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Sociocultural input facilitates children's developing understanding of extraordinary minds.
- Source :
-
Child development [Child Dev] 2012 May-Jun; Vol. 83 (3), pp. 1007-21. Date of Electronic Publication: 2012 Feb 28. - Publication Year :
- 2012
-
Abstract
- Three- to 5-year-old (N = 61) religiously schooled preschoolers received theory-of-mind (ToM) tasks about the mental states of ordinary humans and agents with exceptional perceptual or mental capacities. Consistent with an anthropomorphism hypothesis, children beginning to appreciate limitations of human minds (e.g., ignorance) attributed those limits to God. Only 5-year-olds differentiated between humans' fallible minds and God's less fallible mind. Unlike secularly schooled children, religiously schooled 4-year-olds did appreciate another agent's less fallible mental abilities when instructed and reminded about those abilities. Among children who understood ordinary humans' mental fallibilities, knowledge of God predicted attributions of correct epistemic states to extraordinary agents. Results suggest that, at a certain point in ToM development, sociocultural input can facilitate an appreciation for extraordinary minds.<br /> (© 2012 The Authors. Child Development © 2012 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1467-8624
- Volume :
- 83
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Child development
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 22372590
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01741.x