Psychological Development and Education ›› 2009, Vol. 25 ›› Issue (4): 15-20.

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The Development of 3-to 6-year-old Children’s Belief Reasoning

ZHANG Ting1,2,3, LI Hong1,2,3, ZEN Wei-xi1,2, ZHANG Li1,4, LIAO Yu1,2,3   

  1. 1. School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715 China;
    2. Key Laboratory of Personality and Cognition, Ministry of Education 400715 China;
    3. Sino-Canadian Research Center for Child Development, Chongqing 400715 China;
    4. JiangSu Technology Universtiy, Zhang Jiagang, Jiangsu 615600
  • Online:2009-10-15 Published:2009-10-15

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Abstract: To examine when children can understand true belief,and examine the developmental trajectory of understanding the rule of belief reasoning,true belief and false belief,diverse belief task,conflict true belief task and location false belief task were used.97 3-to 6-year-old children finished diverse belief task,conflict true belief task and location false belief task.3-year-old children passed the diverse belief task,5-year-old children passed the conflict true belief task,6-year-old children passed the location false belief task.Results support the developmental order that children understand true belief firstly,and then false belief.Moreover,the results declare that before children can understand belief,they have already known the rule of belief reasoning.

Key words: theory of mind, belief reasoning, true belief, false belief

CLC Number: 

  • B844.1
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