Preschool children's understanding of biased social cognition

In this study, the understanding of biased social cognition was investigated in 4- and 6-year old children. Children were assessed by the deceptive-box task and four stories that each of them had three characters: one actor and two observers. At the end of each story, children were asked to infer the observers' interpretations of the actor's ambiguous action. The results revealed that at the age of 6 years, children understood that prior beliefs (biases) influenced the observer's interpretation of another individual's behaviour. This understanding was more difficult than the recognition of false belief. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 4th International Conference of Cognitive Science