What Does “That” Have to Do with Point of View? Conflicting Desires and “Want” in German

Preschoolers understand the normativity of cooperatively structured competition

“…When facing a rule-breaking opponent, 3-year-olds focused on the rule breach more for an irrational versus rational opponent. This suggests that very young children might not be able to focus on more than one aspect of competitive games at a time and, thus, do not experience the joint activity as a coherent whole, which might be due to their limited ability to coordinate different perspectives regarding the same state of affairs or their deficiency in executive function skills (Garon et al, 2008;Perner & Roessler, 2012;Perner et al, 2005;Priewasser et al, 2013). The lack of protest against rule breaches of a rational opponent is somewhat surprising given evidence that young children enforce constitutive rules in a variety of contexts (e.g., ; however, in these purely cooperative game contexts, children need only focus on one perspective (the rules) and not on multiple perspectives as in the current experiment.…”

“…In addition, the tendency of older children, but not younger children, to make strategic moves was correlated with their spontaneous competitive attitude before the game had started. What this might suggest is that 5-year-olds do understand how to play strategically but that they also need to be motivated to do so and perhaps overcome reluctance to take disks from the opponent; however, 3-year-olds might not understand the difference between a strategic move and a non-strategic move in terms of the efficiency of their goal achievement, again possibly due to a deficiency in appreciating different perspectives (the opponent's and their own) on the same state of affairs or executive limitations (Garon et al, 2008;Perner et al, 2005;Priewasser et al, 2013).…”

“…Priewasser and colleagues (2013) argued, however, that children in these tasks do not need to simultaneously represent opposing (subjective) goals in interrelated ways (e.g., that someone's goal pursuit is at the same time detrimental to another's goal accomplishment) but might merely understand another's goal as different from, but unrelated to, their own goal. More generally, on the ''symmetry account" (Perner & Roessler, 2012;Perner, Zauner, & Sprung, 2005), understanding subjective conative and epistemic states requires the (domain-) general capacity to understand conflicting perspectives regarding the same state of affairs, which is not present in children under 4 years of age (who, thus, are thought to be unable to understand why two players in a competitive game act the way they do when pursuing opposing goals; Perner & Esken, in press;Perner & Roessler, 2010). On the ''asymmetry account" (Rakoczy, 2010;Rakoczy et al, 2007;Wellman, 1990), however, children come to understand subjective conative states earlier (at around 3 years of age) than subjective epistemic states.…”

“…Because children's executive function skills improve considerably between 3 and 5 years of age (Garon, Bryson, & Smith, 2008;Zelazo & Müller, 2002), and because competitive games require vigilance about both constitutive rules and the opponent's game-playing strategy at the same time, it is plausible to assume that 5-year-olds might show a fuller understanding of competitive games than 3-year-olds who often have difficulty in coordinating different perspectives regarding the same state of affairs (Perner & Roessler, 2012;Perner et al, 2005;Priewasser et al, 2013). Therefore, a comparison of 3-and 5-year-olds' understanding of the normative aspects of competitive games would be instructive.…”

Evolution of human cooperation in Homo heidelbergensis: Teleology versus mentalism

“…But children's responses do not speak to that. Perner (2004;Perner et al, 2005) argued that children's actions show an understanding of objective desirability of goals: their actions are governed by the objectively desirable goals to give broccoli to broccoli lovers, and something else to broccoli haters. Children's sensible actions thus do not demonstrate an understanding of conflicting mental perspectives in the same sense as passing the false belief test does, where children have to understand that Mistaken Max has a different perspective on where his chocolate is from their own perspective.…”