The purpose of the present study was to examine the capacity of active deception and the capacity of understanding the effects of deception on preschoolers, and inspect the view that there is the conceptual change in preschooler's theory of mind. And ...
The purpose of the present study was to examine the capacity of active deception and the capacity of understanding the effects of deception on preschoolers, and inspect the view that there is the conceptual change in preschooler's theory of mind. And the questions of this study was whether 3-year-olds can deceive intentionally or not, and whether they con understand the effects of deception or not.
The subject of this study were 22 3-year-olds, 22 4-year-olds, 22 5-year-olds. Preschoolers were tested for their capacity of active deception by sticker test which originated from Peskin(1992) and for their capacity of understanding the effects of deception by narrative task which originated from Peskin(1996).
The result of this study are as follows:
1. In test for active deception, there was a marked development between the ages of 3and 5 years in capacity to conceal information. Especially, 3-year-olds' performance was significantly poor. In spite of the repeated trial, they couldn't misinform a competitor who always chose the sticker for which they themselves had previously stated a preference. On the contrary, 3-year-olds showed the excellent performance in revealing information on which they had to physically exclude the competitor. And this results suggest that 3-year-olds' difficulty was restricted to active deception.
2. In test for understanding the effects of deception, there was a marked development between the ages of 3 and 5 years in performance to the Deception question. Especially, 3-year-olds' performance was significantly poor. In spite of the deceptive context in narratives, they could neither understand the victim's false belief nor predict the deceiver's next action. On the contrary, 3-year-olds showed the excellent performance to the Pretense question in which they had to distinguish the real from the pretend persona. And this results suggest that 3-year-olds' difficulty was restricted to understanding of effect of deception.
These finding support that unlike 4-,5-year-olds, 3-year-olds lack the capacity of deception. And these findings are in accord with the conceptual change view that at the age of about four years, children come to acquire the concept of mental representation and develop their theory of mind.