ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1991.tb00870.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

We investigated preschool children's understanding of mind and emotion by examining their understanding that emotions such as happiness and surprise depend on the actor's desires and beliefs. We report four investigations: a study of 3‐year‐olds' ratings of actors' happiness and surprise, a natural language analysis of adults' use of the wordsurprisein conversation to a preschool child, and two studies of 3‐and 4‐year‐olds' abilities to explain the causes of desire‐dependent and belief‐dependent emotional reactions, such as happiness and surprise respectively. We demonstrate that children as young as 3 years appropriately understand the relevant mental states underlying happiness, sadness, surprise and curiosity, although they misunderstand the usage of some related lexical terms, especiallysurprise.The findings are discussed with regard to the early development of children's understanding of emotion and their understanding of mind, including children's early understanding of the notion of belief and their ability to distinguish beliefs

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1991.tb00871.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This study looks at two emotions that are determined by whether a person's mental state matches or mismatches the state of the world. Results show that children from 3 years understand that being ‘pleased’ is a function of the match or mismatch between desire and reality. That is between what a person wants and what a person gets. A structurally similar problem is presented by the emotion ‘surprise’. ‘Surprise’ is a function of the match or mismatch between belief and reality. That is between what a person believes or expects to be the case and what actually is the case. It is shown that ‘surprise’ is not understood until children are 5 years old at the earliest. This developmental discrepancy can partly be explained by the fact that ‘surprise’ requires an understanding of belief as a misrepresentation. This is not typically understood before children reach 4 years of age. However, children younger than 4 years can understand ‘pleased’ as the result of reaching or not reaching a desired situation. Results also show that it is not until 5 years of age that children understand ‘happiness’ when ‘happiness’ is made dependent on belief about reality and not on reality itself. The fact that children understand ‘surprise’ and belief‐based ‘happiness’ later than 4 years indicates a general lag between understanding b

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1991.tb00872.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1991.tb00873.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The social processes implicated in the early development of children's talk about desires, feelings and mental states were studied by analysing the content and pragmatic context of naturally occurring conversations at home. Six second‐born children were observed with their mothers and older siblings at two‐month intervals from 24 to 36 months. In addition to increases in the frequency with which children referred to internal states, developmental changes were noted in the content and context of their talk. These included: more frequent references to others' inner states, increased use of inner state turns in reflective discussions and in efforts to manipulate the feelings and behaviour of others, and more frequent references to the causes and consequences of inner states. Parallel changes were noted in mothers' conversations about inner states; maternal references to the thoughts, feelings and desires of those other than the child increased, and their use of these terms in behaviour‐controlling contexts decreased. Results highlight the role of social interaction in children's developing understanding of inner s

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1991.tb00874.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This study investigated how children detect the attitude behind irony and distinguish it from the attitude conveyed by a white lie. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) the ability to distinguish the second‐order intentions of the liar vs. ironist (i.e. what each wants the listener to know) should be a prerequisite for the ability to distinguish ironic from deceptive attitude; (2) the presence of distinctive intonations (sarcastic *** sincere) should facilitate the distinction between ironic and deceptive attitude. Five‐ to 7‐year‐olds heard two stories which ended in either a deceptive or an ironic statement. Children distinguished between the stories in two ways:(a)in terms of whether the speaker wanted the listener to believe him or not (second‐order intention judgement);(b)in terms of whether the speaker was being mean or nice (attitude judgement). In one condition, the final utterances were distinguished by intonation (sarcastic for the irony, sincere for the lie); in the other condition, the utterances were spoken identically, without intonation, in the form of an indirect quote. Results supported the first but not the second hypothesis. Almost all children who failed to make correct second‐order judgements also failed to distinguish which speaker was being mean (ironist) and which was being nice (white liar). However, those who succeeded on the second‐order question but failed the attitude question were equally distributed across the intonation and no‐intonation conditions. Thus, for children of this age, intonation failed to facilitate the ability to distinguish the negative attitude conveyed by irony from the positive attitude conveyed

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1991.tb00875.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Five‐ and 9‐year‐olds heard stories in which a speaker described an object s***he wanted a listener to fetch. The listener found an object which was either slightly or grossly discrepant in relation to the description. Children of both ages sometimes judged positively that the discrepant object was the one the speaker intended, but only 9‐year‐olds judged positively more frequently when the discrepancy was small rather than gross. Therefore, children in both age groups seemed to acknowledge misdescription, but only older children utilized size of discrepancy as a clue to misdescription. We discuss the possibility that although 5‐year‐olds know about misdescription, unlike 9‐year‐olds they are weak at utilizing situational clues in judging whether misdescription has or

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1991.tb00876.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

An investigation of narratives written by 135 children aged 9, 11 and 13 years reveals the steady development during middle childhood of children's ability to realize their understanding of mental events within the tradition of story writing. These developments are examined in relation to the representation of the inner world of characters, of expressive behaviour and of inferences about others. Narrative writing is seen as both a source of data for understanding the emergence into awareness of children's developing theories of mind and as a possible means for the development of such awareness.

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1991.tb00877.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1991.tb00878.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abnormalities in the social and communicative development of children with autism have recently been related to an impairment in their ability to attribute mental states to others, that is, in the development of their ‘theory of mind’. The present paper investigates if this deficit isspecificto understanding mental states, or if it extends to domains of social cognition in autism which do not involve a theory of mind. This is tested in three areas: (1) relationship recognition, (2) interpersonal reciprocity, and (3) understanding the animate‐inanimate distinction. Results from experiments in these three areas show that subjects with autism are unimpaired in all three domains, relative to non‐autistic mentally handicapped or normal control groups. This suggests that the deficits in their theory of mind may well be highly s

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1991.tb00879.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY