Until a few decades ago, scholars believed that young children know very little, if anything, about what others are thinking. Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who is credited with founding the scientific study of children’s thinking, was convinced that preschool children cannot consider what goes on in the minds of others.
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What modern studies reveal
In the 1980s, these kinds of implicit measures became customary in developmental psychology. But it took a while longer before these tools were employed to measure children’s grasp of the mental lives of others. Recent studies have revealed that even infants and toddlers are sensitive to what goes in others’ minds.
In one series of experiments, a group of Hungarian scientists had six-month-old babies watch an animation of the following sequence of events: A Smurf observed how a ball rolled behind a screen. The Smurf then left. In its absence, the infants witnessed how the ball emerged from behind the screen and rolled away. The Smurf returned and the screen was lowered, showing that the ball was no longer there. The authors of the study recorded the infants’ looks and found that they fixated longer than usual on the final scene in which the Smurf gazed at the empty space behind the barrier – as if they understood that the Smurf’s expectation was violated.
In another set of experiments, my colleagues at the University of Southern California and I found evidence that toddlers can even anticipate how others will feel when their expectations are disappointed. We acted out several puppet shows in front of two-year-old children. In these puppet shows, a protagonist (Cookie Monster) left his precious belongings (cookies) on stage and later returned to fetch them. What the protagonist did not know was that an antagonist had come and messed with his possessions. The children had witnessed these acts and attentively watch the protagonist return.
We recorded children’s facial and bodily expressions. Children bit their lips, wrinkled their nose or wiggled in their chair when the protagonist came back, as if they anticipated the bewilderment and disappointment he was about to experience. Importantly, children showed no such reactions and remained calm when the protagonist had seen the events himself and thus knew what to expect. Our study reveals that by the tender age of two, kids not only track what others believe or expect; they can even foresee how others will feel when they discover reality.
Studies like these reveal that there is much more going on in toddlers’ and even infants’ minds than was previously believed. With the explicit measures used by Piaget and successors, these deeper layers of kids’ understanding cannot be accessed. The new investigative tools demonstrate that kids know more than they can say: when we scratch beneath the surface, we find a fledgling understanding of relations and perspectives that Piaget probably did not dream of.
For more read:
http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/children-understand-more-other-minds-believed/?sf68227352=1#utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=psychology&utm_campaign=Children%20Understand%20Far%20More%20About%20Other%20Minds%20Than%20long%20Believed
