%0 Journal Article
%A Lohmann, Heidemarie
%A Tomasello, Michael
%+ Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
%T The Role of Language in the Development of False Belief Understanding : A Training Study : 
%G eng
%U https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0010-0618-1
%F EDOC: 117410
%R 10.1111/1467-8624.00597
%7 2003-07-08
%D 2003
%* Review method: peer-reviewed
%X 

The current study used a training methodology to determine whether different kinds of linguistic interaction play a causal role in children's development of false belief understanding. After 3 training sessions, 3-year-old children improved their false belief understanding both in a training condition involving perspective-shifting discourse about deceptive objects (without mental state terms) and in a condition in which sentential complement syntax was used (without deceptive objects). Children did not improve in a condition in which they were exposed to deceptive objects without accompanying language. Children showed most improvement in a condition using both perspective-shifting discourse and sentential complement syntax, suggesting that each of these types of linguistic experience plays an independent role in the ontogeny of false belief understanding.

%J Child Development
%V 74
%N 4
%& 1130
%P 1130 - 1144