Fig 1.
Stimuli from Birch and Bloom’s (2007) study, where adults are given a plausible reason to believe that Vicki would look for her violin in the current container.
Note, that the red container (current container) in section B is in the same spot as the blue container (original container) in section A. From “The Curse of Knowledge in Reasoning About False Beliefs” by Birch & Bloom (2007), Psychological Science, 18(5), 384.
Fig 2.
A depiction of the four-box Sally-Ann task used in the present experiment.
The researcher presented each child with a visual enactment of four false belief scenarios using colorful stick figures. Each scenario involved a protagonist (a) who put an object in one of the four containers (b). Then, the protagonist leaves (c), and another character placed the object in a different container (d). In one scenario for example, the researcher said to the child: “Sally was playing with her ball, then she got hungry, so Sally put her ball right in here [purple container], and went home. When Sally was gone, Ryan hid Sally’s ball in a different spot! He may have hid it here, or here, or here” [researcher pointed to each of the other containers]. In two scenarios (i.e., Outcome Known Trials), the researcher told the child exactly where the second character placed the object (e.g., “But we know that Ryan hid the ball here.” [blue container]). In the other two scenarios in contrast (i.e., the Outcome Unknown Trials), the researcher told the child: “But we don’t know where he hid it.” Both trial types ended the same way (Panel E, e.g., “Then, Sally came back. Where will she look for her ball?”.
Table 1.
The false belief scenarios presented by trial type and version.
Table 2.
Mixed effect logistic regression with a random intercept for subject examining the effect of trial type, gender and age group on memory performance.
Fig 3.
The predicted probabilities of false belief performance by age group and trial type (predictions from model presented in Table 3).
3-year-olds’ performance was significantly less accurate in the Outcome Known trials (i.e., when specific outcome information was presented; estimated.26 probability of passing each trial) versus Outcome Unknown Trials (i.e., when specific outcome information was not presented; estimated.58 probability of passing each trial). In the older age groups, predicted probability of passing did not significantly differ by trial type (predicted probabilities ranging from.50 to.60). Notably, when the outcome was unknown young children performed equally as well as older children. Error bars are 95% confidence intervals around the predictions, and the dashed line represents chance performance given that there were four containers. Note that all age groups were similarly predicted to perform above chance on Outcome Unknown trials.
Table 3.
Mixed effect logistic regression with a random intercept for participant predicting false belief performance.