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

这个项目考察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？为了找到答案，给孩子们讲了一个故事，在这个故事中，一个男孩把一个东西留在一个地方，然后走了。当他离开的时候，物体被移到了另一个地方，后来他回来找它。大量研究表明，大约4岁时，孩子们期望男孩会看第一个位置，因为他认为物体在那里。但三岁的孩子们说，男孩会在新的地方寻找。他们不明白信念指导行动，男孩对物体的位置有一个“错误的信念”。然而，最近，心理学家使用更间接的测试方法表明，婴儿和幼儿对错误信念有一些“内隐”的理解。例如，当一个有错误信念的人在新地点搜索时，婴儿会感到惊讶，并且会更长时间地观看视频场景。当幼儿被提示去寻找一个有错误信念的人时，他们的眼睛会瞥向那个人认为的旧位置。

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.