Young children's understanding of the mind and reality.

Abstract

In two sets of studies I uncovered some of children's earliest conceptions of the mind and reality. In the first set of experiments, I investigated children's early understanding of various realities, non-realities, and appearances by examining their earliest uses of the words real and really in spontaneous speech. Analyses of these samples showed that by age 3 children clearly distinguished between reality and a variety of non-real contrasts in their everyday speech. For example, young children distinguished between toys, pictures, and pretend actions versus their real natures. In a second study with 3-year-olds, I explicitly questioned children about the reality and appearance of a variety of items. Results from this study showed that young children understand the distinction between appearance and reality when it is applied to toys, pictures, and pretense, but have trouble applying their understanding to perceptual illusions. The second set of studies investigated young children's understanding of mental states. In our everyday common-sense understanding of the mind, we, as adults, distinguish between two distinct sorts of mental states--reality-oriented and fictional. Reality-oriented mental states, such as knowledge, serve in our belief systems and theories, and guide our communication and behavior. Fictional mental states, like imagination and dreams, on the other hand, do not serve such functions. Unlike reality-oriented mental states, they do not arise from direct contact with reality, nor are they taken to be reliable and accurate indicators of the way the world is. In two studies, I demonstrated first, that 3- and 4-year-old children understand that, whereas perceptual knowledge requires perceptual input, fictional imagination can occur independent of direct contact with reality. Secondly, I found that these same young children understand that knowledge is a more accurate and reliable indicator of the nature of reality than is imagination. I also found, however, that three-year-olds, especially the younger ones, were much more likely than 4-year-olds to claim that their imagined mental contents reflected reality. I interpret this finding as indicating that considerable development takes place between the ages of 3 and 4 in children's understanding of the relation between mental contents and real-world contents.