Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Do Actions Speak Louder Than Knowledge? Action Manipulation, Parental Discourse, And Children’S Mental State Understanding In Pretense, Dawn Melzer, Laura J. Claxton
Do Actions Speak Louder Than Knowledge? Action Manipulation, Parental Discourse, And Children’S Mental State Understanding In Pretense, Dawn Melzer, Laura J. Claxton
Psychology Faculty Publications
Studies on pretense mental state understanding in young children have produced inconsistent findings. These findings could potentially emerge from the confounding influences of action manipulation or the failure to examine possible influences on individual children’s performances. To address these issues, we created a task in which 68 3- and 4-year-olds viewed two actors, side by side, on a monitor. Children were told that one actor was knowledgeable about a specific animal, whereas the other actor was not. The actors performed identical movements that were either related or unrelated to the animal they were mimicking or engaged in different behaviors contradictory …