Language and meta-representation in the development of false-belief understanding

这个项目考察了儿童对人类行为的理解。例如，孩子们什么时候会明白，人们有时会根据错误的信息做出错误的行为？为了找出答案，孩子们被讲述了一个故事，在这个故事中，一个男孩把一个物体留在了一个地方，然后就离开了。当他离开的时候，物体被移到另一个地方，然后他回来寻找它。许多研究表明，大约4岁的孩子会期待男孩看第一个位置，因为那是他认为物体在那里。但3岁的孩子们说，这个男孩会去新的地方看。他们不理解信念指导着行动，而男孩对物体的位置有一种“错误的信念”。然而，最近，心理学家使用了更多的间接测试方法，表明婴儿和蹒跚学步的孩子对错误信念有一些“隐含”的理解。例如，当一个有错误信念的人在新的位置搜索时，婴儿会感到惊讶，并会更长时间地观看视频场景。当蹒跚学步的孩子被提示期待一个有错误信念的人的搜索时，他们的眼睛会瞥一眼那个人认为它在哪里的老地方。

This project examines children's understanding of human action. For example, when do children understand that people sometimes act mistakenly on the basis of wrong information? To find out, children are told a story in which a boy leaves an object in one place and goes away. While he's gone the object is moved to another place, and later he comes back to look for it. Numerous studies have shown that about 4 years of age, children expect that the boy will look in the first location because that's where he thinks the object is. But 3-year-olds say the boy will look in the new location. They don't understand that beliefs guide actions and the boy has a "false belief" about the object's location. However, recently, using more indirect testing methods, psychologists have shown that babies and toddlers have some "implicit" understanding of false belief. For example, babies are surprised and look longer at a video scene when a person with a false belief searches in the new location. And when toddlers are prompted to anticipate the search of a person with a false belief, their eyes glance towards the old location where the person thinks it is.