Critical Review: Infants' False Belief Understanding in Helping

This essay provides a critical review of a study investigating the understanding of false beliefs in infants, specifically focusing on a study by Buttelmann, Carpenter, and Tomasello (2009). The study examines whether infants can assist agents in retrieving a toy, considering both true and false belief...Read More

Critical Review on

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
DISCUSSION..................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
At the time of understanding the minds, the biggest obstacle for young infants is
understanding when the adults have a false belief. In a study by David Buttelmann, Malinda
Carpenter and Michael Tomasello, the title of which is 'Eighteen month old infants show false
belief understanding in an active helping paradigm' states that a new paradigm is implemented to
measure the infants' understanding of false belief. The study was conducted on the infants of 2.5
years old and 16 and 18 month old. The study revolves around whether or not infants help agents
to get a toy taking into account the false belief and true belief situation.
SUMMARY
There are various controversies that what is the age of children when they have knowledge about
others false belief. Earlier, it was thought that by the age of 4 – 5 years children understand false
belief. But now it is believed that by the age of 3 years, children develop the knowledge of false
belief. A study conducted by Clement and Perner in 1994 done a false belief test. In test, children
saw toy mouse leave its cheese at one location and cheese was moved to other location when he
was not looking around. When children heard about the coming back of mouse, the question was
whether children look at location where cheese really was or at the loaction where mouse
believed it was.
The main hypothesis of the study is that to pass this test a child must understand the false
beliefs, that is, they must have knowledge why the person is doing this so as to identify the goal
correctly (Buttelmann, Carpenter and Tomasello, 2009).
In the current study, a procedure was tested on 2 groups of infants, that is, 2.5 year old
and 16 and 18 year old. In the study, infants watched as a toy was switched from one box to
another while an outside agent witnessed the switch or not (Fairchild, Mathis and Papafragou,
2020). When outside agent witnessed the switch, infants followed their natural behaviour to help
agent by opening the empty box. On the contrary, when agent did not witnessed the switch, it
should infer that he wants the toy.
For this purpose 2 studies are conducted which are as follows:
Study 1:
Study 1 consisted of 24 German 2.5 year old infants (12 girls and 12 boys) as participants and
material used was a toy (caterpillar) and 2 wooden boxes each of yellow and pink color with
hinged lid and handle on top. The child was made to sit on a cushion equidistant from 2 boxes

with female experimenter E1 who was sitting next to the child and male experimenter who was
sitting between 2 boxes facing the child and E1. E1 played with the child, took the boxes and
opened the lid twice and asked the child to do same. E2 then left the room to get another toy and
came back with a caterpillar toy. He then put that toy in second box. When E2 again left the
room, E1 played a trick with child of taking the toy out of the box and putting it in other box and
locking it. Now, for a child in true belief condition, that is, E2 was in the room while toy was
inter-changed. And, in false belief condition E2 was not in the room when toy was exhanged. At
this point, when E2 focuses on wrong box, the child takes him to the correct boc after full
encouragement. In the condition of true belief, E2 knows about the switch and still goes to wrong
box, the child does not offer any help. The result of the study was that 75% children correctly
opened the box E2 just tried to open in true belief condition whereas 83.3% correctly opened the
correct box with a false belief.
In false belief condition, 7 children informed E2 about change of place of toy when E2 trie to
open box. On the contrary, in true belief situaion, only 3 children talked to E2.
Thus, 2.5 year old children show clear-cut evidence of understanding of false belief by helping
others in different ways whether the agent had a true belief or false belief about the toy's
position.
Study 2:
In study 2, the total participants in this study were fifty 18 month old and 50 16 month old
children and two expermenter's. The same procedure as in study 1 was implemented on 16- and
18- month olds. An additional source of encouragement i.e. parents were also included in the
procedure. When experimenter's encouragement did not work, parents were asked to encourage
their chil to help E2. The result in the case of 18 month old was that 84% children correctly
opened the box E2 tried to open in true belief condition whereas 72% opened the box where the
toy was hidden. Such results are confirmed by infants' sudden communicative responses which
differs acording to the situations. For infants of age 16 month old, 56% opened the box E2 tried
to open in true belief condition and in false belief condition 80% correctly opened the other box.
These results finally show that by the age of 18 month or minimum 16 month old, infants
develop the false belief understaning to help adults properly.

DISCUSSION
The study proves that infants of age 18 months act properly on the basis of other false
belief understanding. Studies conducted shows clear evidence of 18 month children's
understanding while 16 month old were not able to do so. It can also be said that false belief
understanding is still developing at this age and more future research is required to experiment
with small children to study their mind abilities. In short, children saw that adult's having
difficulty to open the box, they had to think about the objective of the behaviour in respect of
adult's mental representation state.
Again, a key challenge is to differentiate between false belief understanding and
ignorance of knowledge. It means the child in false belief might question that E2 is ignorant
about the place of toy and will return to its original position only. Still, several studies show that
children do not use such strategies.
One question is still left unanswered about the nature of false belief understanding of 5
year old children's is same as that of 18 month old infant. The experiments conducted still cannot
be explained in terms of primary and secondary subjectivity. In order to do so, infants have to
search for two different contents with two different behaviours.
In contrast with this study, several studies stated that sometimes, the transaction can fail
too (Behne, and et.al, 2005). The reasons being adult not able to give toy to child beacause she
was teasing the child or accidentially dropped it on the floor. Young infants might have bcome
impatient for getting the toy. The practices conducted by around a child may put a direct impact
on their practices and activities. For eg, the negative environment may have a bad influence on
children. If the surrounding of children compels them to think negatively, he may respond that
way only. The child thinks that the experimenter do not want to give that toy to him. On the
other hand, positive environment will have positive impact on the child. Child with positive
attitude will think that if the experimenter is not giving him the toy then, he want to play and
have fun with him.
With views of (Barone and Gomila, 2021), it can be supported that the environment
wherein the child is living has a crucial impact over the thinking and perception of child. The
reason pertaining to the fact is that a person learns more by seeing the surrounding. Hence, this
causes a huge impact over the working and thinking style of person. Especially for child to grow
in better manner it is very important that they are provided with good and cordial environment.

The reason underlying this fact is that when the child is in such a phase where they learn what
actually happens. So it is very necessary that surrounding and environment of children must be
maintained in proper and effective manner so that they grow in nice manner.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that young infants understand and interpret other behvaiour, goals,
objectives and desires. Majority of the young infant by the age of 18 month minimum develop
false belief understanding. Therefore, this study is a simple and non-verbal measurement of
understanding of false belief for using it with other non verbal populations. It gives us the
evidences of false belief understanding in 12 month old infants.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Buttelmann, D., Carpenter, M. and Tomasello, M., 2009. Eighteen-month-old infants show false
belief understanding in an active helping paradigm. Cognition. 112(2). pp.337-342.
Behne, T. and et.al, 2005. Unwilling versus unable: infants' understanding of intentional
action. Developmental psychology. 41(2). p.328.
Fairchild, S., Mathis, A. and Papafragou, A., 2020. Pragmatics and social meaning:
Understanding under-informativeness in native and non-native speakers. Cognition. 200.
p.104171.
Barone, P. and Gomila, A., 2021. Infants' performance in the indirect false belief tasks: A
second‐person interpretation. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science. 12(3).
p.e1551.