Development Of First Order And Second Order Belief-Desire Reasoning By 5-to 8-Year Old Children

During the last two decades,the topic of children's theory of mind has become immensely popular in developmental psychology.In general,the phrase "theory of mind" is used to refer to oneself and other people mental states,and makes the casuality forecast and explanation from this.From systematized and the multi-stratification plane's angle carries on the exploration to child' theory of mind development is necessary.The belief-desire reasoning faculty takes child' theory the important aspect, at present domestic have not research to discuss the development of child' abilities of first order belief-desire reasoning and second order belief-desire reasoning systematically.In this study,the 5- to 8-year-olds child' abilities of first order belief-desire reasoning and second order belief-desire reasoning were investigated systematically via a range of tasks,and the child' first order belief-desire reasoning and second order belief-desire reasoning development general situation has be discussed.This research used two experiments.In experimentl paradigm in previous studies test was used,four tasks of first order belief-desire according to the dimensions of "true-false" and "approach-avoid" were divided into:first order true belief approach desire task,first order true belief avoid desire task,first order false belief approach desire task,first order false belief avoid task.And children's performance on these four first order belief-desire reasoning tasks was investigated.In experiments according to the second order belief is true or false and the desire is to approach the object or avoid the object,second belief-desire reasoning tasks were divided into:second order true belief approach desire,second order false belief approach desire,second order true belief avoid desire,second order false belief avoid.And we investigated children's performance on the four second order belief-desire reasoning tasks.The conclusions are:(1)The first order belief-desire reason ability developmental trajectory is different from the second order belief-desire reason ability developmental trajectory.The first order belief-desire reason ability developmental trajectory is:first order true belief approach desire＞first order true belief avoid desire＞first order false belief approach desire＞first order false belief avoid.The second order belief-desire reason ability developmental trajectory is:second order true belief approach desire＞second order false belief approach desire＞second order true belief avoid desire＞second order false belief avoid.(2)Inhibition of tasks required in belief-desire reasoning task difficult important factor.One inhibitory difficult task,dual inhibition task secondly,the three most difficult task of inhibition.(3)The development of children's belief-desire reason ability is not an all-or-none process,but one of gradual and multi-level process.