Perner Josef, Huemer Michael, Leahy Brian
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, 5020 Salzburg, Austria.
Department of Linguistics, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany.
Cognition. 2015 Dec;145:77-88. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.08.006. Epub 2015 Aug 29.
We provide a cognitive analysis of how children represent belief using mental files. We explain why children who pass the false belief test are not aware of the intensionality of belief. Fifty-one 3½- to 7-year old children were familiarized with a dual object, e.g., a ball that rattles and is described as a rattle. They observed how a puppet agent witnessed the ball being put into box 1. In the agent's absence the ball was taken from box 1, the child was reminded of it being a rattle, and emphasising its being a rattle it was put back into box 1. Then the agent returned, the object was hidden in the experimenter's hands and removed from box 1, described as a "rattle," and transferred to box 2. Children who passed false belief had no problem saying where the puppet would look for the ball. However, in a different condition in which the agent was also shown that the ball was a rattle they erroneously said that the agent would look for the ball in box 1, ignoring the agent's knowledge of the identity of rattle and ball. Their problems cease with their mastery of second-order beliefs (she thinks she knows). Problems also vanish when the ball is described not as a rattle but as a thing that rattles. We describe how our theory can account for these data as well as all other relevant data in the literature.
我们运用心理档案对儿童如何表征信念进行了认知分析。我们解释了为什么通过错误信念测试的儿童并未意识到信念的内涵性。51名3岁半至7岁的儿童熟悉了一个双重物体，比如一个会发出响声的球，它被描述为拨浪鼓。他们观察了一个木偶如何见证球被放进1号盒子。在木偶不在场时，球从1号盒子被拿走，儿童被提醒它是个拨浪鼓，并强调它是拨浪鼓后又被放回1号盒子。然后木偶回来，物体被藏在实验者手中并从1号盒子拿走，被描述为“拨浪鼓”，接着被转移到2号盒子。通过错误信念测试的儿童能够顺利说出木偶会在哪里寻找球。然而，在另一种情况下，当木偶也被告知球是拨浪鼓时，他们错误地说木偶会在1号盒子里找球，而忽略了木偶对拨浪鼓和球的同一性的了解。当他们掌握二阶信念（她认为她知道）时，这些问题就消失了。当球被描述为一个会发出响声的东西而不是拨浪鼓时，问题也会消失。我们描述了我们的理论如何解释这些数据以及文献中所有其他相关数据。
