1. Children's Understanding of Ordinary and Extraordinary Minds.
- Author
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Lane, Jonathan D., Wellman, Henry M., and Evans, E. Margaret
- Subjects
- *
COMPREHENSION in children , *PRESCHOOL children , *SENSORY perception , *GIFTED persons , *INTELLECT , *COMPREHENSION - Abstract
How and when do children develop an understanding of extraordinary mental capacities? The current study tested 56 preschoolers on false-belief and knowledge-ignorance tasks about the mental states of contrasting agents-some agents were ordinary humans, some had exceptional perceptual capacities, and others possessed extraordinary mental capacities. Results indicated that, in contrast to younger and older peers, children within a specific age range reliably attributed fallible, human-like capacities to ordinary humans and to several special agents (including God) for both tasks. These data lend critical support to an anthropomorphism hypothesis-which holds that children's understanding of extraordinary minds is derived from their everyday intuitive psychology-and reconcile disparities between the findings of other studies on children's understanding of extraordinary minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010
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