Abstract
Two studies contrasted children’s ability to predict a wrong action with their ability to explain such an action in a standard unexpected transfer task. It was found that the majority of 31/2- to 41/2-year-old children was unable to explain in an appropriate way why the protagonist looked for the critical object in the wrong place and, therefore, exhibited at least as much difficulty with explanation as with prediction. This finding speaks against Fodor’s (1992) critical account of the standard false belief tasks. According to Fodor, these tasks induce children to rely on too simple action prediction heuristics (“Predict that the agent will act in a way that will satisfy his desire”) although they possess an understanding of belief and desire as joint causes of action. Analysis of children’s inadequate explanatory attempts showed that in the majority of these answers they referred to the protagonist’s desire to get the object or to the actual location of the object. These desire and reality orientations in explanation are similar to response tendencies in prediction and suggest a lacking in understanding of the causal links between misleading informational conditions, epistemic states, and resulting actions in younger children.
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