Perspectives on Perspective Taking

Birch, Susan; Li, V; Haddock, Taeh; Ghrear, Siba; Brosseau-Liard, Patricia É.; Baimel, Adam; Whyte, M

doi:10.1016/bs.acdb.2016.10.005

Cited by 26 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 167 publications

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“…For these reasons, it is exceedingly important for learners to assess if (or when) others are providing credible information. Fortunately, there are several cues people use to decide whether someone is providing credible information, such as a person's professed level of knowledge or ignorance [e.g., 2,3], area of expertise [e.g., 4], prior track-record of accuracy [e.g., 5,6], perceptual access to information [e.g., 7], or a person's status or prestige [8; for reviews see 1, [9][10][11][12][13][14]. Another useful credibility cue (the focus of this manuscript) is a person's expression of confidence or uncertainty.…”

Section: Confidence Is Good But Overconfidence Always Sinks the Shipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's understanding of when a person's confidence and hesitancy is a cue to their credibility

Birch¹,

Severson²,

Baimel³

2020

PLoS ONE

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The most readily-observable and influential cue to one's credibility is their confidence. Although one's confidence correlates with knowledge, one should not always trust confident sources or disregard hesitant ones. Three experiments (N = 662; 3-to 12-year-olds) examined the developmental trajectory of children's understanding of 'calibration': whether a person's confidence or hesitancy correlates with their knowledge. Experiments 1 and 2 provide evidence that children use a person's history of calibration to guide their learning. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed a developmental progression in calibration understanding: Children preferred a well-calibrated over a miscalibrated confident person by around 4 years, whereas even 7-to 8-year-olds were insensitive to calibration in hesitant people. The widespread implications for social learning, impression formation, and social cognition are discussed.

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Section: Confidence Is Good But Overconfidence Always Sinks the Shipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's understanding of when a person's confidence and hesitancy is a cue to their credibility

Birch¹,

Severson²,

Baimel³

2020

PLoS ONE

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“…Notably, Theory of Mind is a multifaceted capacity that is much broader than simply passing the Sally-Anne task, or reasoning about false beliefs. A ‘theory of mind’ is generally believed to involve a suite of abilities like reasoning about emotions, intentions, desires, knowledge, and much more (for review, see [ 15 ]). To examine the developmental trajectory of different Theory of Mind abilities researchers have designed various measures such as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test [ 16 ], Belief-Desire Reasoning task [ 17 ], Strange Stories [ 18 ], among many others (e.g., [ 19 – 23 ]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are the classic false belief tasks cursed? Young children are just as likely as older children to pass a false belief task when they are not required to overcome the curse of knowledge

et al. 2021

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The question of when children understand that others have minds that can represent or misrepresent reality (i.e., possess a ‘Theory of Mind’) is hotly debated. This understanding plays a fundamental role in social interaction (e.g., interpreting human behavior, communicating, empathizing). Most research on this topic has relied on false belief tasks such as the ‘Sally-Anne Task’, because researchers have argued that it is the strongest litmus test examining one’s understanding that the mind can misrepresent reality. Unfortunately, in addition to a variety of other cognitive demands this widely used measure also unnecessarily involves overcoming a bias that is especially pronounced in young children—the ‘curse of knowledge’ (the tendency to be biased by one’s knowledge when considering less-informed perspectives). Three- to 6-year-old’s (n = 230) false belief reasoning was examined across tasks that either did, or did not, require overcoming the curse of knowledge, revealing that when the curse of knowledge was removed three-year-olds were significantly better at inferring false beliefs, and as accurate as five- and six-year-olds. These findings reveal that the classic task is not specifically measuring false belief understanding. Instead, previously observed developmental changes in children’s performance could be attributed to the ability to overcome the curse of knowledge. Similarly, previously observed relationships between individual differences in false belief reasoning and a variety of social outcomes could instead be the result of individual differences in the ability to overcome the curse of knowledge, highlighting the need to re-evaluate how best to interpret large bodies of research on false belief reasoning and social-emotional functioning.

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“…Similarly, examining the finding that children adopt different perspectives as they read will lend insight into children's deployment of a theory of mind while reading (Ronfard & Harris, 2014). As such, it may help us to better understand how literature can be used to enhance children's perspective-taking skills (Birch et al, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s absorption in fiction: Self-reports by avid and occasional readers.

Prezioso¹,

Harris²

2023

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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Story world absorption is a mental state in which a reader’s attention is captured by immersion in a story. Although there is extensive research on story world absorption in adults, there is very little research on story world absorption in children. This mixed-methods study investigated the mental state of story world absorption in 66 children ages 9–11 years old, asking how they experience that state. Motivated by the hypothesis that, despite differences in their reading frequency, most children can become absorbed by stories, we asked a diverse sample of readers to report on their reading experience. Although 9-year-old frequent readers reported greater overall absorption than 9-year-old occasional readers, 10- and 11-year-old readers reported similar levels of absorption, regardless of their reading frequency. Additionally, frequent and occasional readers across age groups were similar in the extent to which they differentially endorsed the four dimensions of the absorption experience: attention, transportation, emotional engagement, and mental imagery. Semistructured interviews conducted with a subset of the sample (18 children) provided additional information regarding the text types and features that are most likely to absorb child readers. Overall, the findings underline the possibility that both frequent and occasional child readers can become absorbed in a fictional world.

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Perspectives on Perspective Taking

Cited by 26 publications

References 167 publications

Children's understanding of when a person's confidence and hesitancy is a cue to their credibility

Children's understanding of when a person's confidence and hesitancy is a cue to their credibility

Are the classic false belief tasks cursed? Young children are just as likely as older children to pass a false belief task when they are not required to overcome the curse of knowledge

Children’s absorption in fiction: Self-reports by avid and occasional readers.

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