Three decades of false belief task

Article Sidebar

PDF (Español (España))
Published: Aug 20, 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32348/1852.4206.v8.n2.10464
Keywords:
false belief task, folk psychology, philosophy of mind, psychological attribution

Main Article Content

Tomas Balmaceda
Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Abstract

The same paper that gave rise to Folk Psychology as an area of relevance in Philosophy of Mind inspired the False Belief Task, an experiment that undergone numerous transformations over the years and were interpreted in different –sometimes even incompatible- ways. Three decades after its first use in the area, the test is as valid as ever and continues generating controversy among philosophers and psychologists. The paper aims to track and systematize its genealogy, elucidating the conceptual basis behind it, and it tries to explain why the False Belief Task is still considered an adequate way to determine if an individual is in possession of Folk Psychological skills (i.e. mind-reading abilities).

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Article Details

How to Cite
Balmaceda, T. (2016). Three decades of false belief task. Argentinean Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 8(2), 5–21. https://doi.org/10.32348/1852.4206.v8.n2.10464
Issue
Vol. 8 No. 2 (2016): Número Especial: "Historia de las Ciencias del Comportamiento"
Section
Original Articles

La RACC aplicará la licencia internacional de atribuciones comunes creativas (Reconocimiento 4.0 Internacional: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Bajo esta licencia, se permite cualquier explotación de la obra, incluyendo la explotación con fines comerciales y la creación de obras derivadas, la distribución de las cuales también está permitida sin ninguna restricción. Esta licencia es una licencia libre según la Freedom Defined. La única condición es que siempre y en todos los casos se cite a los autores y a la fuente original de publicación (i.e., RACC). Esta licencia fue desarrollada para facilitar el acceso abierto, gratuito y libre a trabajos originales científicos y artísticos.

Author Biography

Tomas Balmaceda, Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas.

References

Balmaceda, T. (2010). Hacia una comprensión interdisciplinaria de la psicología de sentido común. En L. Skidelsky, D. Pérez, & C. Scotto (Eds.), Cuestiones mentales. Debates filosóficos contemporáneos (pp. 132-184). Córdoba: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

Balmaceda, T. (2014). Psicología de Sentido Común. Pasado, presente y futuros. Buenos Aires: Editorial Título

Balmaceda, T., & Burdman, F. (2015). Precisiones en torno al debate entre las posiciones tradicionales y los nuevos enfoques por la Psicología de Sentido Común. En L. Skidelsky, D. Pérez, & D. Lawler (Eds.) Temas de filosofía de la psicología. Buenos Aires: Eudeba

Baron-Cohen, S. (1997). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. United States of America: MIT press.

Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”? Cognition, 21(1), 37-46.

Bennett, J. (1978) Commentary on three papers about animal cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4, 556–560

Bloom, P., & German, T. P. (2000). Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of theory of mind. Cognition, 77(1), B25-B31.

Borone, P. & Gomila, A. (2014) False Belief Attribution in Pre-linguistic Infants? Manuscrito no publicado.

Carlson, S. M., Moses, L. J., & Hix, H. R. (1998). The role of inhibitory processes in young children's difficulties with deception and false belief. Child development, 69(3), 672-691.

Clements, W. A., & Perner, J. (1994). Implicit understanding of belief. Cognitive development, 9(4), 377-395.

Csibra, G., Gergely, G., B??ró, S., Koos, O., & Brockbank, M. (1999). Goal attribution without agency cues: the perception of ‘pure reason’ in infancy. Cognition, 72(3), 237-267.

Davies, M., & Stone, T. (1995). Mental simulation: evaluations and applications en M. Davies & T. Stone (Eds.). Folk Psychology: The theory of mind debate. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers

Dennett, D. (1978). Beliefs about beliefs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4, 568–570

Flavell, J. H., Flavell, E. R., & Green, F. L. (1983). Development of the appearance-reality distinction. Cognitive psychology, 15(1), 95-120.

Flavell, J. H., Green, F. L., Flavell, E. R., Watson, M. W., & Campione, J. C. (1986). Development of knowledge about the appearance-reality distinction. Monographs of the society for research in child development, 51(1), 1-87

Fodor, J. A. (1992). A theory of the child's theory of mind. Cognition, 44(3), 283-296.

Freeman, N. H., & Lacohée, H. (1995). Making explicit 3-year-olds' implicit competence with their own false beliefs. Cognition, 56(1), 31-60.

Freeman, N. H., Lewis, C., & Doherty, M. J. (1991). Preschoolers' grasp of a desire for knowledge in false?belief prediction: Practical intelligence and verbal report. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9(1), 139-157.

Gallagher, S. (2005). How the body shapes the mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

German, T. P., & Leslie, A. M. (2000). Attending to and learning about mental states. In P. Mitchell & K. J. Riggs (Eds.), Children’s reasoning and the mind (pp. 229-252). New York: Psychology Press.

Gergely, G., Nádasdy, Z., Csibra, G., & Biro, S. (1995). Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age. Cognition, 56(2), 165-193.

González M. C. (1991). ¿Es la Psicología de Sentido Común (Folk Psychology) una teoría? En Temas actuales de Filosofía XI (pp. 255-261). Salta, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Salta, Comisión Bicameral Examinadora de Obras de Autores Saltenos.

Gopnik, A. (1993). Theories and illusions. Behavioral and Brain sciences, 16(1), 90-100.

Gopnik, A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1997). Words, thoughts, and theories. Cambridge, MA: Mit Press.

Gopnik, A., & Astington, J. W. (1988). Children's understanding of representational change and its relation to the understanding of false belief and the appearance-reality distinction. Child development, 26-37.

Gopnik, A., & Wellman, H. M. (1992). Why the child's theory of mind really is a theory. Mind & Language, 7(1?2), 145-171.

Gordon, R. M. (1986). Folk psychology as simulation. Mind & Language, 1(2), 158-171.

Gordon, R. M. (1996). 'Radical' simulationism. In P. Carruthers & P. K. Smith (Eds.) Theories of Theories of Mind (pp. 22- 38). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Griffin, D. R. (1978). Prospects for a cognitive ethology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(4), 527-538.

Harman, G. (1978). Studying the Chimpanzee's Theory of Mind. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1(4), 560-576.

Harris, P. L. (1992). From simulation to folk psychology: The case for development. Mind & Language, 7(1-2), 120-144.

Hogrefe, G. J., Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1986). Ignorance versus false belief: A developmental lag in attribution of epistemic states.

Child development, 567-582.

Hutto, D. D. (2008). Folk psychological narratives: The sociocultural basis of understanding reasons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Johnson, S., Slaughter, V., & Carey, S. (1998). Whose gaze will infants follow? The elicitation of gaze?following in 12?month?olds.

Developmental Science, 1(2), 233-238.

Kovács, Á. M., Téglás, E., & Endress, A. D. (2010). The social sense: Susceptibility to others’ beliefs in human infants and adults. Science, 330(6012), 1830-1834.

Leslie, A. M. (1994). Pretending and believing: Issues in the theory of ToMM. Cognition, 50(1), 211-238.

Leslie, A. M. (2012). Pretense and representation revisited. In N. L. Stein, P. J. Bauer, & M. Rabinowitz (Eds.), Representation, memory, and development: Essays in honor of Jean Mandler (pp. 103-114). New York: Psychology Press.

Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1988). Autistic children's understanding of seeing, knowing and believing. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6(4), 315-324.

Lewis, C., & Osborne, A. (1990). Three?Year?Olds' Problems with False Belief: Conceptual Deficit or Linguistic Artifact? Child development, 61(5), 1514-1519.

Lillards, A. S. (1997). Other folks' theories of mind and behavior. Psychological Science, 8(4), 268-274.

Mitchell, P., & Lacohée, H. (1991). Children's early understanding of false belief. Cognition, 39(2), 107-127.

Moses, L. J. (1993). Young children's understanding of belief constraints on intention. Cognitive Development, 8(1), 1-25.

Onishi, K. H., & Baillargeon, R. (2005). Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs? Science, 308(5719), 255-258.

Pérez, D. (1992). Sentido Común y Psicología. Notas sobre la "psicologia del sentido común". Cuadernos de Filosofía, 23(38), 27.

Perner, J. (1991). Understanding the representational mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Perner, J., & Howes, D. (1992). ‘He Thinks He Knows’: And More Developmental Evidence Against the Simulation (Role Taking) Theory. Mind & Language, 7(1?2), 72-86.

Perner, J., Frith, U., Leslie, A. M., & Leekam, S. R. (1989). Exploration of the autistic child's theory of mind: Knowledge, belief, and communication. Child development, 689-700.

Perner, J., Leekam S.R, & Wimmer. H. (1987). Three-year-old's difficulty with false belief: The case for a conceptual deficit. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5, 125–137.

Peterson, C. C., & Siegal, M. (1995). Deafness, conversation and theory of mind. Journal of child Psychology and Psychiatry, 36(3), 459-474.

Peterson, C. C., & Siegal, M. (1999). Representing inner worlds: Theory of mind in autistic, deaf, and normal hearing children. Psychological Science, 10(2), 126-129.

Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and brain sciences, 1(04), 515-526.

Riviere, A. (1991). Objetos con mente (Vol. 2). Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

Roth, D., & Leslie, A. M. (1998). Solving belief problems: Toward a task analysis. Cognition, 66(1), 1-31.

Russell, J., Mauthner, N., Sharpe, S., & Tidswell, T. (1991). The ‘windows task’as a measure of strategic deception in preschoolers and autistic subjects.British journal of developmental psychology, 9(2), 331-349.

Russell, P. A., Hosie, J. A., Gray, C. D., Scott, C., Hunter, N., Banks, J. S., & Macaulay, M. C. (1998). The development of theory of mind in deaf children.Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 39(6), 903-910.

Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S., Rumbaugh, D. M., & Boysen, S. (1978). Linguistically mediated tool use and exchange by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(04), 539-554.

Siegal, M., & Beattie, K. (1991). Where to look first for children's knowledge of false beliefs. Cognition, 38(1), 1-12.

Sodian, B., & Frith, U. (1992). Deception and sabotage in autistic, retarded and normal children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 33(3), 591-605.

Sodian, B., Taylor, C., Harris, P. L., & Perner, J. (1991). Early deception and the child's theory of mind: False trails and genuine markers. Child development, 62(3), 468-483.

Southgate, V., Senju, A., & Csibra, G. (2007). Action anticipation through attribution of false belief by 2-year-olds. Psychological Science, 18(7), 587-592.

Surian, L., & Leslie, A. M. (1999). Competence and performance in false belief understanding: A comparison of autistic and normal 3 year old children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 17(1), 141-155.

Surian, L., Caldi, S., & Sperber, D. (2007). Attribution of beliefs by 13-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 18(7), 580-586.

Wellman, H. M. (1992). The child's theory of mind (Vol. 37). Cambridge, MA: MIT press.

Wellman, H. M., & Bartsch, K. (1988). Young children's reasoning about beliefs.Cognition, 30(3), 239-277.

Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition, 13(1), 103-128.

Woodward, A. L. (1998). Infants selectively encode the goal object of an actor's reach. Cognition, 69(1), 1-34.

Zaitchik, D. (1991). Is only seeing really believing?: Sources of the true belief in the false belief task. Cognitive Development, 6(1), 91-103.