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Children's understanding of ordinary and extraordinary minds.
- Source :
-
Child development [Child Dev] 2010 Sep-Oct; Vol. 81 (5), pp. 1475-89. - Publication Year :
- 2010
-
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.<br /> (© 2010 The Authors. Child Development © 2010 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1467-8624
- Volume :
- 81
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Child development
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 20840235
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01486.x