Poster #38 - The development of conceptual perspective taking

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

When thinking about an object we individuate it as something, and therefore put a certain conceptual perspective on it. An object can be individuated in multiple ways which subsequently puts multiple conceptual perspectives on it. For instance, Maxi’s father and Anne’s teacher can be the same person. Multiple conceptual perspectives give rise to identity statements like “Maxi’s father is Anne’s teacher.” Three year olds have problems making sense of such statements, and these problems relate to their problems understanding different mental perspectives of other people as assessed with the false belief (FB) task (Perner, Mauer & Hildenbrand, 2011). In previous studies on identity understanding an object was introduced to children under one label and subsequently under a second. Only later did children learn that both labels refer to the same object with an explicit verbal identity statement. Here, we use a different method. We investigated whether using different labels for a visually continuously present object still leads to different ways of thinking about the same object.
We tested 47 3- to 6-year-old children with four identity tasks – two each in the change (experimental)-condition and the same (control)-condition –, and two change-of-location FB tasks in a within-subjects design. In the identity task we used anthropomorphic animal cartoon characters of an identifiable profession (e.g. a rabbit who is a gardener, see Figure 1). The story started with introducing the main character as the ‘gardener’, who lost his wallet. In the following sequence another character (e.g. ‘bear/doctor’) came along and – in the change-condition – the bear asked the rabbit for going to lunch. After lunch one of the two could not pay, the child was asked the Test-question: “Who cannot pay? The rabbit or the bear?” In the same-condition, the label of the main character remained the same throughout (see Figure 1). Children who are not able to represent the identity of gardener and rabbit are expected to respond arbitrarily with either ‘rabbit’ or ‘bear’, and thus be correct around 50% of the times.
Figure 2 encodes percentages of correct answers to the Test-question separately for FB failers (FB-) and FB passers (FB+). FB- had great difficulty with the change-condition (only 55% correct), while easily mastering the same-condition (80% correct). The performance in the FB+ group was equally good in both conditions (92% and 91%, respectively). The interaction (see Figure 2) is significant (2 (condition: change/same) × 2 (competence: FB-/FB+) ANOVA, F(1,45) = 7.30, p = .010).
Our data show that indeed different labels applied to a visually present create different ways of thinking about it, such that information gained under one way is not available when thinking under the other way. This problem with different conceptual perspectives persists until children understand the mental perspectives of others as tested by the FB task.

Authors

• Michael Huemer, University of Salzburg
  Presenting Author

• Teresa Haslehner, University of Salzburg
  Non-Presenting Author

• Josef Perner, University of Salzburg
  Non-Presenting Author