Implicit false belief across the lifespan: Non-replication of an anticipatory looking task

Burnside, Kimberly; Ruel, Alexa; Azar, Naomi; Poulin‐Dubois, Diane

doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2017.08.006

Cited by 50 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…[ 32 ] provides support for the idea that false belief-congruent action prediction is fragile in infancy, but becomes increasingly pronounced with age. However, our successful replication with adults has to be contrasted with other recent replication studies that did not find the effect in adults [ 38 , 39 ]. Taken together, the findings from these recent replication studies cast doubt on the robustness of implicit false belief sensitivity in children and adults.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…Strikingly, the recently fast-growing body of replication attempts of these anticipatory looking paradigms could not help to elucidate this issue. For example, previous successful conceptual replications with children and adults [ 24 , 25 ] could in turn not be directly replicated [ 38 ]. In sum, the to date available replication attempts draw a complicated and mixed picture of replications, partial replications and non-replications [ 40 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The robustness and generalizability of findings on spontaneous false belief sensitivity: a replication attempt

et al. 2018

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Influential studies showed that 25-month-olds and neurotypical adults take an agent's false belief into account in their anticipatory looking patterns (Southgate et al. 2007 Psychol. Sci. 18, 587–592 (doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x); Senju et al. 2009 Science 325, 883–885 (doi:10.1126/science.117617010.1126/science.1176170)). These findings constitute central pillars of current accounts distinguishing between implicit and explicit Theory of Mind. In our first experiment, which initially included a replication as well as two manipulations, we failed to replicate the original finding in 2- to 3-year-olds (N = 48). Therefore, we ran a second experiment with the sole purpose of seeing whether the effect can be found in an independent, tightly controlled, sufficiently powered and preregistered replication study. This replication attempt failed again in a sample of 25-month-olds (N = 78), but was successful in a sample of adults (N = 115). In all samples, a surprisingly high number of participants did not correctly anticipate the agent's action during the familiarization phase. This led to massive exclusion rates when adhering to the criteria of the original studies and strongly limits the interpretability of findings from the test phase. We discuss both the reliability of our replication attempts as well as the replicability of non-verbal anticipatory looking paradigms of implicit false belief sensitivity, in general.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The robustness and generalizability of findings on spontaneous false belief sensitivity: a replication attempt

et al. 2018

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“…However, this mechanism might not be the ability to represent the beliefs of others implicitly, but rather, an expression of keeping an “experiential record” of the other person's goal (see Perner & Roessler, ), a kind of sub‐mentalising (Heyes, ) or a minimal or belief‐like state based on encountering something (Butterfill & Apperly, ). Given the fact that recent studies fail to either replicate the results of implicit false‐belief understanding in children (Burnside, Ruel, Azar, & Poulin‐Dubois, ; Crivello & Poulin‐Dubois, ) or to provide evidence on the convergent validity of implicit false‐belief tasks (Dörrenberg, Rakoczy, & Liszkowski, ), we claim that deceptions‐in‐actions may not rely on implicit representations of false‐beliefs but rather, on the analysis of behavioural patterns. Because, to this day, the mechanism of deception‐in‐action is an unstudied topic, future research is of special importance here.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 75%

A new model of the development of deception: Disentangling the role of false‐belief understanding in deceptive ability

Jakubowska

Białecka‐Pikul

2019

Social Development

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“Deception” is defined predominantly as the intentional attempt to create false‐beliefs in others. However, the intentionality behind early acts of deception and its relation to false‐belief understanding remain unresolved. In this article, we offer a three‐stage theoretical model of the development of deception in human ontogeny. We posit that at any age, human deception is an intentional action, but its form changes according to the level of the deceiver's intentionality. As the primary function of deception is to influence the behaviour of others, we argue that first‐stage deceptions‐in‐action involves only in the analysis of behaviours and perceptual access, not beliefs. In our view, the ability to deceive and false‐belief understanding are eventually inter‐connected, but false‐belief understanding is not essential for the earliest form of deception. Based on empirical findings, which suggest that by observing the results of early deceptions children build their knowledge of mental states as causes of human actions, we claim that the second stage of deception is representational deception. Further, as the understanding of beliefs becomes more advanced, the effectiveness of children's deception increases, and new forms of reflective deception (the third stage) emerge. Future directions for research are outlined, and limitations of the current model are discussed.

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“…Other paradigms have been developed to test false belief understanding in infancy (e.g. anticipatory looking, helping) but they have also proven difficult to replicate (Burnside, Ruel, Azar, & Poulin-Dubois, 2018;Crivello & Poulin-Dubois, 2018;Priewasser, Rafetseder, Gargitter, & Perner, 2018;Schuwerk, Priewasser, Sodian, & Perner, 2018). Additionally, there appears to be a lack of convergence in performance when the same infants are administered pairs of non-traditional false belief tasks (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants attribute false beliefs to a toy crane

Burnside

Severdija

Poulin‐Dubois

2019

Developmental Science

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The mentalistic view of early theory of mind posits that infants possess a robust and sophisticated understanding of false belief that is masked by the demands of traditional explicit tasks. Much of the evidence supporting this mentalistic view comes from infants’ looking time at events that violate their expectations about the beliefs of a human agent. We conducted a replication of the violation‐of‐expectation procedure, except that the human agent was replaced by an inanimate agent. Infants watched a toy crane repeatedly move toward a box containing an object. In the absence of the crane, the object changed location. When the crane returned, 16‐month‐old infants looked longer when it turned toward the object's new location, consistent with the attribution of a false belief to the crane. These results suggest that infants spontaneously attribute false beliefs to inanimate agents. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/qqEPPhd9FDo

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Implicit false belief across the lifespan: Non-replication of an anticipatory looking task

Cited by 50 publications

References 20 publications

The robustness and generalizability of findings on spontaneous false belief sensitivity: a replication attempt

The robustness and generalizability of findings on spontaneous false belief sensitivity: a replication attempt

A new model of the development of deception: Disentangling the role of false‐belief understanding in deceptive ability

Infants attribute false beliefs to a toy crane

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