City Research Online

Abstract

Two studies were carried out in an attempt to replicate an earlier but controversial set of findings that suggested that young children are able to understand pretence in a mentalistic sense (Hickling, Wellman, & Gottfried, 1997). In Study 1, 65 three-year-olds and 77 four-year-olds were asked to either judge the thoughts of an absent teddy bear, who had not witnessed a change in the original pretence stipulation, or were asked to complete a similar, standard false-belief task. Study 2 repeated the experimental procedures of the first study with 24 three-year-olds and 16 four-year-olds, with the difference that all children had to complete both tasks in a single session. The results obtained across both studies showed that 3-year-olds were unable to correctly judge the discrepant thoughts of the teddy bear, suggesting that young children do not attribute a false belief to another actor during pretend play, and that instead they view pretence in terms of overt action.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Berguno, G. & Bowler, D. M. (2004). Understanding pretence and understanding action. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22(4), pp. 531-544., which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/0261510042378254. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Psychology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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