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In defense of a developmental dogma: children acquire propositional attitude folk psychology around age 4

  • S.I. : Future of Social Cognition
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Abstract

When do children acquire a propositional attitude folk psychology or theory of mind? The orthodox answer to this central question of developmental ToM research had long been that around age 4 children begin to apply “belief” and other propositional attitude concepts. This orthodoxy has recently come under serious attack, though, from two sides: Scoffers complain that it over-estimates children’s early competence and claim that a proper understanding of propositional attitudes emerges only much later. Boosters criticize the orthodoxy for underestimating early competence and claim that even infants ascribe beliefs. In this paper, the orthodoxy is defended on empirical grounds against these two kinds of attacks. On the basis of new evidence, not only can the two attacks safely be countered, but the orthodox claim can actually be strengthened, corroborated and refined: what emerges around age 4 is an explicit, unified, flexibly conceptual capacity to ascribe propositional attitudes. This unified conceptual capacity contrasts with the less sophisticated, less unified implicit forms of tracking simpler mental states present in ontogeny long before. This refined version of the orthodoxy can thus most plausibly be spelled out in some form of 2-systems-account of theory of mind.

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Notes

  1. This is true, at least, on the de dicto (in contrast to the de re) reading of propositional attitude reports (Quine 1956).

  2. Different types of objects with two aspects were used in different experiments of that study: (i) There were soft toys with two sides that could be turned inside out. For example, a soft toy bunny was introduced; then it was explained that the bunny was also a carrot, and the carrot-side was revealed by turning the soft toy inside out. (ii) There were toy figurines with two identities. For example, a figure called “Peter” was introduced; then in the second step it was explained that Peter was also the firefighter and his firefighter uniform was put on—so that perceptually he could then not be recognized as Peter anymore. In a slightly modified design, there were also (iii) dual function objects. For example, a pen was introduced in the first step; then it was shown—by rattling—that the pen was also a rattle. Then the object was transferred as “rattle” in such a way that one could hear it rattle but could not see it.

    Fig. 1
    figure 1

    Basic experimental logic and setup of the new aspectuality task in Rakoczy et al. (in press)

    Full size image

  3. Many conceptual change and 2-system-acccounts assume that there are simpler forms of tracking both proxies for belief proper and other cognitive propositional attitudes as well as of desires proper and other conative propositional attitudes. My focus here is on the former—but parallel arguments would apply to the latter.

  4. One study predating these recent designs might be taken to directly investigate infants’ ascription of belief about objects’ identities (Scott and Baillargeon 2009), but leaves it very unclear whether it really does so [for details, see Butterfill and Apperly (2013)].

  5. It is important to note that we know from previous work with such kind of stimuli that children at this age (in fact, children from age 1) do understand that the two aspects pertain to the same object and that the transformation from one aspect to the other is reversible (Cacchione et al. 2013). And children were familiarized with the transformations themselves in an introductory phase of the experiment so that they could have (and sometimes, but only rarely, did so) taken the object and transformed it back for the protagonist if in fact they were unsure whether she would like it under the second aspect.

  6. In fact, whether there are two distinction systems or just one, is a matter of considerable dispute (see e.g., Gallistel (1990).

  7. Or at least one of them—there is a controversy about this question related to the controversy mentioned above see Carey (2009).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Steve Butterfill for very helpful comments and discussion. Thank you very much to Alexander Dieball for help with the references.

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  1. Institute of Psychology, University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, 37073, Göttingen, Germany

    Hannes Rakoczy

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Rakoczy, H. In defense of a developmental dogma: children acquire propositional attitude folk psychology around age 4. Synthese 194, 689–707 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0860-8

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