| Project/Area Number |
17500172
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Cognitive science
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| Research Institution | Kyoto University |
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Principal Investigator |
MASATAKA Nobuo Kyoto University, Primate Research Institute, Professor, 霊長類研究所, 教授 (60192746)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
MATSUI Tomoko Kyoto University, Primate Research Institute, Associate Professor, 霊長類研究所, 准教授 (20296792)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2005 – 2006
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| Project Status |
Completed (Fiscal Year 2006)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,500,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥1,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥2,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000)
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| Keywords | Theory of mind / Communicative ability / Social cognition / Word learning / Certainty |
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| Research Abstract |
(1)Our first study examined children's ability to assess the reliability of information encoded in an utterance. Japanese children were given two contradicting statements about the location of a hidden object. Each statement was provided by a different individual, and was linguistically marked with a different degree of certainty/evidentiality. Children were then questioned about the location of the object and asked to tell how they reached their conclusion. The result demonstrated that 6-to 7-year-olds could reliably explain how they came to know the location of the hidden object, by referring to the utterance or the particular linguistic marking of speaker certainty/evidentiality, of the more reliable speaker. 5-year-olds were only capable of answering the source question by referring to the utterance of more reliable speaker. This indicates a developmental transition from perceptual to metalinguistic awareness in understanding of the sources of belief between 5-to 7-years of age. By
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contrast, 3-to 4-year-olds had great difficulty in explaining why they trusted one speaker over the other, even when their choice was correct.
(2)It has been repeatedly shown that when asked to identify a protagonist's false belief on the basis of his false statement, typical English-speaking 3-year-olds dismiss the statement and fail to attribute to him a false belief. In our second study, we tested 3-year-old Japanese children in a similar task, using false statements accompanied by grammaticalized particles of speaker (un-)certainty, as in everyday Japanese utterances. The Japanese children were directly compared with same-aged German children, whose native language does not have grammaticalized epistemic concepts (like English). Japanese children, who are sensitive to different degrees of speaker certainty as indicated by the grammaticalized particles in a way that German children are not, profited from the explicit statement of the protagonist's false belief when it was marked with the attitude of certainty. Less
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