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Do complement clauses with first- or third-person perspective support false-belief reasoning?: A training study with English-speaking 3-year-olds

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Do complement clauses with first- or third-person perspective support false-belief reasoning? A training study with English-speaking 3-year-olds. / Boeg Thomsen, Ditte; Kandemirci, Birsu; Theakston, Anna et al.
In: Developmental Psychology, 17.10.2024.

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Boeg Thomsen D, Kandemirci B, Theakston A, Brandt S. Do complement clauses with first- or third-person perspective support false-belief reasoning? A training study with English-speaking 3-year-olds. Developmental Psychology. 2024 Oct 17. Epub 2024 Oct 17. doi: 10.1037/dev0001808

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Boeg Thomsen, Ditte ; Kandemirci, Birsu ; Theakston, Anna et al. / Do complement clauses with first- or third-person perspective support false-belief reasoning? A training study with English-speaking 3-year-olds. In: Developmental Psychology. 2024.

Bibtex

@article{d0ffa2a8fa7842158657f69c86dad22b,
title = "Do complement clauses with first- or third-person perspective support false-belief reasoning?: A training study with English-speaking 3-year-olds",
abstract = "To investigate whether acquisition of the perspective-marking grammar of complement-clause constructions supports progression in children{\textquoteright}s false-belief reasoning, we conducted a training study with 76 English-speaking three-year-olds from the North-West of England (age range: 3;0-3;10 years, 50% female, 80% White). Children were randomly assigned to one of three maximally comparable training conditions, and in a four-week eight-session program, all children participated in the same training activities with mental-state contrasts. Depending on condition, activities were mediated linguistically with either simple clauses, first-person complements or third-person complements. The study addressed critical confounds in previous training studies by avoiding the use of complement clauses in false-belief tests and controlling individual differences in memory, executive functioning, general language and pretest proficiency with complement clauses. The results yielded strong support for the hypothesis of a causal influence of complement-clause exposure on false-belief progression, as children trained with first-person complements advanced significantly more in false-belief reasoning from pretest to posttest than children trained with simple clauses. Examining the roles of first- and third-person complements, a direct comparison between progression in the two complement-clause conditions showed no significant difference, but only children trained with first-person complements progressed significantly more than children in the control condition trained with simple clauses. Follow-up analyses suggested that first- and third-person complements each support false-belief progression at different stages of development.",
author = "{Boeg Thomsen}, Ditte and Birsu Kandemirci and Anna Theakston and Silke Brandt",
year = "2024",
month = oct,
day = "17",
doi = "10.1037/dev0001808",
language = "English",
journal = "Developmental Psychology",
issn = "0012-1649",
publisher = "American Psychological Association Inc.",

}

RIS

TY - JOUR

T1 - Do complement clauses with first- or third-person perspective support false-belief reasoning?

T2 - A training study with English-speaking 3-year-olds

AU - Boeg Thomsen, Ditte

AU - Kandemirci, Birsu

AU - Theakston, Anna

AU - Brandt, Silke

PY - 2024/10/17

Y1 - 2024/10/17

N2 - To investigate whether acquisition of the perspective-marking grammar of complement-clause constructions supports progression in children’s false-belief reasoning, we conducted a training study with 76 English-speaking three-year-olds from the North-West of England (age range: 3;0-3;10 years, 50% female, 80% White). Children were randomly assigned to one of three maximally comparable training conditions, and in a four-week eight-session program, all children participated in the same training activities with mental-state contrasts. Depending on condition, activities were mediated linguistically with either simple clauses, first-person complements or third-person complements. The study addressed critical confounds in previous training studies by avoiding the use of complement clauses in false-belief tests and controlling individual differences in memory, executive functioning, general language and pretest proficiency with complement clauses. The results yielded strong support for the hypothesis of a causal influence of complement-clause exposure on false-belief progression, as children trained with first-person complements advanced significantly more in false-belief reasoning from pretest to posttest than children trained with simple clauses. Examining the roles of first- and third-person complements, a direct comparison between progression in the two complement-clause conditions showed no significant difference, but only children trained with first-person complements progressed significantly more than children in the control condition trained with simple clauses. Follow-up analyses suggested that first- and third-person complements each support false-belief progression at different stages of development.

AB - To investigate whether acquisition of the perspective-marking grammar of complement-clause constructions supports progression in children’s false-belief reasoning, we conducted a training study with 76 English-speaking three-year-olds from the North-West of England (age range: 3;0-3;10 years, 50% female, 80% White). Children were randomly assigned to one of three maximally comparable training conditions, and in a four-week eight-session program, all children participated in the same training activities with mental-state contrasts. Depending on condition, activities were mediated linguistically with either simple clauses, first-person complements or third-person complements. The study addressed critical confounds in previous training studies by avoiding the use of complement clauses in false-belief tests and controlling individual differences in memory, executive functioning, general language and pretest proficiency with complement clauses. The results yielded strong support for the hypothesis of a causal influence of complement-clause exposure on false-belief progression, as children trained with first-person complements advanced significantly more in false-belief reasoning from pretest to posttest than children trained with simple clauses. Examining the roles of first- and third-person complements, a direct comparison between progression in the two complement-clause conditions showed no significant difference, but only children trained with first-person complements progressed significantly more than children in the control condition trained with simple clauses. Follow-up analyses suggested that first- and third-person complements each support false-belief progression at different stages of development.

U2 - 10.1037/dev0001808

DO - 10.1037/dev0001808

M3 - Journal article

JO - Developmental Psychology

JF - Developmental Psychology

SN - 0012-1649

ER -