Deck 5: What Children Understand About the Mind

Question 1

Research into children's understanding of the mind has focused on their ability to impute false:

A)Beliefs
B)Memories
C)Facts
D)Knowledge
E)Information

Answer 1

Beliefs

Question 2

Who is credited with arguing that a test of false belief is a litmus test for investigating children's development of a theory of mind?

A)Wellman
B)Wimmer and Perner
C)Baron-Cohen
D)Leslie
E)Dennett

Answer 2

Dennett

Question 3

Wimmer and Perner (1983) devised a test of false belief that involved a story about a boy's quest to find his chocolate. This is known as the:

A)Deceptive box test
B)Unexpected transfer test
C)False memory test
D)Perspective-taking test
E)State-change test

Answer 3

Unexpected transfer test

Question 4

Perner, Leekam, and Wimmer (1987) devised a test of false belief that involved a familiar box that contained something other than it usually contains. This is known as the:

A)State-change test
B)Unexpected transfer test
C)False memory test
D)Perspective-taking test
E)Deceptive box test

Question 5

Most typically developing children pass a conventional test of false belief from about the age of:

A)2 years
B)4 years
C)6 years
D)8 years
E)10 years

Question 6

Gopnik and Astington (1988) found that children aged around 3 and 4 years:

A)Are more likely to acknowledge another person's false belief than their own prior false belief
B)Are more likely to acknowledge their own prior false belief than to acknowledge another person's false belief
C)Perform as well in acknowledging another person's false belief as in acknowledging their own prior false belief
D)Find it easier to distinguish between appearance and reality than to acknowledge false belief
E)Find it easier to acknowledge false belief than to distinguish between appearance and reality

Question 7

Flavell, Flavell, and Green (1983) disguised a sponge to look like a rock in order to investigate children's understanding of:

A)Representational change
B)False belief
C)The distinction between appearance and reality
D)Different perspectives
E)Deception

Question 8

After investigating age-related changes in children's performance on false belief and appearance-reality tasks, Gopnik and Astington (1988) concluded that children experience:

A)Teasing from siblings
B)A gradual change in their understanding of the mind
C)Mentoring from their parents
D)A radical conceptual shift
E)More sophisticated conversation with peers

Question 9

Lewis and Osborne (1990) argued that children aged 3 years give incorrect judgments on a test of false belief because they:

A)Do not have older siblings
B)Have a cognitive deficit
C)Have a poor memory
D)Are intimidated by the experimenter
E)Misunderstand the experimenter's question

Question 10

Siegal and Beattie (1991) discovered that children are more likely to give a correct judgment in a test of false belief if the test question includes the phrase:

A)First of all
B)I will give you some chocolate if you answer correctly
C)Take your time before answering
D)Before we opened the lid
E)Stop and think

Question 11

Wimmer and Hartl (1991) sought the help of Kasperl as a confederate to test the possibility that children fail to acknowledge their own prior false belief because they:

A)Misunderstand the experimenter's question
B)Have amnesia
C)Are embarrassed
D)Enjoy make believe
E)Enjoy children's TV programs

Question 12

Wimmer and Hartl (1991) devised a test of state change. In this, the child's initial belief about the content of a box was:

A)Neutral
B)False
C)Void
D)True
E)Undetectable

Question 13

Wimmer and Hartl (1991) noted young children's correct judgments on a state change test and used them as evidence to argue that young children:

A)Undergo a conceptual shift at about the age of 4 years
B)Have been underestimated
C)Misunderstand the question
D)Are embarrassed
E)Are intimidated

Question 14

In the variant of the state change task devised by Saltmarsh, Mitchell, and Robinson (1995), how did children aged about 3 years perform?

A)They reported the thing that was in the box initially
B)They typically gave the wrong answer
C)They typically gave the correct answer
D)They misunderstood the question
E)They lacked a theory of mind

Question 15

In the "mailing procedure," devised by Mitchell and Lacohee (1991), children:

A)Mailed a picture of their initial false belief
B)Mailed a picture of their initial true belief
C)Mailed a letter to Santa Claus
D)Answered the question about their belief by sending it on a postcard to the experimenter
E)Misunderstood the question

Question 16

The results of Mitchell and Lacohee's (1991) mailing experiment suggest that young children:

A)Experience a radical conceptual shift around the time of their fourth birthday
B)Have been underestimated by previous research in their understanding of the mind
C)Undergo stage-like development in their understanding of the mind
D)Find it easy to acknowledge false belief
E)Perform at their best when engaged in pretend play

Question 17

The findings reported by Mitchell et al. (1996) suggest that:

A)Adults lack a theory of mind
B)Adults perform similarly to young children on a test of theory of mind
C)Sometimes adults confuse their own beliefs with other people's beliefs
D)Adults are vulnerable to hindsight bias
E)Adults are adept in recognizing when people tell lies

Question 18

Dunn et al. (1991) investigated the relation between how parents communicated with their toddlers and the age from which their children began to acknowledge false belief. They discovered that:

A)Children with an extended family are at an advantage in developing a theory of mind
B)Verbose parents tend to encourage children's pretend play, but this does not promote development of a theory of mind
C)Autocratic parenting promotes a theory of mind
D)Children who had the most advanced theory of mind had parents who tended to explain people's behavior with reference to psychological factors
E)Children with older siblings are at an advantage in developing a theory of mind

Question 19

Bartsch and Wellman (1989) devised a variant of a test of false belief in which participants were invited to:

A)Impute psychological meaning to the direction of another person's gaze
B)Try to deceive the experimenter
C)Try to deceive a peer
D)Make a deceptive facial expression
E)Explain rather than predict behavior

Question 20

Perner, Ruffman, and Leekam (1994) investigated the relationship between children's ability to acknowledge false belief and how many siblings they had. They found that:

A)The likelihood of acknowledging false belief is a negative function of the number of siblings a child has
B)Singletons are more likely to pass a test of false belief than children who have brothers and sisters
C)Being able to acknowledge false belief is related to the size of the child's extended family
D)Children's understanding of the mind changes gradually
E)The likelihood of acknowledging false belief is a positive function of the number of siblings a child has

Question 21

Lewis et al. (1996) found that the age at which children first pass a test of false belief is ______ related to the size of the child's extended family.

A)Scarcely
B)Positively
C)Not
D)Negatively
E)Quadratically

Question 22

Lewis, Stranger, and Sullivan (1989) investigated:

A)Young children's ability to conceal information
B)Children's misunderstanding of the question
C)The relation between size of extended family and passing a test of false belief
D)Children's memory failures
E)Children's ability to comprehend false belief stories

Question 23

Chandler, Fritz, and Hala (1989) investigated young children's ability to:

A)Solve logical problems
B)Remember key facts
C)Destroy evidence
D)Tell a story
E)Make friends with peers

Question 24

According to Saltmarsh and Mitchell (1998), children succeeded in acknowledging false belief in Sullivan and Winner's (1993) study because the task was based on:

A)A story that was easy to comprehend
B)Deception
C)Real life
D)State change
E)Pretence

Question 25

Cole and Mitchell (1998) found that ______ is related to young children's ability to acknowledge false belief.

A)Reading ability
B)The mother's wellbeing
C)Listening ability
D)Being motivated
E)The mother's age