| Summary: | 碩士 === 臺北市立教育大學 === 兒童發展研究所 === 94 === The purpose of the study is to explore the influence of “age differences” and “task types” on young children’s false belief and deception abilities. Through the experimental contexts of real scenarios, the first section of the study explores the performance of 3- and 4-year-old children in different false belief tasks. The second section deals with the performance of their deception abilities in two different deception tasks “Hiding the Candy” and “Guessing the Spot.” In “Guessing the Spot” the performance of their counter deception is also investigated.
The main subjects of the study are 3- and 4-year-old children. There are 24 3-year-olds (ranging from 3 years old and 3 and 11-month years old, with average age of 3.6 years old) and 24 4-year-olds (ranging from 4 years old to 4 and 11-month years old, with average age of 4.6 years old) from one of the public daycare centers in Nan-Kang District. The number of boys is equal to that of girls. Altogether, there are 48 subjects.
Based on the purpose of the study, the findings are presented as follows:
1. The performance of 3- and 4-year-old children in terms of their understanding of false belief
It is found in the study that the perception abilities of false belief in 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds are different; 4-year-olds have higher pass rate than 3-year-olds in false belief tasks. The pass rate increases with age. The research results indicate that 3-year-olds have difficulty judging others’ understanding of false belief in the tasks of false belief. By the age of 4, there are some changes in their judgment of others’ understanding of false belief. The research results are inconsistent with those in Bau (2003).
2. The performance of young children’s understanding of false belief in different false belief tasks
It is found in the study that there is no significant variation in the performance of 3-year-olds’ and 4-year-olds’ understanding of false belief. The two false belief tasks do not show difficulty differences, which is consistent with the research results in Jenkins and Astington (1993).
3. The performance of 3- and 4- year-old children in terms of their deception abilities
It is found in the study that 4-year-olds have higher pass rate than 3-year-olds in deception tasks in terms of deception abilities. The deception abilities increase with age. The research results show that 3-year-olds have difficulty in the execution of deception abilities. By the age of 4, there are some changes in their deception abilities. The results of this study are consistent with those found in Sodian (1991), Ruesll et al. (1991), Chang (1997), Shen (2000), and Experiment II in Wang (2001) that acknowledge the deception abilities in 4-year-olds; namely, 4-year-olds are capable of thinking about others’ mental activities while 3-year-olds are incapable of deception.
4. Young children’s performance of deception abilities in different deception tasks
The research findings indicate that there is no significant variation in 3-year-old children’s deception abilities in different deception tasks. There is no significant variation in 4-year-old children’s deception abilities in different deception tasks.
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