Influence Of Animation On Preschoolers’ False Belief Understanding

Objective: To explore a more suitable method for testing the ability of childr-en false belief understanding, and obtain the understanding to the development leveland trend of false belief understanding of3to5years old children.Method：This study used mixed design. According to age,103normal childrenwere randomly divided into3groups: three-year-old group, four-year-old group,five-year-old group. Age group was taken as variable-between-subject, and eachsubject was treated with all of the experimental treatment. The experiment includestwo preparatory tasks (Thought Bubble Familiarization Task and Thought Bubbles asMental Representations Task) and three types of the false belief tasks with thedifferent way in showing task (Standard Unexpected Location Task, Thought BubbleFalse Belief Task-birthday present, Thought Bubble Unexpected LocationTask). The preparatory tasks were used to detect the subject’s ability of identifyingand understanding the thought bubble to ensure experimental validity, while the falsebelief tasks were used to detect the subject’s ability of understanding the false beliefand to contrast the impact of different task presenting modes on child’s false beliefunderstanding. Based on the purpose of this study, the research used analysis ofvariance, t-test or chi-square test to analysis the results of various experimental tasks.Results:(1) In Thought Bubble Familiarization Task,88%of responses for thequestion “What is the boy/girl thinking?”are related to the contents of the thoughtbubble; In analysis of variance between age groups and types of problems, the maineffect of problem types is significant.(2) The passing rate of Thought Bubbles as Mental Representations Task in3experimental groups are all significantly higher than random level.(3) In the Standard Unexpected Location Task and the Thought BubbleUnexpected Location Task, the result of3experimental groups have significantdifferences, while in the Thought Bubble False Belief Task-birthday present Task,there was significant differences between three-year-old group and the other2groups,but no significant differences between four-year-old group and five-year-old group.(4)In the Thought Bubble Unexpected Location Task, the scores of three-year-oldgroup and four-year-old group are significantly lower than that in the Thought BubbleUnexpected Location Task, but significantly higher than that in the Standard Unexpected Location Task. The score of all3groups in the Thought Bubble FalseBelief Task-birthday present Task are significantly higher than that in the StandardUnexpected Location Task.Conclusion:(1) The normally developing children aged3to5can all understandthat thought bubbles represent thought, thought bubbles can be used to infer anunknown reality, and thoughts with thought bubble representation can be false.(2)3to5years old children in the false belief tasks presents the obviouscharacteristics of age; Thought bubble more easily extends to children’sunderstanding of false belief and improve the scores in the false belief tasks.