half of 3- and 4-year-olds and two fifths of 5- and 6-year-olds said they recalled these events—often vividly (Poole & White, 1991, 1993).
Young children’s natural trust in others may enhance their suggestibility. In one study, 3-year-olds who received misleading verbal and visual information from an experimenter about a sticker’s location continued to search in the wrong, suggested location despite no success (Jaswal, 2010). In another study, 3- to 5-year-old children watched as an adult hid a toy in one location, then told the children that the toy was in a different location. When retrieving the toy, 4- and 5-year-olds relied on what they had seen and disregarded the adult’s false statements, but 3-year-olds deferred to what the adult had said, despite what they had directly observed (Ma & Ganea, 2010).
In some cases, children can resist suggestion. For example, in one study, 4- and 7-year-old children either played games with an adult confederate (e.g., dressing up in costumes, playing tickle, being photographed) or merely watched the games (Ceci & Bruck, 1998). Eleven days later, each child was interviewed by an adult who included misleading questions that were often followed up with suggestions relevant to child abuse. Even the 4-year-olds resisted the false suggestions about child abuse. Children also vary. Some children are better able to resist social pressure and suggestive questioning than others (Uhl, Camilletti, Scullin, & Wood, 2016).
Children are more vulnerable than adults, but adults are not entirely resistant to suggestion. For example, recent research suggests that in some situations, adults are more likely than children to make quick associations between suggestive details about unexperienced events and prior experiences, making them more vulnerable to suggestion (Otgaar, Howe, Merckelbach, & Muris, 2018). Like children, adults who are exposed to information that is misleading or inconsistent with their experiences are more likely to perform poorly during memory interviews—and repeated questioning has a similar effect on performance (Wysman, Scoboria, Gawrylowicz, & Memon, 2014).
What Do You Think?
Suppose you need to question a preschool child about an event. How would you maximize your likelihood of the child’s giving an accurate account of what occurred?
Young children can have largely accurate memories, but they can also tell tall tales, make errors, and succumb to misleading questions. Children’s ability to remember events can be influenced by information and experiences that may interfere with their memories. These can include conversations with parents and adults, exposure to media, and sometimes intentional suggestions directed at changing the child’s view of what transpired. Children’s vulnerability to suggestion is discussed in Applying Developmental Science.
Theory of Mind
Over the childhood years, thinking becomes more complex. In particular, children become increasingly aware of the process of thinking and of their own thoughts. Theory of mind refers to children’s awareness of their own and other people’s mental processes. This awareness of the mind can be considered under the broader concept of metacognition, knowledge of how the mind works and the ability to control the mind (Lockl & Schneider, 2007). Let’s explore these concepts.
Young children’s theory of mind grows and changes between the ages of 2 and 5 (Bower, 1993; Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1995; Wellman, 2017). For example, 3-year-old children understand the difference between thinking about a cookie and having a cookie. They know that having a cookie means that one can touch, eat, or share it, while thinking about a cookie does not permit such actions (Astington, 1993). Young children also understand that a child who wants a cookie will be happy upon receiving one and sad upon not having one (Moses, Coon, & Wusinich, 2000). Similarly, they understand that a child who believes he is having hot oatmeal for breakfast will be surprised upon receiving cold spaghetti (Wellman & Banerjee, 1991). Theory of mind is commonly assessed by examining children’s abilities to understand that people can hold different beliefs about an object or event.
Culture shapes children’s thinking. Samoan and Vanuatu cultures deemphasize internal mental states as explanations for behavior. Children are not exposed to discussions about the mind and they get little experience considering other people’s thoughts.
age fotostock / Alamy Stock Photo
False Belief
Young children do not yet understand people can hold different beliefs and that some may be incorrect. Three-year-old children tend to perform poorly on false-belief tasks, tasks that require them to understand that someone can have an incorrect belief. In a classic false-belief task, children who are presented with a Band-Aid box that contains pencils rather than Band-Aids will show surprise but tend to believe that other children will share their knowledge and expect the Band-Aid box to hold pencils (Flavell, 1993), similar to Figure 7.6. The children do not yet understand that the other children hold different, false beliefs. In addition, the children will claim that they knew all along that the Band-Aid box contained pencils (Birch, 2005). They confuse their present knowledge with their memories for prior knowledge and have difficulty remembering ever having believed something that contradicts their current view (Bernstein, Atance, Meltzoff, & Loftus, 2007).
Some researchers, however, assert that young children are much more competent than they appear. Research with infants using preferential looking and habituation tasks has suggested an understanding of false belief as early as 15 months of age (Scott & Baillargeon, 2017). Similar to arguments regarding object permanence in infancy and egocentrism in early childhood (see Chapter 5), it may be that children understand the concept (that another person will understand that the Band-Aid box contains bandages, not pencils) but may have difficulty communicating their understanding to the researcher (Helming, Strickland, & Jacob, 2014). Yet many researchers counter that false-belief findings with infants reflect perceptual preferences, that is, a desire to look at one object over another, not theory of mind (Heyes, 2014). Indeed, the research to date suggests that theory of mind as evidenced by false-belief tasks emerges at about 3 years of age and shifts reliably between 3 and 4 years of age (Grosse Wiesmann, Friederici, Singer, & Steinbeis, 2017). By age 3, children can understand that two people can believe different things (Rakoczy, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2007). Four-year-old children can understand that people who are presented with different versions of the same event develop different beliefs (Eisbach, 2004). By age 4 or 5, children become aware that they and other people can hold false beliefs (Moses et al., 2000).
Figure 7.6 False-Belief Task
Source: Nathan Davidson
Advanced cognition is needed for children to learn abstract concepts such as belief. Performance on false-belief tasks, such as the Band-Aid task, is associated with measures of executive function, the abilities that enable complex cognitive functions such as planning, decision making, and goal setting (Doenyas, Yavuz, & Selcuk, 2018; Sabbagh, Xu, Carlson, Moses, & Lee, 2006). Advances in executive functioning facilitate children’s abilities to reflect on and learn from experience and promote development of theory of mind (Benson, Sabbagh, Carlson, & Zelazo, 2013). For example, one longitudinal study following children from ages 2 to 4 found that advances in executive functioning predicted children’s performance on false-belief tasks (Hughes & Ensor, 2007). Children’s performance on false-belief tasks is closely related with language development and competence in sustaining conversations (Hughes & Devine, 2015).
