Symposium
Chair: Diane Poulin-Dubois
Discussant: Ted Ruffman
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Research on children's developing theories of mind indicates that the seeing Ð knowing relation is understood around the age of four years. Three-year-olds appear to associate seeing with knowing, but do not seem to have a clear appreciation of why this is the case. An implicit understanding of epistemic states has, however, recently been demonstrated in children younger than three (Clements & Perner, 1994). To date, very little is known about an implicit understanding of epistemic states in infancy. Poulin-Dubois, Tilden and Levine (1995) showed in a preferential looking paradigm that 18-month-olds were surprised when a person pointed at the incorrect location of a hidden object when she had seen where the object was hidden, but not when she had not seen the hiding event. Interpreted cautiously, this finding indicates that infants associate ãseeing' with correct action. In the present Experiment, we test in a visual habituation paradigm, whether 12-month-old infants expect a person to search for a hidden object in the correct location if and only if she was able to observe the hiding event. In the habituation phase, 48 infants saw an actress watching a toy disappear in location A and subsequently the actress searching for the toy at location A (the toy was not retrieved, the actress merely put her hand into the box where it was hidden). In the test phase, infants saw consistent (hide at B search at B) and inconsistent (hide at A search at B) sequences in a within-subject design. In the test phase, the actress's visual access was varied between subjects: Infants saw an actress who had visual access to the hiding event, an actress with a blindfold, or an actress with an irrelevant manipulation (blindfold over mouth or forehead). All infants had had some experience with the blindfold prior to the Experiment. Results showed that infants looked significantly longer at the inconsistent than the consistent hide-search sequence in the visual access and the irrelevant manipulation conditions, but looked equally long at consistent and inconsistent hide-search sequences in the no visual access condition. This finding indicates that infants were not surprised at a person's inconsistent search (searching at the wrong location when the object had been hidden only a few seconds earlier) when the person had had no visual access to the hiding event, but that they were surprised when the person had seen the hiding event. This pattern of results is consistent with the assumption that 12-month-old infants recognize the importance of visual access as a precondition for correct action . Obstruction of visual access to events may initially be understood by infants like a physical obstacle to goal-attainment, and may only lateron be interpreted in terms of epistemic states. Further research is under way to test the generality of this finding, and the developmental course of infantsÔ understanding of vision in the age range between 12 and 24 months. Clements, W.A., & Perner, J. (1994). Implicit understanding of belief. Cognitive Development, 9, 377-392.Poulin-Dubois, D., Tilden, J., & Levine, B. (1995). InfantsÔ understanding of beliefs. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, Berkeley, CA:
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Young children typically reveal a greater understanding of desiresthan of beliefs until they reach the age of 4 or 5 (Flavell & Miller,1997). By the age of 3 years, and sometimes earlier, children recognizethe link between desires and emotional reactions. For instance, they knowthat fulfilled and unfulfilled desires have different emotionalconsequences (e.g., happiness vs. sadness) (Wellman & Wholley, 1990). There is evidence that the understanding of such casual relationsby infants has just begun to be addressed. Spontaneous production ofdesire terms emerges toward the end of the second year (Bartsch & Wellman,1995) and, by 18 months, infants are able to infer correctly a person'spreferences for food on the basis of facial expressions (Repacholi &Gopnik, 1997). The present set of experiments was designed to clarify whetherinfants understand that emotional expressions are informative about aperson's desires. In the first experiment, 18-month old infants were showna videotape of a person requesting an object from another person. In thetest phase, the infants were shown two still frames, one with the requesterholding the desired object, and one with the requester holding anotherobject. On some trials, a sad facial expression appeared on both screens,while on other trials a happy expression was displayed. Results indicatedthat infants looked longer at the incongruous frames (e.g., sad expressionpaired with desired object), suggesting an understanding that fulfilled andunfulfilled desires have different consequences. In a second experiment,infants at 18 months were administered a food-request task. In onecondition, an experimenter displayed emotional expressions toward two typesof food (disgust or pleasure) and then requested some food from the child.In another condition, two different persons displayed the emotions andrequested the food. Measures of the latency to give food and the specificfood given indicated that infants took twice as much time to comply withthe request in the different person condition and were more likely to givethe undesired food in that condition. These findings suggest that infants as young as 18 monthsunderstand that emotional expressions provide information about a person'sdesires. Finally, a third experiment using an object request task with 14-to 18-month-olds will be reported. In that experiment, infants areprovided with attentional and emotional cues about a person's desires andthe weight of each type of cues is measured by the number of times thechild gives the requester the desired object. Taken together, the presentset of data shed light on which behavioral cues infants use to inferpeople's mental states during the second year of life.