Acquisition of False Belief

Researcher: Helen Stickney

Helen is investigating the children's (ages 2-5) understanding of the ability of people to have a false belief. When a person has a belief that is different from the reality that a child witnesses, can she recognize the false belief? If so, or if not, how does she interpret false beliefs and misstatements? Does a child's ability to understand false belief correlate with the child's language ability?

The method used involves the child and a puppet looking at a series of pictures. The puppet will make silly statements about the pictures and the child is instructed to, playfully, tell the puppet when he gets the pictures right or wrong. For example, for a picture showing Elmo (with a thought bubble) thinking about a cat, the puppet might say, “Is Elmo thinking about a dog?” The child’s answers or gestures will be recorded.

Acquisition of Reflexive and Reciprocal Pronouns

Researcher: Danny Green

Danny is investigating children's comprehension of reflexive and reciprocal pronouns (each other, themselves) and whether certain verbs carry specific meanings that are interpreted regardless of the accompanying pronoun. Danny's project involves showing children a series of pages which each contain two similar photographs. Danny will describe one of the photos and ask the child to point to the corresponding photo. An example of the task at hand: one page contains a picture of two people embracing one another, and another picture of the same two people hugging themselves. Danny will then say, “Show me, they are hugging themselves.”

Research suggests that the meaning embedded in the verb “hugging” (two people hugging one another) is strong enough to override the pronoun “themselves” in a mind that is still strengthening its grasp on language.