Preschoolers' Developing Understanding of Factivity in Mental Verb Comprehension and Its Relation to First- and Second-Order False Belief Understanding: A Longitudinal Study

Kristen-Antonow, Susanne ; Jarvers, Irina und Sodian, Beate (2019): Preschoolers' Developing Understanding of Factivity in Mental Verb Comprehension and Its Relation to First- and Second-Order False Belief Understanding: A Longitudinal Study. In: Journal of Cognition and Development, Bd. 20, Nr. 3: S. 354-369

Abstract

It has been argued that the distinction between factivity and non-factivity is more fundamental to mental state understanding than that between false beliefs and reality. The present study examined children's growing understanding of all possible contrasts between the factive verb know and the non-factive verbs think and guess longitudinally between the ages of 50 and 94 months and investigated its relations to first- and second-order FB skills independently of general language skills. For this purpose, 140 monolingual children (63 females) were tested at 50, 60, 70, and 94 months in a task measuring their understanding of degrees of speaker (un)certainty expressed by the verbs know, think, and guess and in first- and second-order FB tasks. Results showed that by 60 months of age, know was differentiated from think and from guess in the majority of the sample. However, longitudinal results revealed protracted development over the preschool years. Further, there was a link between first-order FBU and a partial understanding of the factivity/non-factivity contrast at 70 months, while the consistent mastery of the know-contrasts at 94 months was predicted by second-order FBU. Results also suggested that false belief precedes a full-fledged concept of factivity rather than vice versa. The results are discussed in light of theories of socio-cognitive development.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Psychologie und Pädagogik > Department Psychologie
• Themengebiete: 100 Philosophie und Psychologie > 150 Psychologie
• ISSN: 1524-8372
• Sprache: Englisch