Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
Reply

Reply to Rubio-Fernández et al.: Different traditional false-belief tasks impose different processing demands for toddlers

Rose M. Scott, View ORCID ProfilePeipei Setoh, and Renée Baillargeon
  1. aPsychological Sciences, University of California, Merced, CA 95343;
  2. bDivision of Psychology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637332;
  3. cDepartment of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820

See allHide authors and affiliations

PNAS first published April 17, 2017; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1703665114
Rose M. Scott
aPsychological Sciences, University of California, Merced, CA 95343;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: rscott@ucmerced.edu
Peipei Setoh
bDivision of Psychology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637332;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Peipei Setoh
Renée Baillargeon
cDepartment of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Setoh, Scott, and Baillargeon (1) propose that children may fail a false-belief task for one of two reasons: They may lack sufficient skill at one or more of the processes involved in the task, or they may be capable of executing each individual process but lack sufficient information-processing resources to handle the task’s total concurrent processing demands.

This account fits well with prior findings that 3.5- to 4-y-olds often perform below chance in traditional “high-inhibition” tasks (e.g., an agent’s apple is moved from location A to location B in her absence, and children are asked where she will look for it when she returns) but perform above chance in traditional “low-inhibition” tasks, where inhibitory-control demands are reduced (e.g., the apple is moved to an undisclosed location). These and related results (2⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓–8) suggest that these children fail high-inhibition tasks primarily for the first reason described above: They lack sufficient inhibitory control to suppress the strong prepotent response evoked by the test question.

Unlike 3.5- to 4-y-olds, children age 3 y and younger typically perform only at chance in low-inhibition tasks, despite their reduced inhibitory-control demands (7⇓–9). We speculated that this failure might stem from the second reason described above: Perhaps these children possess sufficient inhibitory control to suppress the weaker prepotent response triggered by the test question but cannot handle the task’s total processing demands. This speculation predicted better performance with further reductions in these demands. Our results supported this prediction: 2.5-y-old toddlers succeeded at a low-inhibition task when response-generation demands were reduced via practice trials (experiments 1 and 2) but reverted to chance performance when these trials were rendered less effective (experiments 2 and 3).

The preceding summary hopefully clarifies our arguments and findings. Contrary to what Rubio-Fernández et al. (10) suggest, we have never claimed that reducing either inhibitory-control or response-generation demands in a high-inhibition task should improve 2.5-y-olds’ performance. Indeed, such a position would contradict prior findings: In a study by Yazdi et al. (8), 3-y-olds performed below chance in a high-inhibition task that included several “where” questions before the test question, thereby reducing response-generation demands. We confirmed this finding with 2.5-y-olds (experiment 4), providing further evidence that inhibitory-control and response-generation demands are not interchangeable and have different impacts on children’s performance.

We also have never claimed that inhibitory-control demands are similar in traditional and nontraditional tasks. In traditional tasks, it is the direct test question that triggers a prepotent response that must then be inhibited. When children are asked no such questions or merely overhear such questions, inhibitory-control demands are much less significant (11).

Finally, Rubio-Fernández et al. (10) suggest that our where practice questions prompted toddlers to point to the apple’s last location in the test trial. However, it is unclear why our young toddlers would have adopted this solution when given practice trials with two pictures (experiment 1) but not one picture (experiment 2), making this alternative explanation unlikely. We hope that future research using this new elicited-prediction task will prove fruitful in shedding light on young children’s false-belief understanding.

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: rscott{at}ucmerced.edu.
  • Author contributions: R.M.S., P.S., and R.B. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

References

  1. ↵
    1. Setoh P,
    2. Scott RM,
    3. Baillargeon R
    (2016) Two-and-a-half-year-olds succeed at a traditional false-belief task with reduced processing demands. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 113:13360–13365.
    .
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
  2. ↵
    1. Carlson SM,
    2. Moses LJ
    (2001) Individual differences in inhibitory control and children’s theory of mind. Child Dev 72:1032–1053.
    .
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
  3. ↵
    1. Bartsch K
    (1996) Between desires and beliefs: Young children’s action predictions. Child Dev 67:1671–1685.
    .
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
  4. ↵
    1. Hala S,
    2. Chandler M
    (1996) The role of strategic planning in accessing false-belief understanding. Child Dev 67:2948–2966.
    .
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
  5. ↵
    1. Siegal M,
    2. Beattie K
    (1991) Where to look first for children’s knowledge of false beliefs. Cognition 38:1–12.
    .
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
  6. ↵
    1. Surian L,
    2. Leslie AM
    (1999) Competence and performance in false belief understanding: A comparison of autistic and normal 3-yr-old children. Br J Dev Psychol 17:141–155.
    .
    OpenUrlCrossRef
  7. ↵
    1. Scott RM,
    2. Baillargeon R
    (2017) Early false-belief understanding. Trends Cogn Sci 21:237–249.
    .
    OpenUrl
  8. ↵
    1. Yazdi AA,
    2. German TP,
    3. Defeyter MA,
    4. Siegal M
    (2006) Competence and performance in belief-desire reasoning across two cultures: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about false belief? Cognition 100:343–368.
    .
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
  9. ↵
    1. Wellman HM,
    2. Cross D,
    3. Watson J
    (2001) Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false belief. Child Dev 72:655–684.
    .
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
  10. ↵
    1. Rubio-Fernández P,
    2. Jara-Ettinger J,
    3. Gibson E
    (2017) Can processing demands explain toddlers’ performance in false-belief tasks? Proc Natl Acad Sci USA doi:10.1073/pnas.1701286114.
    .
    OpenUrlCrossRef
  11. ↵
    1. Scott RM,
    2. He Z,
    3. Baillargeon R,
    4. Cummins D
    (2012) False-belief understanding in 2.5-year-olds: Evidence from two novel verbal spontaneous-response tasks. Dev Sci 15:181–193.
    .
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
Next
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Reply to Rubio-Fernández et al.: Different traditional false-belief tasks impose different processing demands for toddlers
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Early success with reduced processing demands
Rose M. Scott, Peipei Setoh, Renée Baillargeon
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Apr 2017, 201703665; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1703665114

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Early success with reduced processing demands
Rose M. Scott, Peipei Setoh, Renée Baillargeon
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Apr 2017, 201703665; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1703665114
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

This article has a Letter. Please see:

  • Relationship between Letter and Replye - April 17, 2017

See related content:

  • Early success at a traditional false-belief task
    - Nov 07, 2016
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 118 (15)
Current Issue

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Water from a faucet fills a glass.
News Feature: How “forever chemicals” might impair the immune system
Researchers are exploring whether these ubiquitous fluorinated molecules might worsen infections or hamper vaccine effectiveness.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Naumov.
Reflection of clouds in the still waters of Mono Lake in California.
Inner Workings: Making headway with the mysteries of life’s origins
Recent experiments and simulations are starting to answer some fundamental questions about how life came to be.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Radoslaw Lecyk.
Cave in coastal Kenya with tree growing in the middle.
Journal Club: Small, sharp blades mark shift from Middle to Later Stone Age in coastal Kenya
Archaeologists have long tried to define the transition between the two time periods.
Image credit: Ceri Shipton.
Mouse fibroblast cells. Electron bifurcation reactions keep mammalian cells alive.
Exploring electron bifurcation
Jonathon Yuly, David Beratan, and Peng Zhang investigate how electron bifurcation reactions work.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Panda bear hanging in a tree
How horse manure helps giant pandas tolerate cold
A study finds that giant pandas roll in horse manure to increase their cold tolerance.
Image credit: Fuwen Wei.

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Special Feature Articles – Most Recent
  • List of Issues

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Subscribers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Cozzarelli Prize
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates
  • FAQs
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Rights & Permissions
  • About
  • Contact

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490