Deaf Children's Understanding of Beliefs and Desires

Deaf children's use of beliefs and desires in negotiation.

Although several studies have shown that deaf children demonstrated impaired performances on false-belief tasks, the children's belief understanding appeared intact when asked to explain emotions or behavior. However, this finding does not necessarily indicate a full-fledged theory of mind. This study aimed to investigate deaf children's negotiation strategies in false-belief situations, becaus...

Deaf children's understanding of emotions: desires take precedence.

Deaf children frequently have trouble understanding other people's emotions. It has been suggested that an impaired theory of mind can account for this. This research focused on the spontaneous use of mental states in explaining other people's emotions by 6- and 10-year-old deaf children as compared to their hearing peers. Within both age-groups deaf children referred to others' beliefs as ofte...

Beliefs Desires Intentions

Understanding of Goals, Beliefs, and Desires Predicts Morally Relevant Theory of Mind: A Longitudinal Investigation.

Developmental continuity between infants' understanding of intentional agency (goals, beliefs, and desires) and young children's attributions of moral intentions were studied in a 4-year longitudinal study (N = 77 children). First, goal encoding at the age of 7 months and implicit false belief understanding at 18 months were predictive of children's understanding of an accidental transgressor's...

Beliefs about desires: Children's understanding of how knowledge and preference influence choice

Knowledgeable agents always choose what they like best, thus revealing their preferences. But naïve agents only choose what they believe they like best, and may end up disliking their choice. As such, sensitivity to an agent’s prior experience is critical for interpreting their behavior. Here we show that fourand five-year-olds expect knowledgeable agents, as compared to naïve agents, to have s...