Facilitating children's understanding of misinterpretation: explanatory efforts and improvements in perspective taking.

Full Abstract

The authors investigated children's understanding of how mistaken beliefs can arise through misinterpretation of ambiguous information. Children (N = 91), aged 4 to 5 years, were given pre- and posttests on their ability to infer a puppet's interpretation of a restricted-view drawing after the puppet had been led to an erroneous expectation about the drawing's identity. Before the posttest, the children received either self-explanation training or other-explanation training in which they explained the source of their own or a puppet's misinterpretations of drawings; a control group received no training. The children who received training improved from pre- to posttest, and those who had practiced explaining misinterpretations by referring to previously viewed pictures or to features of a target picture showed the greatest improvement. These results indicate that learning to explain misinterpretations can help children recognize situations in which misinterpretations are likely to occur.

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Author information

Author/s: Pillow, Bradford H (BH); Mash, Clay (C); Aloian, Samuel (S); Hill, Valerie (V);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb 60115-2892, USA. pillow(-atsign-)niu.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: The Journal of genetic psychology (J Genet Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jun; vol 163 (issue 2) : pp 133-48

Dates: Created 2002/07/03; Completed 2003/02/10; Revised 2007/03/30;

PMID: 12095085, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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