=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1208/paper1
|storemode=property
|title=Teaching children to attribute second-order false belief: A training study
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1208/paper1.pdf
|volume=Vol-1208
}}
==Teaching children to attribute second-order false belief: A training study==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1208/paper1.pdf
Teaching Children to Attribute Second-order False Belief:
A Training Study
(Extended Abstract)
Burcu Arslan1, Rineke Verbrugge1, Niels Taatgen1, Bart Hollebrandse2
1
Institute of Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 407,
9700 AK Groningen, The Netherlands
2
Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, P.O.Box 716,
9700 AS Groningen, The Netherlands
{b.arslan, l.c.verbrugge, n.a.taagen, b.hollebrandse}@rug.nl
1 INTRODUCTION
To understand that different people have different mental states, such as desires,
beliefs, knowledge and intentions, which can be different from one’s own, is called
Theory of Mind [1]. While explicit first-order Theory of Mind (ToM) (“Mary believes
that [there is a chocolate in the drawer]”) develops around the age of four [2], second-
order ToM (“Jack thinks that [Mary knows that [there is a chocolate in the fridge]]”)
develops between the ages of five and six [3].
One of the most applied verbal tasks for studying the development of ToM is the false
belief task (FBT). The goal of the first-order FBT is to examine whether children can
attribute a false belief to another person in a given story where the child knows the reality
and the other person has a false belief. Similarly, the goal of the second-order FBT is to
test whether children can attribute a false belief to another person who is attributing a
belief to the third agent.
In previous work, Arslan, Taatgen and Verbrugge (2013) constructed a computational
cognitive model in order to show the developmental transitions from first- to second-
order ToM [4]. There are two main predictions of their model:
1. Children who are able to give correct answers for the first-order ToM questions
but not for the second-order ToM questions do give first-order (and not zero-
order) answers for the second-order ToM questions.
2. Children who are able to pass the first-order ToM task can learn to pass second-
order ToM with the help of feedback.
In order to test these predictions, we conducted a training experiment with primary
school children between the ages of 5 and 6 years old.
2 METHOD
2.1. Participants
A sample of 26 Dutch children was tested. The children were pre-tested to ensure that
they had not yet acquired second-order false belief reasoning. In line with our pre-defined
exclusion criteria, three children who gave correct answers for all of the second-order
false belief questions during the pre-test were excluded from the analysis. Thus the results
of 23 children were included to the analysis (15 female, Mage=5.8 years, SE=0.06, range:
5.1 – 6.2).
2.2. Materials
We used three different types of second-order FBTs: (a) Birthday Puppy-like stories, (b)
Chocolate Bar-like stories, (c) Bake Sale-like Stories. To be able to test the first
prediction of the model, we constructed the Chocolate Bar-like stories and the Bake Sale-
like Stories in such a way that it is possible to distinguish the most likely order of the
child’s ToM reasoning from the given answer. In total, we constructed 30 different
second-order false belief stories.
We also constructed four true belief stories in order to test whether children possibly
use a simple strategy instead of reasoning about second-order mental state attributions.
Two of the true belief stories had the same structure as the Bake Sale-like stories and the
other two had the same structure as the Birthday Puppy-like stories.
In addition to testing the transfer effect by training the children with second-order FBT
(near transfer), we wanted to see whether children can transfer what they learned during
training to another domain in which they should apply first- and second-order reasoning
(far transfer). For this purpose, we adopted Meijering and colleagues’ (submitted) Marble
Drop (MD) game [5]. In this game, children are instructed that they play against a
computer. Both the child’s and the computer’s aim is to maximize their own pay-off.
During the game, sometimes children are asked to make a decision that takes into account
the computer’s decision (first-order), and sometimes they are asked to make a prediction
about the computer’s decision, which takes into account their own decision at the final
decision point (second-order). Figure 1 shows an example of a second-order game where
the computer controls the blue trapdoors and the child controls the orange trapdoors.
Lastly, we adapted Towse, Hitch, and Hutton’s (1998) Counting Span Task and used
this during the pre- and post-tests to control for children’s working memory score [6].
Fig.1. An example of second-order game
2.3. Procedure
Children were tested individually for about 30 minutes in their preschool in a series of
four different sessions: i) pre-test, ii) first training session, iii) second training session,
and iv) post-test, respectively. There was at least one week between pre- and post-tests.
Children were trained in two different days in between the pre-test and the post-test.
There was at least one day between the first and the second training days. Drawings of the
episodes of the stories were presented one by one together with their audio recordings.
The drawings remained visible throughout the story.
Pre- and post-test. Children were tested with one MD game, one Counting Span Task,
and three second-order FBTs (one Bake Sale-like, one Birthday Puppy-like, and one
Chocolate Bar-like) in a random order. Children did not get any feedback for the second-
order FBTs in the pre-test and post-test. Because children were not trained with
Chocolate Bar-like stories during the two training sessions, this type of stories was used
to test the near transfer effect of the training. In the MD game, positive (green happy
smiley) or negative feedback (red sad smiley) was always provided during the trials.
Training Sessions. Per training sessions, each child was trained with 6 different
second-order FBTs (3 Bake Sale-like, and 3 Birthday Puppy-like) in a random order. Per
story, a feedback (correct or incorrect) and an explanation were provided by the
experimenter in an interactive fashion. After three second-order FBTs were presented,
one true belief story was presented to check whether the children were using a simple
strategy or not.
3 RESULTS
Most of the time (63%) children who gave wrong answers provided first-order answers
for second-order false belief questions. Whilst 17% of answers were zero-order answers,
20% of answers were “I don’t know.” This finding confirms the first prediction of Arslan
and colleagues’ (2013) model.
Figure 2.a shows children’s improvement from pre- to post-tests. There is a significant
improvement from pre- to post-tests (V=27, p = .002), and from training day 1 to training
day 2 (V=36, p= .03). These results confirm the second prediction of Arslan and
colleagues’ (2013) model that children’s performance can be improved by providing
feedback. Whilst the children gave correct answers to 76% of the true belief questions in
the first training day, the correct answers increased to 91% in the second training day.
This result suggests that children did not use a simple strategy (i.e. pattern recognition)
instead of reasoning about the questions.
Figure 2.b shows children’s improvements in different types of second-order FBTs
from pre- to post-tests. There are significant improvements from pre- to post tests in Bake
Sale-like stories (V= 27, p= .008) and Chocolate Bar-like stories (V=15, p= .008), and
there is a marginally significant improvement in Birthday Puppy-like stories (V=11, p=
.065).
100%
100%
90%
90%
Proportion
Correct
80%
Proportion
Correct
80%
70%
70%
60%
60%
50%
50%
40%
40%
30%
30%
Chocolate
Bar-‐like
20%
20%
Bake
Sale-‐like
10%
10%
Birthday
Puppy-‐
0%
like
0%
Pre-‐test
Training
Training
Post-‐test
Day
1
Day
2
Pre-‐test
Post-‐test
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. (a) Changes in performance over the course of training. (b) Children’s performance
from pre- to post-tests in different types of story types
Children’s MD game scores did not differ from the chance level for the first- and the second-
order games during pre- and post-tests. Moreover, children’s counting span score does not
predict their pre- and post-tests scores.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This study shows that children can learn to attribute second-order false belief to an agent with
the help of explicit feedback with explanation. Our finding that children’s performance also
improved in Chocolate Bar-like stories (near transfer) suggests that this improvement is not just
limited to the stories that we used during training sessions, but that there is a more flexible
improvement that they can use in a different type of situation. On the other hand, our finding
that children’s performance did not improve in the Marble Drop game (far transfer) suggests
that children cannot transfer their knowledge in a completely different setting in which they
should apply second-order reasoning.
Because we provided feedback with explanation during the training sessions, we do not know
whether the improvement is because of the explanation, nor whether providing just feedback
without explanation would also work. To test this, as a second condition, we will train children
by providing feedback without explanation.
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
Vici grant NWO 277-80-001, awarded to Rineke Verbrugge.
6. REFERENCES
1. Premack, D., & Woodruff, G.: Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 4. (1978) 515-526.
2. Sullivan, K., Zaitchik, D., & Tager-Flusberg, H.: Preschoolers can attribute second-order beliefs.
Developmental Psychology, 30 (3). (2008) 395-402.
3. Wimmer, H., & Perner, J.: Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong
beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception. Cognition, 13. (1983) 103–128.
4. Arslan, B., Taatgen, N. A., & Verbrugge, R. : Modeling Developmental Transitions in Reasoning
about False Beliefs of Others. In R. West & T. Stewart (eds.), Proceedings of the 12th
International Conference on Cognitive Modeling, Ottawa: Carleton University. (2013) 77-82.
5. Meijering, B., Van Tijn, H., Taatgen, N.A., & Verbrugge, R.: Reasoning about self versus others:
Changing perspective is hard. (Submitted).
6. Towse, J., Hitch, G., & Hutton, U.: A reevaluation of working memory capacity in children. Journal
of Memory and Language, 39. (1998) 195-217.