1、CHILDREN TALK ABOUT THE MINDThis page intentionally left blank CHILDREN TALKABOUT THE MINDKAREN BARTSCHand HENRY M.WELLMANNew York OxfordOXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS1995Oxford University PressOxford New York TorontoDelhi Bombay Calcutta Madras KarachiKuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong TokyoNairobi Dar es S
2、alaam Cape TownMelbourne Auckland Madridand associated companies inBerlin IbadanCopyright 1995 by Oxford University Press,Inc.Published by Oxford University Press,Inc.,200 Madison Avenue,New York,New York 10016Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University PressAll rights reserved.No part of
3、this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,or otherwise,without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataBartsch,Karen.Children talk a
4、bout the mind/Karen Bartsch and Henry M,Wellman.p.cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-19-508005-X1.Knowledge,Theory of,in children.I.Wellman,Henry M.U.Title.BF723.C5B27 1995150.83dc20 94-82351 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2Printed in the United States of Americaon acid-free paperTo David,Daniel
5、,Daniel,and NedThis page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis book represents part of a continuing effort by a growing number of investi-gators to understand the basic nature of our everyday understanding of persons.How do we ordinarily conceive of each others actions,thoughts,and lives?Ourc
6、oncern is not primarily how adults understand people,but how children developsuch understandings in the first place.As adults,our understanding of personsseems to be fundamentally mentalistic.We construe people essentially in terms ofthe mental,psychological states that lie behind overt behavior and
7、 appearances,that is,in terms of the persons beliefs,desires,emotions,intentions.But whatabout children?When do they understand this basic mentalism?How do they con-ceive of persons minds?In this book we aim to answer these questions by carefully scrutinizing youngchildrens everyday talk about perso
8、ns and minds.The research began in 1988.Consequently,we have reported preliminary findings from the project in severalprior presentations:Bartsch and Wellman(1989a,1993),Bartsch(1990),Wellman(1991),and Wellman and Kalish(1991).The current volume extends these initialreports,provides a comprehensive
9、picture of the entire project,and corrects anyerrors that may have appeared earlier.Our research,and the book that has resulted from it,has been a fully collab-orative project from initial inception to final writing and editing.Authorship,credit,and responsibilities have been equal;either of us coul
10、d have been first author;theordering of our names on the title page is alphabetical.Each of us wishes to begin,therefore,by thanking the other for the help,collegiality,insights,and patiencethat have been tendered and received.Many other persons and institutions have contributed to this endeavor.We
11、areespecially grateful to Catherine Givens,Bill Bacon,and Mita Banerjee for theirhelp with coding and organization in the early phases of the project.More recentlyAnne Hickling,Sheba Shakir,Michelle Hollander,Mary Reid Stanley,and GeoffTurner have provided invaluable assistance.The research has been
12、 continuouslyfunded by grant HD-22149 to Henry Wellman from the National Institute of ChildHealth and Human Development,and it also received support from the Center forStudy of Child and Adolescent Development at Pennsylvania State University toKaren Bartsch.We gratefully acknowledge the help of the
13、se institutions.Writingof the manuscript began when Henry Wellman was a fellow at the Center forAdvanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences,receiving support from the center andfrom the MacArthur Foundation.The opportunity for a fellowship year at the centerwas critical to completion of the project.Co
14、mpletion of the project has taken several years.Our home departments anduniversities have provided continuing support and encouragement during this time:viii Acknowledgmentsthe Departments of Psychology at the University of Wyoming and at PennsylvaniaState University for Bartsch,and the Department o
15、f Psychology as well as theCenter for Human Growth and Development of the University of Michigan forWellman.We are grateful,moreover,to the colleagues who have read and helpfullycommented on earlier versions of the book and who have discussed these ideasand issues with usAlison Gopnik,Paul Harris,Jo
16、hn Flavell,Lou Moses,SimonBaron-Cohen,Chris Moore,Pat Smiley,Marilyn Shatz,Josef Perner,David Estes,and Michael Chandler,among others.Finally,but foremost,this research would have been impossible in conceptionand execution without the existence of the Child Language Data Exchange System(CHILDES)orga
17、nized by Brian MacWhinney and Catherine Snow and supervisedby Brian MacWhinney at Carnegie Mellon University.The CHILDES is a uniquedata base that represents a collaborative pooling of child language transcripts froma great many selfless investigators world wide.We are particularly indebted toBrian
18、MacWhinney for all his help and energy,and to the investigators who con-tributed the original transcripts we have exploited in our analyses:Roger Brown,Stan Kuczaj,Jacqui Sachs,Lois Bloom,Brian MacWhinney,and Catherine Snow.And,although we have not even met most of them,we are grateful to the childr
19、enand families who participated in the research.Laramie,Wyo.K.B.Ann Arbor,Mich.H.M.W.April 1994CONTENTS1.Children,Mind,and Language:An Introduction,32.Language and Mind:Methods,173.Talk about Thoughts and Beliefs,374.Talk about Desires,655.Desires and Beliefs,956.Explanations and Arguments,1127.Indi
20、vidual Differences,1278.Childrens Developing Theory of Mind,1439.Alternatives and Controversies,17410.Ordinary Talk about Persons and Minds:Questions and Conclusions,206REFERENCES,217INDEX,227This page intentionally left blank CHILDREN TALK ABOUT THE MINDThis page intentionally left blank 1Children,
21、Mind,and Language:An IntroductionMark at 3 years,10 monthsMARK:When I was going outside,I thought there was a snake on the ground.Butthere was.there wasnt really a snake.FATHER:No.It was just fake.MARK:1 thought there was a real snake.FATHER:Just a toy snake.MARK:Nah-uh.I just thought there was a sn
22、ake.There was no.snake,realsnake.There was no toy snake.FATHER:No snake at all.MARK:Uh-uh.FATHER:Oh well.Thats too bad isnt it?MARK:Too bad a snake?!FATHER:Too bad no snake.Because we like snakes,right?Do you like snakes?MARK:Yeah.I thought there was a snake.Adults often talk about the mind.Sometime
23、s we talk about the mind directly:Itslipped my mind.He must have lost his mind.More often we talk about thecontents of our minds,that is,about someones mental states and activities:Hethinks that there is life on Mars.I just imagined it.She was daydreaming.This sort of talk is shaped by and reveals o
24、ur understanding of persons internalmental lives.Not only do adults talk about the mind,so do children.The conver-sation that begins this chapter provides one example.Childrens talk about themind reveals their thoughts about this intriguing subject,just as adult talk revealsadult thinking.But what,e
25、xactly,do children understand about the mind,and whendoes an understanding of mind first emerge?In this volume we attempt to answerthis question.In constructing our answer,we advance three arguments and provideextensive new findings to use in forging a comprehensive account of childrensdeveloping th
26、eories of mind.The first argument is that childrens understanding of the mind is important.This is a conviction we share with a growing number of scholars.The second isthat despite mounting empirical studies,we are still far from understanding whenchildren know what about the mind.There is a need,th
27、erefore,for new data anda comprehensive account.Our third argument is that these needs can be addressed34 Children Talk about the Mindby turning to a little-explored source of information on childrens understandingof mindtheir everyday talk about the mind.In this chapter,we outline thesearguments by
28、 way of setting the stage for the rest of the book.The Importance and Nature of an EverydayUnderstanding of MindInterest in what children think and say about the mind is spreading among a grow-ing number of researchers who address what has come to be called the childstheory of mind(see Astington,Har
29、ris,&Olson,1988;Baron-Cohen,Tager-Flusberg,&Cohen,1993;Lewis&Mitchell,in press;Perner,1991;Wellman,1990).Why is this topic receiving such increased scrutiny?The importance oftheory of mind stems,essentially,from its role in our ordinary understandingof people.This understanding can be called our eve
30、ryday,commonsense,or laypsychology.Research on everyday psychology attempts to characterize how peopleunderstand each others actions,thoughts,and livesunderstanding our under-standing of ourselves.The realm of everyday psychology constitutes,we believe,a foundational domain of human understanding;it
31、 is one of the three or four mostbasic topics that humans think and learn about(Wellman&Gelman,1992).The phrase theory of mind nicely emphasizes that our ordinary understand-ing of people is mentalistic.Adults,in our society at least,assume that peoplepossess minds;that is,we assume that behind the
32、public world of physical bodiesand manifest action there is for each individual a unique mental world of thoughts,hopes,ideas,intentions,and emotions.Here is an elegant example from GabrielGarcia Marquezs novel,Love in the Time of Cholera:In Paris,strolling arm in arm with a casual sweetheart throug
33、h a late autumn,itseemed impossible to imagine a purer happiness than those golden afternoons,with the woody odor of chestnuts on the braziers,the languid accordions,theinsatiable lovers kissing on the open terraces,and still he had told himself withhis hand on his heart that he was not prepared to
34、exchange all that for a singleinstant of his Caribbean in April.He was still too young to know that the heartsmemory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good,and that thanks to this artificewe manage to endure the burden of the past.But when he stood at the railing ofthe ship(upon his return to the
35、 Caribbean)and saw the white promontory of thecolonial district again,the motionless buzzards on the roofs,the washing of thepoor hung out to dry on the balconies,only then did he understand to what extenthe had been an easy victim to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia.(1988,p.105-6,emphases our
36、s)In this passage we are given an explanation for why one of the protagonists,Dr.Urbino,has returned home to the Caribbean from Paris,and his reaction uponreturning.Because he has nostalgically misremembered the charms of his home-land,he returns.But upon returning,Urbino finds something quite diffe
37、rent fromwhat he expected.He has fooled himselfa disappointed victim to the charitabledeceptions of nostalgia.This text illustrates a construal of persons as havingChildren,Mind,and Language:An Introduction 5imaginations,memories,misunderstandings,and the capacity to be deceived.Thisconstrual is bas
38、ic to our everyday psychology,our social communications,ourabilities to make sense of ourselves and others.As this passage also shows,peoples thoughts,memories,intentions,and emo-tions are intimately interrelated;they cohere in certain ways,accounting for anddetermining one another.Because an actor
39、has certain beliefs,false or true,he orshe attempts to engage in certain actions,the success or failure of which result invarious emotional reactions.Urbinos false memories cause him to return to theCaribbean,leading to disappointment.The phrase theory of mind emphasizesthe coherence of our everyday
40、 mentalistic construal of people and action by lik-ening it to a theory.This ordinary theory,however,is not theoretical in the sense of being removedfrom practical application in our lives.To the contrary,here are a few applicationsof our everyday psychology:you want to make someone happy,so you giv
41、e hersomething she wants;you want to keep something that someone else also wants,so you deceive him into falsely believing you no longer have it;you know some-thing that someone else does not,so you tell her.As in these examples,our ev-eryday interactions are founded on consideration of peoples want
42、s,beliefs,knowledge,and emotions.As a contrast,consider how differently we would interactwith one another if we were behaviorists instead of mentalists,attempting to clas-sically or operantly condition one anothers behavior,manipulating and arrangingstimuli and responses rather than manipulating and
43、 assessing beliefs and desires.The expression theory of mind endeavors to characterize the understanding ofpeople that frames and determines our everyday social world and our social acts.An assumption of mind so saturates our everyday thinking that its importancecan often be overlooked,like the prov
44、erbial importance of water to fish.So it ishelpful to have an initial outline of the theory,to highlight the nature of our basicmentalism against the backdrop of our many thoughts and statements about people.In fact,it can be argued that beyond its general mentalistic character,everydaypsychological
45、 reasoning has a discernible structure or form.How to characterizethat form is debatable,but a useful and often adopted approach is to characterizeour everyday psychology as largely a belief-desire understanding of mind andaction.In describing our everyday mentalism in terms of beliefs and desires,b
46、eliefsare meant to refer to a general category of thoughts encompassing knowledge,opinions,guesses,convictions,and hunches,that is,all mental states that attemptto reflect something true about the world.More broadly,thoughts include not onlyserious beliefs but also fanciful ideas,states of imaginati
47、on,and dreamsmentalstates that represent fictional worlds.Desires are also to be understood as a generalcategory including wants,urges,and states of caring about something;that is,awhole range of pro-attitudes toward or about something(Davidson,1963).The underlying structure of our commonsense conce
48、ption of mind requires con-sideration of both desires and beliefs.People do things because they desire some-thing and believe some act will achieve it.Urbino desired a certain sort of life,onethat he believed was available in and characteristic of his homeland.So he triedto recapture it.Such a belie
49、f-desire explanation of Urbinos action is more than amere convention or re-description;it is satisfactory.When we learn about Urbinos6 Children Talk about the Mindideas and feelings in this fashion,we feel we have gained a genuine understandingof his behavior and of his psyche.According to this sort
50、 of analysis,then,at the center of a theory of mind is aconceptual triad of constructs:actions,beliefs,and desires.But beyond this triad,belief-desire reasoning can be quite complicated and can include a host of auxiliarynotions.Consider the following example:Why did Jill go to the basement at herun