Children's understanding of ordinary and extraordinary minds

Journal article

How and when do children develop an understanding of extraordinary mental capacities? The current study tested 56 preschoolers on false-belief and knowledge-ignorance tasks about the mental states of contrasting agents - some agents were ordinary humans, some had exceptional perceptual capacities, and others possessed extraordinary mental capacities. Results indicated that, in contrast to younger and older peers, children within a specific age range reliably attributed fallible, human-like capacities to ordinary humands and to several special agents (including God) for both tasks. These data lend critical support to an anthropomorphism hypothesis - which holds that children's understanding of extraordinary minds is derived from their everyday intuitive psychology - and reconcile disparities between the findings of other studies on children's understanding of extraordinary minds.

Authors: Lane, J; Wellman, H; Evans, E

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Journal: Child Development
• Volume: 81
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 1475-1489
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01486.x
• EISSN: 1467-8624
• ISSN: 0009-3920
• Language: English
• Keywords: false-belief understanding; theory of mind; children; knowledge-ignorance understanding
• Subjects: Anthropology