%0 Journal Article %J Developmental Science %D 2017 %T Changing minds: Children’s inferences about third party belief revision %A Rachel Magid %A Phyllis Yan %A Max Siegel %A Joshua B. Tenenbaum %A Laura Schulz %K learning %K rational action %K theory of mind %X

By the age of five, children explicitly represent that agents can have both true and false beliefs

based on epistemic access to information (e.g., Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). Children also begin to understand that agents can view identical evidence and draw different inferences from it (e.g., Carpenter & Chandler, 1996). However, much less is known about when, and under what conditions, children expect other agents to change their minds. Here, inspired by formal ideal observer models of learning, we investigate children’s expectations of the dynamics that underlie third parties’ belief revision. We introduce an agent who has prior beliefs about the location of a population of toys and then observes evidence that, from an ideal observer perspective, either does, or does not justify revising those beliefs. We show that children’s inferences on behalf of third parties are consistent with the ideal observer perspective, but not with a number of alternative possibilities, including that children expect other agents to be influenced only by their prior beliefs, only by the sampling process, or only by the observed data. Rather, children integrate all three factors in determining how and when agents will update their beliefs from evidence. 

%B Developmental Science %P e12553 %8 05/2017 %G eng %R 10.1111/desc.12553 %0 Conference Paper %B Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society %D 2014 %T Preschoolers expect others to learn rationally from evidence %A Phyllis Yan %A Rachel Magid %A Laura Schulz %K learning %K rational action %K theory of mind %X

Even infants expect agents to act rationally in pursuit of their  goals. However, little research has looked at whether young  children expect other agents to learn rationally. In the  current study, we investigated 4.5- to 6-year-olds’ reasoning  about another agent’s beliefs after the agent observed a  sample drawn randomly or selectively from a population.  We found that those children who could correctly track both  the true state of the world and the other agent’s initial beliefs  expected the other agent to learn rationally from the data.  Critically, this inference depended upon but could not be  reduced to either the child’s own understanding of the world,  or the child’s own inferences from the sampling process,  suggesting that the ability to integrate these component  processes underlies a developing understanding of the way  in which evidence informs others’ beliefs.

%B Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society %G eng