False Belief Understanding and Justification Reasoning according to Information of Reality amongst Children Aged 3, 4 and 5

The purpose of this study was to investigate false belief understanding and justification reasoning according to information of reality amongst children aged 3, 4 and 5. Children aged 3 to 5 years (N = 176) participated in this study.Each child was interviewed individually and responded to questions designed to measure his/her false belief understanding.Every child responded to the false belief task under two different information conditions of reality(reality known vs reality unknown).For more specific analysis, children's reasoning responses were also recorded.The major findings of this study are as follows.Children could understand false belief more easily under reality unknown conditions.Specifically, the influences of information conditions were crucial to 3-year-olds but not to 4-and 5-year-olds.Although 3 year olds were able to avoid the systematical errors inherent in the false belief task, they still did not understand the false belief itself.This study provides specific aspects of false belief understanding and its relevance to general changes in cognitive development.