2歳児は誤信念を理解するだろうか : PernerとLeslieの論争を再考する

Abstract

Josef Perner (1991) and Alan Leslie (1987) both proposed that children had the representational theory of mind by understanding the propositional attitude in such forms as desires or beliefs. In the early 1990s, however, they disputed the pretended plays of 2-year-olds because of their different metarepresentation concepts. A new dispute arose in 2005 over the findings regarding the understanding of false beliefs among 15-month-olds in Onishi and Baillargeon's paper in Science. The outlines of their arguments were described, and their discussions were examined. Perner pointed out that children could not acquire metarepresentation until the age of 4 because this process was closely related with language ability. while Leslie insisted that 2-year-olds could innately undel-st8nd false beliefs according to his theory of mind mechanism . The disputes were not yet settled. The present paper proposed that children might be able to detect others' intentions at an earlier age than they could detect their beliefs. Further, this can be attributed to two different systems of theory of mind, the early theory of mind for goal-intention and the late theory of mind for the understanding of false beliefs.