2002 Volume 13 Issue 2 Pages 136-146
The focus of this study was on how preschool children understand representation of thought bubbles, such as those often appearing in comic strips. Children aged 3, 4, 5, and 6 (N 96) participated in three experimental tasks. On the knowledge task, it appeared that children's awareness of thought and thought bubbles began during the preschool years. On the comprehension task, children between the ages of 3 and 5 explained characters' thinking more easily with increasing age. Three- and 4-year-olds had greater ease explaining the actions than the thoughts of characters. Children's ability to explain thoughts reached the same level as their ability to explain actions by the age of 5, and instruction on mental descriptions was effective for 3- and 4-year-olds in inducing their ability to explain thoughts. On the production task, the effect of instruction was not found when children were asked using a thought bubble about a character's thinking and then about their own mental states. On the production task, expressing one's own desires or preferences was easier for children than inferring the character's thinking. Finally, the fact that a substantial number of 5- and 6-year-olds answered "thinking nothing" in the interpretation of blank bubbles seems to indicate that the framework for understanding the human mind changes qualitatively between the ages of 4 and 5.
