Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Dev Sci. 2018 Jul;21(4):e12600. doi: 10.1111/desc.12600. Epub 2017 Sep 27.
There is currently a hot debate in the literature regarding whether or not infants have a true theory of mind (ToM) understanding. According to the mentalistic view, infants possess the same false belief understanding that older children have but their competence is masked by task demands. On the other hand, others have proposed that preverbal infants are incapable of mental state attribution and simply respond to superficial features of the events in spontaneous-responses tasks. In the current study, we aimed to clarify the nature of infants' performance in tasks designed to assess implicit theory of mind (ToM) by adopting a within-subject design that involved testing 18-month-old infants on two batteries of tasks measuring the same four ToM constructs (intention, desire, true belief, and false belief). One battery included tasks based on the violation-of- expectation (VOE) procedure, whereas the other set of tasks was based on the interactive, helping procedure. Replication of the original findings varied across tasks, due to methodological changes and the use of a within-subject design. Convergent validity was examined by comparing performance on VOE and interactive tasks that are considered to be measures of the same theory of mind concept. The results revealed no significant relations between performance on the pairs of tasks for any of the four ToM constructs measured. This pattern of results is discussed in terms of current conflicting accounts of infants' performance on implicit ToM tasks. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3vqfe_zdhA&feature=youtu.be.
目前，文献中对于婴儿是否具有真正的心理理论（ToM）理解存在激烈的争论。根据心理主义观点，婴儿具有与年长儿童相同的错误信念理解，但他们的能力被任务要求所掩盖。另一方面，其他人则提出，前语言婴儿无法进行心理状态归因，而只是在自发反应任务中对事件的表面特征做出反应。在本研究中，我们旨在通过采用内隐心理理论（ToM）的测试方法，澄清婴儿在任务中的表现本质。采用了一种被试内设计，在两个任务组中对 18 个月大的婴儿进行测试，这些任务都测量了相同的四个 ToM 结构（意图、欲望、真信念和假信念）。一组任务基于违反预期（VOE）程序，而另一组任务基于互动、帮助程序。由于方法上的变化和使用被试内设计，原始发现的再现性因任务而异。通过比较被认为是相同心理理论概念的测量的 VOE 和互动任务的表现，来检验了一致性有效性。结果显示，在任何四个 ToM 结构的测量中，任务之间的表现都没有显著关系。根据当前关于婴儿在隐式 ToM 任务中表现的冲突观点，讨论了这一结果模式。本文的视频摘要可以在以下网址观看：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3vqfe_zdhA&feature=youtu.be.
