Witnessing Others’ Experiences Perceptually and Directly Is Necessary for Toddlers’ Mental State Ascriptions

• In Event: Seeing is Believing: Infants' and Toddlers' Social Learning from Visual Cues

Abstract

It has been argued that toddlers’ theory of mind skills are rooted in their capacity to keep records of others’ perceptual experiences of objects (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009; Perner, Rendl, & Garnham, 2007; Perner & Roessler, 2010). Implied in this account is the idea that toddlers need to witness others directly perceiving objects to be able to ascribe beliefs or belief-like states to them. We tested this hypothesis by varying the kinds of interactions between an agent and an object and then measuring children’s suspenseful expressions (Moll et al., 2016; 2017) as the agent returned to the scene in which her object had, unbeknownst to her, been replaced with something else. The study has been pre-registered on the OSF platform (https://osf.io/uypfr/?view_only=56f19c56f29f4344ac65f5ab9008b0a1).
In Experiment 1, 3-year-olds (N = 30) watched a protagonist either gaining first-hand perceptual knowledge (Perceptual Condition) or receiving a testimonial (Testimonial Condition) of the content of a box (see Figure 1). In both conditions, a different agent then replaced the object in the box in the protagonist’s absence. When the protagonist approached the box with the intent to retrieve its content, children’s suspenseful expressions (e.g., lip bites, furrowed brows, smirk, etc.) were measured. Expressing suspense indicated children’s awareness of the undesirable and uncontrollable the protagonist was about to face. The results showed that children had more suspenseful expressions in the Perceptual than in the Testimonial Condition, p < .01, suggesting that witnessing others perceptually experiencing objects is key for toddlers to be able to ascribe belief(-like) states. In Experiment 2 (N = 90), we further investigated if children have to witness the co-existence of the protagonist and the object, or if children only need to know the protagonist has perceptually encountered the object. A third condition was added to the Perceptual and Testimonial Conditions. In this condition, children themselves only saw the box’s content after they had seen the protagonist looking inside, thus forcing them to infer what the protagonist must have perceptually encountered (Inferential Condition). Additionally, control trials, in which the box’s content remained unchanged, were added to each condition. Preliminary results show that children expressed more suspense in experimental than control trials only in the Perceptual Condition, p < .01.
The results from these experiments strongly suggest that witnessing others perceiving and experiencing objects is key for toddlers’ ability to ascribe belief-like states. Our study supports the argument that children younger than 4 have some theory of mind skills, but that these skills are limited to cases in which the child directly witnesses others’ perceptual interactions with objects. Taken together, the experiments advance our understanding of the nature and scope of toddlers’ theory of mind.

Authors

• Qianhui Ni, University of Southern California
  Presenting Author

• Bella Fascendini, Stanford University

• Lisa Miao

• Henrike Moll, University of Southern California