Object Tracking and Belief Representations in Infants and Preschoolers

• In Event: 3-224 - The Nature of Infants' and Preschoolers' Sensitivity to Other People's Object-representations

Integrative Statement

Human infants from a young age track objects in their surrounding. Such object tracking is also involved in encoding other people’s beliefs. In a series of studies using a manual search task (adapted from Feigenson & Carey, 2005) we investigated how infants’ and preschoolers' own object tracking interacts with their representations of others’ beliefs involving objects.
The first study (Experiment 1) established that 14-month-old infants can represent others’ beliefs involving multiple objects, taking into account identity-defining features of objects. This was assed via an altercentric modulation of infants’ behavior by the other person’s belief. Infants searched longer in trials when the other believed an object remained in the box, compared to trials when she believed the box was empty.
The second and third study found that infants can encode others’ beliefs involving mistakes about numerical identity of objects. Such mistakes can manifest in two main ways. In Experiment 2 we found that infants understand situations where the other person may mistakenly infer that different appearances indicate different entities, while in fact infants know what they belong to the same exemplar. However, this depended on infants’ own understanding of dual-appearance objects. Experiment 3 found that infants also appreciate that another person can identify an entity that looks the same as a previously seen one, as the same, while infants know that they are two distinct entities.
Our results speak to the development of belief understanding in at least two ways. First, understanding numerical identity mistakes from someone else’s perspective requires appreciating the fact that they may have a different perception of the external environment. For example, Mary may know Superman is Clark Kent, but Steve may not, and therefore receiving information on Superman will not lead him to apply that knowledge to Clark Ken and vice versa). The fact that infants successfully tracked others’ beliefs in such scenarios speaks against recent proposals arguing that representing false beliefs involving identity mistakes posits a challenge to infants’ Theory of Mind abilities (e.g. Butterfill & Apperly, 2013; Perner, Mauer, & Hildenbrand, 2011).
Second, infants’ susceptibility to others’ beliefs at a young age raises the question whether older children would exhibit such phenomena, and how this relates to their ability to plan their own actions based on others’ beliefs. Experiment 4 is currently ongoing, and aims to assess whether similar pattern of search found in infants can be observed in preschoolers (between 3-6 years of age) as well; and whether children could infer others’ actions from their respective beliefs and subsequently adjust their own behavior (as manifested in their search duration).

Author

• Dora Kampis, University of Copenhagen
  Presenting Author