Recognition and Attribution of Beliefs in the Child

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that human beings develop the capacity to ascribe mental states (as false beliefs) at the age of four or five years old. This has been demonstrated through the use of different tests (appearance – reality, representational change and false belief tests). Three year old infants commit serious mistakes in such tests. Perner (1994; 1995) suggests that such capacities depend on the metacognitive skills that permits the comprehension of the mind as a representational structure. But its are not developed until the age of four or five. Leslie (1987; 1988; 1994b) sustains that such capacity depends on the ontogenetic development of a “paraintentional” modular structure in the brain. Leslie think that around the second year of life children express “mentalist” abilities. For Leslie, lack of executives capacities and lack of a mechanism responsible for coordination of inferences explain the difficulties of children in false belief tests. The objective of this work is to inquire why 3 years old children can not attribute false beliefs, in “false belief test”. The data shows that children are capable of solving problems that require mental adscription at 3 years old, as long as problems are simplified. This indicates that the reported low performance of 3 year old children can be explained in terms of general skills to compute information.

Keywords

• False Belief
• Metarepresentation
• Executive Function
• Mental Attribution