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Infants' and toddlers' reasoning about others: Connections to prosocial development and language
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Hobbs, Kathryn |
| Copyright Year | 2014 |
| Abstract | Often overlooked in the study of theory of mind (ToM) development, the understanding of motivational states, such as goals and desires, is both important in its own right and also a likely precursor to more advanced social and cognitive skills. This dissertation explored infants’ and toddlers’ reasoning about agents’ motivational states, linking those representations to the domains of language and prosocial development. Parts I and II of the dissertation asked about toddlers’ abilities to use representations of others’ motivational states to guide helping behaviors. Part I used a spontaneous helping paradigm with two goal objects, one previously liked and the other disliked. Threebut not 2-year-olds helped appropriately by giving an actor her desired object, reflecting prosocial concern for others’ specific desires at age 3. Part II probed the understanding of goals and helping of 14and 24-month-olds. After establishing that toddlers encode simple reaching actions as goal-directed, a series of 4 experiments using an object-giving paradigm investigated toddlers’ abilities to use goal representations to guide helping. The results indicate that 24but not 14-month-olds used representations of prior goals to inform their helping behaviors; 14-month-olds were capable of using only current goals to guide helping. Part III of the dissertation asked whether there is continuity in the developmental relationship between language and ToM by investigating links between toddlers’ |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/13065030/Hobbs_gsas.harvard.inactive_0084L_11722.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=4 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/13065030/Hobbs_gsas.harvard.inactive_0084L_11722.pdf?sequence=4 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
