Early false-belief understanding in traditional non-Western societies

Citation:

Barrett, H. C., T. Broesch, R. M. Scott, Z. J. He, R. Baillargeon, D. Wu, M. Bolz, et al. “Early false-belief understanding in traditional non-Western societies.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 280, no. 1755 (2013): 20122654.
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Date Published:

Mar 22

Abstract:

The psychological capacity to recognize that others may hold and act on false beliefs has been proposed to reflect an evolved, species-typical adaptation for social reasoning in humans; however, controversy surrounds the developmental timing and universality of this trait. Cross-cultural studies using elicited-response tasks indicate that the age at which children begin to understand false beliefs ranges from 4 to 7 years across societies, whereas studies using spontaneous-response tasks with Western children indicate that false-belief understanding emerges much earlier, consistent with the hypothesis that false-belief understanding is a psychological adaptation that is universally present in early childhood. To evaluate this hypothesis, we used three spontaneous-response tasks that have revealed early false-belief understanding in the West to test young children in three traditional, non-Western societies: Salar (China), Shuar/Colono (Ecuador) and Yasawan (Fiji). Results were comparable with those from the West, supporting the hypothesis that false-belief understanding reflects an adaptation that is universally present early in development.

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Last updated on 01/23/2017