Mechanisms of belief-desire reasoning

理解他人和参与社会交往都取决于对信念、欲望和其他心理状态进行推理的能力。例如，为了理解我的朋友为什么在看冰箱，如果我认识到她想要一个橙子，并且她相信冰箱里有橙子，这将有所帮助。 小孩子常常很难推理出别人相信什么。当孩子们对与自己不同的信念进行推理时，这种困难尤其明显。这项拟议中的研究考察了允许儿童推理和了解人们的信仰和愿望的认知系统。这项拟议中的研究还将研究成年人如何对信仰和欲望进行推理。 这项研究的重点将是我们控制自己对他人信仰和愿望的想法的能力。这种能力在年幼的孩子中可能不成熟，导致他们难以克服假设其他人分享他们信仰的倾向。这种能力在年龄较大的儿童中发展得更好，但在复杂的情况下仍然可能受到挑战。 拟议的研究将解决的问题包括：关于信念和欲望的想法是否受到控制其他类型思想的相同系统的控制？是成年人在推理信念和欲望方面比年幼的儿童更好，还是儿童和成年人在推理心理状态方面存在其他差异？为什么年龄较小的孩子如此容易假设其他人与他们有相同的信仰？ 这项拟议中的研究将提高我们对儿童如何推理的理解，并了解其他人的想法和需求。这项研究可能会揭示儿童和成人思维方式的惊人差异。从长远来看，这项研究将增加我们对儿童在社会推理中面临的挑战的理解。

Understanding people and engaging in social interactions both depend on the ability to reason about beliefs, desires, and other mental states. For example, to understand why my friend is looking in the fridge, it will help if I recognize that she desires an orange, and that she believes that there are oranges in the fridge.    Young children often have difficulty reasoning about what other people believe. This difficulty is especially apparent when children reason about beliefs which differ from their own. The proposed research examines the cognitive systems that allow children to reason and learn about people's beliefs and desires. The proposed research will also examine how adults reason about beliefs and desires.    The focus of the proposed research will be our ability to control our thoughts about what other people believe and desire. This ability may be immature in younger children, leading them to have difficulty overcoming a tendency to assume that other people share their beliefs. The ability is better developed in older children, but may still be challenged in complicated situations.    Questions to be addressed by the proposed research will include: Are thoughts about beliefs and desires controlled by the same system(s) involved in controlling other types of thought? Are adults simply better than young children at reasoning about beliefs and desires, or are there other differences between how children and adults reason about mental states? Why are younger children so tempted to assume that others share their beliefs?    The proposed research will improve our understanding of how children reason and learn about what others think and want. The research may uncover surprising differences between how children and adults think. In the longer term, this research will increase our understanding of the challenges children face in social reasoning.