses on one type of perspective taking: false-belief reasoning, defined as the ability to reason about another person’s beliefs and appreciate that beliefs can differ from reality. False-belief reasoning is a central component of theory of mind (ToM) [4]. While past research with children has revealed a significant shift in the ability to appreciate false beliefs during the preschool years, less is known about differences in false-belief reasoning from preschool to old age [5, 6]

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