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The ontogeny of intent‐based normative judgments
No full textWhen evaluating norm transgressions, children begin to show some sensitivity to the agent's intentionality around preschool age. However, the specific developmental trajectories of different forms of such intent-based judgments and their cognitive underpinnings are still largely unclear. The current studies, therefore, systematically investigated the development of intent-based normative judgments as a function of two crucial factors: (a) the type of the agent's mental state underlying a normative transgression, and (b) the type of norm transgressed (moral versus conventional). In Study 1, 5- and 7-year-old children as well as adults were presented with vignettes in which an agent transgressed either a moral or a conventional norm. Crucially, she did so either intentionally, accidentally (not intentionally at all) or unknowingly (intentionally, yet based on a false belief regarding the outcome). The results revealed two asymmetries in children's intent-based judgments. First, all age groups showed greater sensitivity to mental state information for moral compared to conventional transgressions. Second, children's (but not adults') normative judgments were more sensitive to the agent's intention than to her belief. Two subsequent studies investigated this asymmetry in children more closely and found evidence that it is based on performance factors: children are able in principle to take into account an agent's false belief in much the same way as her intentions, yet do not make belief-based judgments in many existing tasks (like that of Study 1) due to their inferential complexity. Taken together, these findings contribute to a more systematic understanding of the development of intent-based normative judgment
Children's understanding of the aspectuality of intentions
No full textWhen children come to grasp the concept of intention is a central question in theory of mind research. Existing studies, however, present a puzzling picture. On the one hand, infants distinguish between intentional and accidental actions. On the other hand, previous work suggests that until 8 years of age children do not yet understand an essential property of intentions-their aspectuality. Intentions are aspectual in the sense that they refer to objects and actions only under specific aspects. For example, Oedipus married Jocasta without knowing that she was his mother. Thus, he intentionally married Jocasta but did not intentionally marry his mother. However, the negative findings from these studies may indicate performance limitations rather than competence limitations. The rationale of the current set of studies, therefore, was to test children's understanding of the aspectuality of intentions in a simplified, cognitively less demanding design. The participants, 5- and 6-year-olds (Study 1) and 4-year-olds (Study 2), were involved in simple games where they (or another agent) intentionally acted on objects that had an obvious first identity and a hidden second identity. Children either did or did not know about the toy's second identity at the moment of acting. After their actions, children were asked about their intentions regarding the toys' different identities. Results revealed that the 5- and 6-year-olds, but not the 4-year-olds, systematically considered how they (or another agent) represented the objects when making intentionality judgments. Thus, an understanding of aspectual intentions seems to develop at around the late preschool years-much earlier than previously assumed
Is knowledge ascription primary relative to belief ascription? Evidence from reaction time studies
No full textIn our folk psychology, which cognitive attitude that we ascribe is primary? Traditionally, in epistemology and in Theory of Mind research in cognitive science, it was assumed that belief is the primary cognitive attitude, and that knowledge is secondary, derived from belief (as justified true belief). More recent Knowledge First Epistemology and Factive Theory of Mind accounts claim the revers: knowledge ascription is primary relative to belief ascription. Various sources of evidence are adduced in favor of these ac-counts, among them reaction time asymmetries: adults have been found to be faster to ascribe knowledge than belief to other agents. The present study tested whether these effects are robust and really indicate an asymmetry between knowledge and belief ascription. An alternative possibility is that subjects were merely faster in ascribing simpler, non-propositional states of information access relative to full-fledged, meta-representational, propositional belief ascription. To test for this possibility, subjects were asked about the knowledge or beliefs of agents in situations that did or did not involve fine-grained aspectual scenarios that require full-blown propositional belief and knowledge ascription. Across three studies, subjects (N~ 5000) were faster to ascribe knowledge than belief across conditions and task variations that controlled for pragmatic and lexical frequency effects. Taken together, these studies present converging evidence that knowledge ascriptionis primary relative to belief ascription and thus speak for Factive Theory of Mind accounts
Children’s Developing Understanding of the Subjectivity of Intentions – A Case of “Advanced Theory of Mind”
No full textYoung children give transgressors the benefit of the doubt in the absence of intention information
No full textYoung children consider transgressors’ intentions in their normative judgments. But how do children evaluate moral transgressions in the absence of information about a transgressor’s intent? Across three studies, 5-year-old German-speaking children (N=216, 108 girls, 108 boys) observed negative moral outcomes in which the transgressor was either smiling (happy condition), shocked (surprised condition) or was without expression, in that their face was left entirely blank (no-expression condition). Children then reasoned in pairs (Study 1 and 2) or independently (Study 3) about the intentional structure of each transgression. In Study 1, dyads concluded the transgressions were intentional in the happy condition, accidental in the surprised condition, and were at-chance in the no-expression condition. In Studies 2 and 3, methodological changes meant children concluded the transgressions were accidental in the no-expression condition and were at-chance in the happy condition. When intention information was thus unavailable, 5-year-olds preferred to ascribe positive intentions to transgressors devoid of all expression and give them the benefit of the doubt
Young Children Demonstrate Improved Metacognitive Competence in Social Contexts
No full textMetacognition – the capacity to represent and reflect upon our knowledge and its sources – is fundamental for higher cognition and learning. Yet, developmental research suggests that metacognition emerges surprisingly late, not before school age. However, this research has assumed that metacognition is optimized for private reflection and therefore tested children’s metacognitive judgments in individual settings. In contrast, recent theoretical approaches propose that metacognition may have a primarily social function and should therefore become most evident in socio-communicative contexts. To test this, we conducted two preregistered studies (N = 130) in which 3- and 5-year-old children participated in a social version of a well-established metacognition task (partial ignorance task). Children had to communicate their uncertainty towards a cooperative partner who relied on their advice. Even 3-year-olds demonstrated metacognitive competence under these conditions: They spontaneously and explicitly expressed uncertainty when they were partially ignorant, but not when they were knowledgeable. Two preregistered control studies (N = 65) confirmed that the enhanced metacognitive performance in the first two studies was indeed mainly due to the socio-communicative context rather than other factors. These findings support the claim that metacognition is primarily a socio-cognitive capacity
Do children understand desires before they understand beliefs? A comparison of 3-year-olds’ grasp of incompatible desires, competitive games and false beliefs
No full textAdults and Children Engage in Subtle and Fine‐Grained Action Interpretation and Evaluation in Moral Dilemmas
No full textAbstract Understanding the actions of others is fundamental for human social life. It builds on a grasp of the subjective intentionality behind behavior: one action comprises different things simultaneously (e.g., moving their arm, turning on the light) but which of these constitute intentional actions, in contrast to merely foreseen side‐effects (e.g., increasing the electricity bill), depends on the description under which the agent represents the acts. She may be acting intentionally only under the description “turning on the light,” but did not turn on the light in order to increase the electricity bill. In preregistered studies ( N = 620), we asked how adults and children engage in such complex subjective action interpretation and evaluation in moral dilemmas. To capture the deep structure of subjects' representations of the intentional structures of actions, we derived “act trees” from their response patterns to questions about the acts. Results suggest that people systematically distinguish between intended main and merely foreseen side‐effects in their moral and intentionality judgments, even when main and side‐effects were closely related and the latter were harmful. Additional experimental conditions suggest that, when given ambiguous information, the majority of subjects assume that agents act with beneficial main intentions. This “good intention prior” was so strong that participants attributed good intentions even when the harmful action was no longer necessary to resolve the dilemma (Study 2). These methods provide promising new ways to investigate in more subtle and fine‐grained ways how reasoners parse, interpret, and evaluate complex actions
Actions do not speak louder than words in an interactive false belief task
No full textOpen-Access-Publikationsfonds 202
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