Helping as an early indicator of a theory of mind: mentalism or teleology?: Dataset 2

Abstract

The prime objective of this study was to assess how children in the false belief condition infer from E2’s attempt to open an empty box that E2 must be looking for her toy. In this study we added a third, differently colored but otherwise identical, box. All remaining materials were the same as in dataset 1. Overall, 126 children between 18 and 32 months were tested either in the Theory of mind Child Lab of the University of Salzburg (n=20), in different childcare institutes in the city of Salzburg (n=87) and in Scotland (n=19). Testing in institutes took place in a separate room and in the presence of the child’s teacher or parent. Thirty-six children (28%) had to be excluded due to parental/ teacher (4) or experimenter error (4), fussiness (20), unclear responses (3) or because they did not respond to any helping request (5). Overall, 29.1% of children (20,6% of the older (28–32 months) and 37.5% of the younger (18–27 months) ones) were excluded. The final sample consists of 90 children between 18.04 and 32.82 months (M=27.15 months, SD=3.65, 40 girls). Thirty-seven children participated in the replication conditions (Mage=27.17 months, SD=3.69). Six children spontaneously responded to E2’s nonverbal request, 13 children responded to E1’s prompts, five children responded to E2’s verbal prompts, 11 children responded to their parents/teachers prompt and one child needed parental/teacher assistance. Fifty-three children participated in the new conditions (Mage=27.13 months, SD=3.66). Seven children spontaneously responded to E2’s nonverbal request, 26 children responded to one of E1’s prompts, eight children responded to one of E2’s verbal prompts, 10 children responded to their parents/teachers prompting and one child needed parental/teacher assistance (unfortunately, for one child video recording is missing and therefore amount of prompts cannot be reported).