Preschoolers' Development of Theory of Mind: The Contribution of Understanding Psychological Causality in Stories.

Wakako Sanefuji,Etsuko Haryu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00955

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between children’s abilities to understand causal sequences and another’s false belief. In Experiment 1, we tested 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children (n = 28, 28, 27, and 27, respectively) using false belief and picture sequencing tasks involving mechanical, behavioral, and psychological causality. Understanding causal sequences in mechanical, behavioral, and psychological stories was related to understanding other’s false beliefs. In Experiment 2, children who failed the initial false belief task (n = 50) were reassessed 5 months later. High scorers in the sequencing of the psychological stories in Experiment 1 were more likely to pass the standard false belief task than were the low scorers. Conversely, understanding causal sequences in the mechanical and behavioral stories in Experiment 1 did not predict passing the false belief task in Experiment 2. Thus, children may understand psychological causality before they are able to use it to understand false beliefs.

Highlights

Imagine that a little girl dawdled in a forest on her way to see her grandmother, and told a wolf where she was going
We conducted a longitudinal study and investigated whether children who had successfully sequenced pictures based on psychological causality (TIME 1) would be more likely to pass the standard false belief task 5 months later (TIME 2), compared with those who had failed in the picture-sequencing task at TIME 1
The results of Experiment 1 indicated that the tracking of mechanical, behavioral, and psychological causality was related to understanding other’s false belief

Summary

Introduction

Imagine that a little girl dawdled in a forest on her way to see her grandmother, and told a wolf where she was going. In order to understand this story, children need to understand the connections between such events as the wolf hurrying to the grandmother’s house and that he arrived there before the little girl, as well as those between such events that the grandmother believed that her granddaughter had come and that she opened the door to allow the wolf to come in. The former connection could be called behavioral connection or causality, and the latter, psychological connection or causality

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