Young children's understanding of another's apparent crying and its relationship to theory of mind

Abstract

This study examined young children's understanding of apparent crying and its potentially misleading consequences. Gross and Harris (1988) showed that 6-year-olds can understand that one can simulate an emotion while feeling another, and that such a display can mislead others. In this study, 69 children aged 4, 5, and 6 were given "crying tasks" and "Standard and Second-order False Belief tasks". In "crying tasks", participants were asked to identify whether the protagonist was actually crying, and whether the other character believed that the protagonist was actually crying. The results indicate that children's understanding of apparent crying develops between the ages of 4 and 6. However, most of the children did not understand its misleading consequences. Furthermore, relationships were found between the understanding of apparent crying and the False Belief tasks. This finding suggests that the development of young children's understanding of apparent crying relates to the development of theory of mind.