Department of Cognitive Sciences and Education, University of Trento, Italy.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2012 Mar;30(Pt 1):30-44. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-835X.2011.02046.x. Epub 2011 Jun 15.
Prior research on implicit mind-reading skills has focussed on how infants anticipate other persons' actions. This study investigated whether 11- and 17-month-olds spontaneously attribute false beliefs (FB) even to a simple animated geometric shape. Infants were shown a triangle chasing a disk through a tunnel. Using an eye-tracker, we found that 17-month-olds in a change-of-location true belief (TB) task anticipated that the triangle would search for the disk in the correct place while in a FB test they anticipated that it would search for it in the wrong, belief congruent place. These results suggest that 17-month-olds' psychological-reasoning system is applied to the actions of unfamiliar agents and it is employed to anticipate agents' actions even in the absence of any morphological features that are typical of natural agents. These findings provide support for theoretical accounts that emphasize continuity in the development of theory of mind core concepts and belief reasoning skills.
先前关于内隐心理解读技能的研究主要集中在婴儿如何预测他人的行为上。本研究调查了 11 个月和 17 个月大的婴儿是否会自发地归因于一个简单的动画几何形状的错误信念（FB）。婴儿被展示一个三角形穿过隧道追逐一个圆盘。使用眼动追踪仪，我们发现 17 个月大的婴儿在位置变化的真实信念（TB）任务中预期三角形会在正确的地方寻找圆盘，而在 FB 测试中，他们预期三角形会在错误的、与信念一致的地方寻找圆盘。这些结果表明，17 个月大的婴儿的心理推理系统被应用于不熟悉的代理人的行为，并且即使在没有任何典型于自然代理人的形态特征的情况下，它也被用来预测代理人的行为。这些发现为强调心理理论核心概念和信念推理技能发展连续性的理论解释提供了支持。
