The False Belief Task

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In order to understand the false-belief task, we must first consider the concept of theory of mind. Premack and Woodruff (1978) as cited in Baron Cohen, Lesile and Frith (1985) defined 'theory of mind' as the "ability to assign mental states to oneself and to others". It is also the ability to make inferences about what other people believe and in a given situation allows individuals to predict how they may behave. False belief tasks were created in order to examine theory of mind and understanding that an individual’s belief or representation about the world may contrast with reality. It is a commonly used method to examine a theory of mind in children to gain an insight to a child's internal mental states. Theory of mind consists of two …show more content…

Firstly the task and actual construct itself may have issues. Chandler et al.,(1989) as cited in Mark, Jeannette & Valerie (n.d) argued that children may fail the false belief tasks, due to the tasks being too complex and unnatural. The author argued that false beliefs tasks also heavily relies on other cognitive abilities besides from thought processes such as language, working memory, and executive control. False belief tasks requires at a child to reason about a belief that is false which goes completely against the concept of beliefs (Leslie, 1994 as cited in Bloom & German, 2000). Fodor, (1992) as cited in Bloom and German, (2000) stated that in order to pass the false belief task, the child has to override useful and simple heuristics such as "people will act in accord with their desires". Therefore false belief tasks as a whole may be intrinsically difficult as there is much consideration for other factors which all contribute to the measurements directly affecting pass rates. Other research has also suggested that the false belief paradigm has issues as the set age boundaries do not apply depending on the way the paradigm is presented. Buttelmann, Over, Carpenter, Tomasello (2014) conducted a study to examine whether infants around 18 months of age can pass a false belief task similar to the Smarties unexpected contents test. It was found in their paradigm, 66.7% of the infants …show more content…

Firstly autism can cause children to fail false belief tasks even when reaching the average passing age (4 years of age). Autism is described as an impairment in verbal and nonverbal communication. Such impairment is part of the core features of childhood autism which can affect understanding and coping with the social environment regardless of IQ (American Psychiatric Association, 1980; Kanner, 1943; Ritvo & Freeman, 1978; Rutter, 1978 as cited in Baron-Chon, Leslie & Frith, 1985). Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith (1988) as cited Chari (2002) suggested that social functioning, communication and imaginative play all contribute to theory of mind. Due to an impairment in these three areas, there is an inability to acquire theory of mind leading to autistic children to fail in the false belief task. It is highly important for children to understand mental states such as beliefs and desires as they are essential in predicting other people’s behaviour. Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith (1985) found that the pass rates for 'normal' children and those who suffered from Down's Syndrome had respective pass rates of 85% and 86%. However autistic children had only a 20% pass rate for the false belief task despite having the mental age of four and over. The authors concluded that the autistic children did not understand the difference between their own

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