Geänderte Inhalte

Rakoczy, H., Harder-Kasten, A., & Sturm, L. (in press). The decline of theory of mind in old age is (partly) mediated by developmental changes in domain-general abilities. British Journal of Psychology.

Abteilung 4: Kognitive Entwicklungspsychologie

Rakoczy, H. (in press). Do infants have a theory of mind? British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Judgements of wrongdoing in humans often hinge upon an assessment of whether a perpetrator acted out of free choice: whether they had more than one option. The classic inhibitors of free choice are constraint (e.g. having your hands tied together) and ignorance (e.g. being unaware that an alternative exists). Here, across two studies, we investigate whether chimpanzees consider these factors in their evaluation of social action. Chimpanzees interacted with a human experimenter who handed them a non-preferred item of food, either because they were physically constrained from accessing the preferred item (Experiment 1) or because they were ignorant of the availability of the preferred item (Experiment 2). We found that chimpanzees were more likely to accept the non-preferred food and showed fewer negative emotional responses when the experimenter was physically constrained compared with when they had free choice. We did not, however, find an effect of ignorance on chimpanzee’s evaluation. Freedom of choice factors into chimpanzees’ evaluation of how they are treated, but it is unclear whether mental state reasoning is involved in this assessment.

Puppet use is a popular research tool in developmental studies. Despite this popularity, however, the method has rarely received systematic discussion regarding its theoretical foundations. The present paper addresses a number of fundamental questions concerning puppets use in research, with the hope of contributing initial steps towards such a theoretical foundation. First, why use puppets at all? Here, cases where puppet use is convenient are distinguished from those where it is inevitable. Second, why should puppet use be a valid method to study real social cognition? The basic argument here will be that puppet use is not categorically different from using other symbolic props (pictures, narratives, movies) in most of psychological research. Even if it taps children’s thinking in pretend or simulation mode, it still presents a window into how children think, which concepts they use, which inferences they draw. Finally, the scope and limits of the method are discussed.