Browsing by Subject "False belief"

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Open Access
The development of preschoolers’ understanding of culpability
(2020-06) Alimujiang, Reyihanguli
The effect of outcome and intention on children’s moral judgment is much debated in developmental literature. Combining this debate with norm understanding literature we investigated children’s ability to understand intentions and norm violators’ culpability in a given situation. 4-year-olds were randomly assigned to two different groups that involve a puppet either intentionally violates a norm or violates the norm based on a false belief. Further, we investigated other sociocognitive abilities that may influence children’s understanding of intentions and culpability. Theory of mind Battery (Wellman & Liu, 2004), Change in location False Belief Task (Wimmer & Perner, 1983) and standard Executive Functions task (Zelazo, 2006) are tested in each participant. Regarding protest behavior during transgression and tattling behavior after transgression as salient markers of children’s understanding of intention and culpability, the result shows that children tattle more when a norm violation is done with an intention to violate the rule as compared to the same norm violation that is done based on a false belief about the situation. In other words, 4 year-olds do understand intentions and decide transgressors culpability by incorporating the mental state of the transgressor. Moreover, children who could not pass the explicit false belief tasks show the same pattern in tattling while the ones who passed at least one of the explicit false belief tasks show no difference in tattling among conditions. Taken together, 4-year-olds understand and comprehend intention information especially when they do not have explicit false belief understanding.
Open Access
Self/other differentiation based on present VS past tense cues in Turkish culture
(2021-07) Çelik, Salih Bartuğ
The literature provides various studies that showed human beings’ implicit awareness of their own and others’ mental states (i.e., implicit Theory of Mind, ToM abilities). However, how much these implicit processes are qualitatively different from the explicit ToM abilities is an open question to investigate. To explore this issue, Bradford et al. (2015; 2018) conducted a study that showed it was easier for adults to adopt “self” perspectives than “other” perspectives. Importantly, participants found shifting from other- to self-oriented perspectives easier than shifting from self- to other. Bradford et al. concluded that self-oriented mental states might be automatically processed when thinking about others but that other-oriented mental state attribution requires consciously controlled processes. In the current study, we explored whether the task demands from Bradford et al.’s study affect participants’ performances across shifting conditions. Self-oriented perspectives might be always processed faster than other-oriented perspectives because they might include more concrete cues (e.g., past and personal experiences). To provide more concrete cues for the other-oriented perspective questions, participants were presented with Bradford et al.’s paradigm using the Turkish past-tense with the direct evidential marker, -DI. This manipulation allowed investigating whether other-oriented perspectives could be processed as fast as self-oriented perspectives. In order to also investigate the impact of cultural factors on the participants’ performances, an Individuals-Collectivism survey was included. The results of the study showed similar findings with Bradford et al. (2015; 2018) in that participants more easily shifted from other- to self-oriented perspectives compared to self- to other-oriented perspectives. The results were discussed based on the current approaches (i.e., lean, middle-ground, and rich accounts) to social cognition.
Open Access
Social, cognitive, and social cognitive influences on children’s lie-telling
(2023-08) Dönmez, Ferhan Kübra
Lie-telling as a verbal form of deception may involve intentionally implanting false information in the mind of others. Lie-telling and the subsequent ability to maintain them (i.e., semantic leakage control) were examined to understand their developmental trajectory and the influences behind these capacities. One hundred twenty-one parent-child dyads (aged 3-to-6-year-olds) participated. Children were tested on inhibitory control, false belief, and a lie-telling task. Parents were measured on their use of lying to their children to control behavior, explicit socialization of lie-telling, and more general parenting practices. To test children's lie-telling abilities, they were instructed not to peek at a toy in the experimenter's absence; later, they were asked: whether they peeked (initial lie-telling), the toy's identity, and how they knew the identity if they answered correctly. Children's initial lie-telling behavior did not change with age; however, older children showed significantly higher semantic leakage control. Inhibitory control was not associated with lie-telling. Additionally, false belief understanding was not related to lie-telling behavior, but children with higher levels of semantic leakage control had greater false belief understanding. However, when controlled for age, this relation became nonsignificant. Finally, none of the parenting variables predicted semantic leakage control. However, aspects of parental socialization (i.e., encouragement and modeling of lie-telling, problematic lying, and consequences for lying) predicted lie-telling behavior. These findings suggest that children might be influenced by parental socialization of lie-telling for their decision to lie; however, their ability to maintain these lies may rely more heavily on their cognitive and social cognitive capacities.