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The Roles of Explanation and Feedback in False Belief Understanding: A Microgenetic Analysis

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Title: The Roles of Explanation and Feedback in False Belief Understanding: A Microgenetic Analysis
Language: English
Authors: Guajardo, Nicole R., Petersen, Rachel, Marshall, Timothy R.
Source: Journal of Genetic Psychology. 2013 174(3):225-252.
Availability: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 28
Publication Date: 2013
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Descriptors: Role, Feedback (Response), Training, Cognitive Development, Beliefs, Young Children, Task Analysis, Language Processing, Generalization, Coding, Listening Comprehension, Statistical Analysis, Measures (Individuals)
Assessment and Survey Identifiers: Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language
DOI: 10.1080/00221325.2012.682101
ISSN: 0022-1325
Abstract: The authors examined effects of feedback and explanation on false belief performance. Thirty-three children (42-54 months; 15 girls, 18 boys) were randomly assigned to four treatment conditions: explanation, feedback, feedback researcher explains, and feedback child explains. Children completed false belief tasks during pretraining, 8 training sessions, and posttraining across 6 weeks. Language comprehension was assessed at pretraining. The authors hypothesized that children would improve most when training involved feedback and explanation. Generalized estimating equations modeling was used to analyze the data. Children who received feedback and generated explanations for characters' false beliefs improved across training sessions more so than children in other conditions. Children's explanations for false beliefs also were explored. Implications of the findings are discussed. (Contains 3 tables and 6 figures.)
Abstractor: As Provided
Number of References: 39
Entry Date: 2013
Accession Number: EJ1001427
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0087450070;gnp01may.13;2019Feb21.14:28;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0087450070-1">The Roles of Explanation and Feedback in False Belief Understanding: A Microgenetic Analysis. </title> <p>The authors examined effects of feedback and explanation on false belief performance. Thirty-three children (42–54 months; 15 girls, 18 boys) were randomly assigned to four treatment conditions: explanation, feedback, feedback researcher explains, and feedback child explains. Children completed false belief tasks during pretraining, 8 training sessions, and posttraining across 6 weeks. Language comprehension was assessed at pretraining. The authors hypothesized that children would improve most when training involved feedback and explanation. Generalized estimating equations modeling was used to analyze the data. Children who received feedback and generated explanations for characters' false beliefs improved across training sessions more so than children in other conditions. Children's explanations for false beliefs also were explored. Implications of the findings are discussed.</p> <p>Keywords: false belief; feedback; microgenetic method; self-explanations; training</p> <p>Important conceptual changes in theory of mind understanding develop between 2.5 and 5 years of age (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref1">37</reflink>]). One factor that may account for such change is social discourse. As a consequence of over 20 years of research, much is known about correlations between family discourse and theory of mind development, yet less is known about the specific aspects of that social interaction that cause developmental changes in thought. Is it the feedback children receive from others or the explanations they themselves or others generate during discussion that leads to conceptual changes in thought? The purpose of the present study was to examine the impact of feedback and source of explanation (child vs. adult) on false belief understanding, a central component of theory of mind, using a microgenetic design.</p> <p>The association between social interaction and theory of mind development is quite clear. Children's interactions within their families (e.g., Brown, Donelan-McCall, & Dunn, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref2">5</reflink>]; Dunn, Brown, & Beardsall, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref3">8</reflink>]; Lewis, Freeman, Kyriakidou, Maridaki-Kassotaki, & Berridge, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref4">19</reflink>]; Perner, Ruffman, & Leekam, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref5">25</reflink>]) and with peers (e.g., Brown et al., [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref6">5</reflink>]) are related to their understanding of the representational nature of the mind. Within the context of interacting with others, children learn about their own and others' thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, as well as how to talk about such concepts. For example, through talking to their infants as if they are mindful and intentional (Meins & Fernyhough, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref7">24</reflink>]), or with their young children about causes of behavior (Dunn et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref8">8</reflink>]) or how their actions made another feel (Ruffman, Perner, & Parkin, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref9">28</reflink>]), parents inadvertently teach children that others can have different perspectives than themselves. Consistent with a Vygotskian perspective (see Astington, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref10">3</reflink>]; Fernyhough, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref11">10</reflink>]), parents scaffold young children's early theory of mind understanding and assist them in supporting or refuting hypotheses about relationships between mental states and behavior. Yet, the question remains as to which specific aspect of such interaction leads to changes in conceptual understanding. For example, is it the explicit feedback a child receives from others or his or her own generation of ideas based upon indirect feedback that prompts cognitive change?</p> <p>Training studies have provided some experimental support for the impact of feedback (Slaughter, [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref12">34</reflink>]; Slaughter & Gopnik, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref13">35</reflink>]) and social discourse (e.g., Appleton & Reddy, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref14">2</reflink>]; Guajardo & Watson, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref15">14</reflink>]; Lohmann & Tomasello, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref16">22</reflink>]) on theory of mind development. For example, Slaughter and Gopnik trained children on the concepts of beliefs, desires, and perceptions using explicit feedback for task performance across multiple trials. Across two studies, children's false belief performance improved after training. Conversation about mental states, involving less explicit feedback, also leads to changes in children's theory of mind performance (e.g., Appleton & Reddy, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref17">2</reflink>]; Guajardo & Watson, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref18">14</reflink>]; Lohmann & Tomasello, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref19">22</reflink>]). Across studies, repeated discourse facilitated young children's understanding of the mind, as evidenced by increased performance on theory of mind tasks from pre- to posttest (see also Knoll & Charman, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref20">18</reflink>]).</p> <p>It is possible that children develop theory of mind understanding by generating their own explanations, even in the absence of direct feedback, as they attempt to make sense of their own or others' behavior or responses. Self-explanations, referring to causal inferences about events in an individual's environment (Siegler & Lin, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref21">33</reflink>]), enhance children's learning in a variety of areas including relational similarity (Honomichl & Chen, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref22">16</reflink>]), mathematical strategy use (e.g., Siegler [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref23">29</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref24">30</reflink>]; Siegler & Lin, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref25">33</reflink>]), addition (Calin-Jageman & Horn Ratner, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref26">6</reflink>]), balance (Pine & Messer, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref27">27</reflink>]), map skills (Kastens & Liben, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref28">17</reflink>]), emotion understanding (Tenenbaum, Alfieri, Brooks, & Dunne, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref29">36</reflink>]), and perspective taking (Pillow, Mash, Aloian, & Hill, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref30">26</reflink>]). Across several studies children experienced greater gains in cognitive understanding when they had to generate explanations for their own or another's response than when they did not. It is plausible that children naturally learn theory of mind concepts as they make sense of others' differing perspectives during social interaction and discourse.</p> <p>Amsterlaw and Wellman ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref31">1</reflink>]), using a microgenetic design, demonstrated the impact of both self-generated explanations and implicit feedback on false belief performance. Experimenters administered false belief change of location tasks and gave implicit feedback to children by modeling behavior consistent with a character's false belief. They then asked for explanations for the actions of task characters. Performance was best when children were administered fewer tasks (2 vs. 4) across more sessions (12 vs. 6) and were asked to explain each task. The combination of implicit feedback and self-explanation led to gradual, meaningful changes over time in children's false belief understanding (Amsterlaw & Wellman, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref32">1</reflink>]; see also Flynn, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref33">12</reflink>]; Flynn, O'Malley, & Wood, 2004).</p> <p>Social interaction is a dynamic process that likely leads to cognitive changes gradually over time. Thus, the best way to capture such change would be with a method that examines incremental change rather than correlational or pretest–posttest designs. For this reason, the present study utilized a microgenetic design to examine the roles of exposure and feedback in false belief understanding. The present study adds to only three published studies, to date, that have employed a microgenetic design to study false belief understanding (Amsterlaw & Wellman, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref34">1</reflink>]; Flynn, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref35">12</reflink>]; Flynn et al., [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref36">13</reflink>]).</p> <p>In the present study we examined the effectiveness of source of explanation as well as utility of feedback. Specifically, we compared the effects of feedback and explanation to determine whether feedback was essential for conceptual change in false belief understanding. The present study is also the first to compare the effect of adult provided versus child generated explanations to determine if one source was more effective than another or whether they equally effected change in false belief performance. We hypothesized that performance would improve when children received feedback and an explanation was provided, rather than when the child only explained his/her answer. Consistent with the self-explanation effect, performance was expected to increase the most when the child generated explanations for the feedback received, as opposed to when the experimenter did so. An additional goal was to examine whether training would generalize to false belief tasks not used in training.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-2">Method</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0087450070-3">Participants</hd> <p>Fifty children from a small, northwestern city in the United States completed pretesting for inclusion in this study; 40 children between the ages of 42 months and 54 months qualified. Ten failed to meet the inclusion criteria as a result of high scores on the false belief pretest scores. Of the 40 eligible children, data of three children were excluded because the research assistant failed to follow the designated protocol, one child's data were excluded because her pretest data were missing, and, three children missed two or more training sessions and were excluded. Eighteen boys and 15 girls were included in the final analyses, yielding a sample size of 33. Most children were European-American via two European-American parents; all children had at least one European-American parent. Of the children with heteroethnic parents, three had an African American parent, four had a Hispanic parent, and two had a Native American parent.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-4">Design</hd> <p>Children completed ten sessions: one screening/pretraining, eight training, and one posttraining. Each child completed all sessions with the same researcher and spent playtime with him/her prior to the second session to increase familiarity between child and researcher. Following pretesting, eligible children were assigned randomly to one of four conditions. Each child's sessions occurred across six weeks; the final training session occurred four weeks after the pretraining session and the posttraining session occurred one week later.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-5">Measures</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0087450070-6">Language comprehension</hd> <p>The Test for the Auditory Comprehension of Language (TACL-3; Carrow-Woolfolk, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref37">7</reflink>]) was administered to ensure that group differences were not attributable to differences in linguistic skill. Total scores (range = 0 to 135) were used.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-7">False belief</hd> <p>Five false belief tasks were included in the study: two unexpected contents tasks (one directed toward another, and one self–representational change task), one change of location task, one appearance–reality task, and one knowledge-access task. All stories were acted out with props and the sex of the character matched the child's. After each test question children were asked to explain their reasoning. The same materials and tasks were used in each session; however, the specific content of each task (e.g., names, objects) was modified across sessions. Children only received points when they answered both the control and test questions accurately.</p> <p>The unexpected contents-other task (see Bartsch & Wellman, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref38">4</reflink>]) assessed each child's ability to identify another's thoughts and knowledge. The experimenter presented a familiar container (e.g., an M&M's canister) with an unexpected object inside (e.g., a toy pig). After the child answered control questions to ensure comprehension, the researcher introduced Peter, a doll, and said, "Peter has never ever seen inside the M&M's can. Now here comes Peter." A reference sheet was provided to the child with a pig, some M&M's, and a question mark (indicating "I don't know") for the child to point to if desired. Next, the researcher asked the child the target question, "So, what does Peter think is in the can? M&M's or a pig?," and the memory question, "Did Peter see inside this can?" The researcher then asked, "How do you know that?" For this task, a child earned one point for correctly responding that Peter thinks M&M's are in the canister and that he did not see in the can.</p> <p>Another unexpected contents task was used to assess children's understanding of their own representational change (Lewis & Osborne, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref39">20</reflink>]). After being shown the unexpected contents and answering control questions, each child was asked, "What did you think was in the box?" If the child responded incorrectly, the researcher followed up with, "What did you think was in the box <emph>before I</emph> opened it?" Children earned one point if they answered either question correctly. In order to assess the child's explanation, the researcher asked, "Why did you think that?"</p> <p>Children also completed Wimmer and Perner's (1983) change of location task. Children were told the story of Maxi and her mother who both returned from the grocery store. Maxi placed the chocolate in one cabinet and her mother moved it while Maxi was outside. To ensure that children comprehended the story, the researcher asked three control questions: "Where did the chocolate used to be?" "Where is it right now?" and "Did Maxi see it being moved?" Next, the experimenter asked the target question, "Where will Maxi first look for the chocolate when she comes back into the room?" and the follow-up question, "Why will Maxi look in that cupboard?" Children who responded that Maxi would first look in the blue cupboard because that is where she last saw it earned one point.</p> <p>The appearance–reality tasks (Flavell, Flavell, & Green, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref40">11</reflink>]), utilized objects that appeared to be one thing, but were really something else (e.g., a candle that looked like a crayon). After being asked, "What does this look like to your eyes right now?" each child was allowed to play with the object to determine its true identity (a candle). At this time, the researcher explained verbally the aspects that made it a candle (e.g., it is made out of wax, one can not eat it). The researcher then asked the child two test questions: "What is this really and truly? Is it really and truly a crayon or really and truly a candle?" and "When you look at it with your eyes right now, does it look like a candle or does it look like a crayon?" Children received one point if they correctly answered both test questions. The follow-up question prompted an explanation for the second test question: "Why do you think that this looks like a candle?"</p> <p>The knowledge-access task was based on Wellman and Liu ([<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref41">38</reflink>]). A researcher showed the child a drawer and said, "Here is a drawer. What do you think is inside the drawer?" Next, the researcher said, "Let's see ... there is really a ball inside!" The child then was asked the postview question, "Okay, what is in the drawer?" If the child did not respond correctly, the researcher again showed the contents of the drawer. A doll, Grace, was introduced, and the researcher told the child, "Grace has never ever seen inside this drawer. Now here comes Grace." The researcher asked the target question, "So does Grace know what is inside this drawer?" and the memory question, "Did Grace see inside this drawer?" One point was awarded if the child responded "no" to both questions. The researcher then asked, "Why does/doesn't she know what is inside the drawer?"</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-8">Procedure</hd> <p>Parents completed a demographic form (i.e., marital status, household income, education level, number of siblings) and returned it with the parental consent form. Children were tested individually at their child care center.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-9">Screening–pretraining</hd> <p>Children completed the language measure and all five false belief tasks during screening/pretraining. Task performance and explanation were coded separately. Children earned one point for each task if they responded correctly to both the target question and the control/memory questions. Children who answered the test question correctly could receive another point for each follow-up question contingent on accuracy or plausibility. For example, on the unexpected contents-other task, children earned an explanation point if they identified correctly that Peter would think M&M's are in the canister and that Peter thought that because he had not seen inside the canister.</p> <p>Children who received both a target question and an explanation composite score between 0 and 2 (of 5) were eligible for training. These criteria yielded 40 (of 50) children eligible for inclusion.</p> <p>Children were assigned randomly to the four conditions described below (see Table 1). In order to check on equivalence of false belief, language, and age scores, three one-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with four levels were performed on false belief pretraining scores, language, and age. The ANOVAs yielded the following: false belief, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref42">3</reflink>, 29) = 0.488, <emph>p</emph> = <emph>ns</emph>, η<sups>2</sups> =.048; language, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref43">3</reflink>, 29) = 1.120, <emph>p</emph> = <emph>ns</emph>, η<sups>2</sups> =.104; and age, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref44">3</reflink>, 29) = 0.644, <emph>p</emph> = <emph>ns</emph>, η<sups>2</sups> =.062. The small eta values suggest these variables account for a small amount of variance in the dependent variables. Table 1 depicts the means for each condition on these variables. The effect of child sex also was examined for false belief. A 4 × 2 (Condition × Sex) ANOVA revealed that there was a nonsignificant main effect of sex, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref45">1</reflink>, 25) =.906, <emph>p</emph> = <emph>ns</emph>, η<sups>2</sups> =.035, suggesting this variable accounts for a small amount of the variance in false belief performance<emph>,</emph> and sex by condition interaction, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref46">3</reflink>, 25) = 2.787, <emph>p</emph> = <emph>ns</emph>, η<sups>2</sups> =.251. Thus, sex was not included in the analyses.</p> <p>TABLE 1 Means and Standard Deviations of False Belief Pretest Scores, Language, and Age, by Condition (N = 33)</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><td /><td>False belief<sup>a</sup></td><td>Language<sup>b</sup></td><td>Age (months)</td></tr><tr><td>Condition</td><td><italic>M</italic></td><td><italic>SD</italic></td><td><italic>M</italic></td><td><italic>SD</italic></td><td><italic>M</italic></td><td><italic>SD</italic></td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Explanation</td><td>1.4</td><td>1.6</td><td>53.9</td><td>11.7</td><td>47.0</td><td>2.8</td></tr><tr><td> (<italic>n</italic> = 7; 4 girls)</td><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>Feedback (<italic>n</italic> = 8; 5 girls)</td><td>0.8</td><td>0.9</td><td>50.1</td><td>14.2</td><td>46.1</td><td>3.5</td></tr><tr><td>Feedback researcher</td><td>1.2</td><td>1.2</td><td>42.3</td><td>15.5</td><td>48.6</td><td>4.2</td></tr><tr><td> explains (<italic>n</italic> = 9; 5 girls)</td><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>Feedback child</td><td>1.0</td><td>0.9</td><td>46.4</td><td>11.8</td><td>46.9</td><td>4.1</td></tr><tr><td> explains (<italic>n</italic> = 9; 1 girl)</td><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td><italic>Note.</italic><sup>a</sup>Maximum score = 5. <sup>b</sup>Maximum score = 135.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0087450070-10">General training procedures</hd> <p>During each training session children completed two false belief tasks: unexpected contents-other and change of location tasks. At the end of each task, all children were asked to explain their response and then they received feedback consistent with their experimental condition (see Appendix for an example). The format of each condition was based on Siegler ([<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref47">29</reflink>]). The four experimental conditions were as follows:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> 1. Explanation. This condition served as a pure control group. Children answered each question and explained their answer. Children did not receive feedback.</item> <p></p> <item> 2. Feedback. This condition served as a second control group. After being asked to explain their answer to the target question, children received feedback for their response to the target questions. They were not asked to explain the feedback provided. For example, after children in this condition indicated what Peter thinks, the researcher then said, "Let's see what Peter thinks is in the can." Peter then approached the M&M's on the reference sheet and the researcher labeled his belief ("Peter thinks there are M&M's in there"). Regardless of the child's response, the researcher remained positive, ensuring the child did not experience negative affect about giving an incorrect response.</item> <p></p> <item> 3. Feedback researcher explains. After the task, children in this condition received feedback concerning their response to the target question as in the feedback control condition. Following the feedback, the researcher explained the reasoning for the appropriate response to the target question. Each explanation consisted of the correct mental and perceptual information. For example, for the false belief unexpected contents-other task, the researcher said, "Peter thinks that there are M&M's in this can because he has not seen in this can. He does not know there is a pig inside because he hasn't seen inside this can."</item> <p></p> <item> 4. Feedback child explains. Children received feedback as in the feedback control condition and then the child was asked to explain the character's behavior during feedback. To illustrate, in the unexpected contents-other task, the researcher would take Peter to the M&M's on the reference sheet and say, "Peter thinks there are M&Ms in this can." Then the researcher asked, "Why would Peter think there are M&M's in this can?" If the child did not respond, the researcher re-asked the explanation question. Regardless of the child's response, the task ended at this point.</item> </ulist> <hd id="AN0087450070-11">Posttraining</hd> <p>During the final session, each child was administered all five false belief tasks in the same manner as during the screening–pretraining. False belief measures were scored as described in the screening/pretraining section.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-12">Coding of Explanations</hd> <p>The explanation coding system was based, in part, on Amsterlaw and Wellman ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref48">1</reflink>]), and, in part, developed inductively, given the response style of children in this study. Explanation response styles were categorized as the following: 0 = irrelevant, child provided a response unrelated to the task; 1 = don't know–no response, child says "I don't know," gave no response to the question, or answered with one word (<emph>because</emph>); 2 = own perception–mental states, child's explanation is the result of his or her own perceptual or mental activity ("I saw the balloons."; I know what is in there."; "I want a cookie."); 3 = situational, child describes some aspect of current situation or prior events ("His sister moved it."; "There are balloons in it."); 4 = mistake, child suggests that the character made a mistake ("She made a mistake."); 5 = character perception–character action. child indicates that the character did or did not see or hear something ("She saw it there last."; "She didn't see it get moved.") or that the target character moved or placed the object in the target location ("She put it in the shed."; "Because that's where she put it."); 6 = wanting–liking, child describes character's desire or liking of the object in question ("He likes balloons."; "He wants his scooter."); and 7 = thinking–knowing, child refers to the thoughts of the character or to what the character did or did not know ("Because he thinks his scooter is in there."; "Because he doesn't know she moved it.").</p> <p>Rachel Petersen and a research assistant who did not participate in the training portion of this study completed explanation style coding. The reliability for this coded information was 97.5% agreement. Cohen's kappa was 94%. Discrepancies were resolved through discussion.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-13">Results</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0087450070-14">Analytic Approach</hd> <p>A generalized estimating equation (GEE) using an unstructured correlational matrix structure across the ten sessions and the two false belief tasks was used to evaluate the effects of the four training/feedback conditions across the individual sessions. The unstructured model allows all of the parameters of the matrix to be different and thus is the most general model (Hedeker & Gibbons, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref49">15</reflink>]). The pattern of missing data fits a missing completely at random (MCAR) pattern for the unexpected contents task with 5.5% of the data missing, Little's MCAR test, χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref50">2</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 330) 3.745, <emph>p</emph> =.154, and for the location task with 5.2% of the data missing, Little's (1988) MCAR test, χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref51">2</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 330) 2.748, <emph>p</emph> =.253. These missing values were unrelated to the feedback–training condition and sessions and had no identifiable pattern to the missing data. Because the dependent variables in this study were dichotomous (success or fail), a GEE analysis with a binomial probability distributions and Logit link model type were selected with an unstructured correlation matrix structure for each analysis that follows.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-15">Overview</hd> <p>The first set of analyses examined the effects of training on false belief performance overall, irrespective of explanations, followed by performance on the unexpected contents-other task and the unexpected change task separately. The second set examined whether training had differential effects on tasks for which children received training compared to those they did not. Finally, analyses examined changes in children's explanation styles.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-16">False Belief Tasks</hd> <p>A GEE was conducted to examine the effects of training on false belief performance overall and on each false belief task separately. Figures 1 and 2 show the participants' response in each condition across sessions on the change of location task and the unexpected contents-other task. Table 2 provides the percentage of correct responses for the two false belief tasks by condition and session. The GEE model examining overall false belief performance indicated significant main effect of condition, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref52">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 42.540, <emph>p</emph> <.001; task, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref53">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 47.389, <emph>p</emph> <.001; and session, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref54">9</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 546.683, <emph>p</emph> <.001. There also were significant condition by session, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref55">27</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 17852.064, <emph>p</emph> <.001; condition by task, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref56">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 63.780, <emph>p</emph> <.001; and condition by session by task, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref57">25</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 178.362, <emph>p</emph> <.001, interactions. Sidak adjusted pairwise comparisons of the estimated marginal means suggested that children in the feedback child explains (<emph>p</emph> <.001) condition and those in the feedback researcher explains (<emph>p</emph> =.020) condition had reliably more accurate responses on the false belief tasks than did those in the feedback condition. The main effect for task indicated that children, regardless of condition, were more successful at the change of location task (142 of 313) than the unexpected contents task (106 of 312). An examination of the task by condition interaction suggested that children in the feedback condition were reliably more successful on the change of location task (<emph>p</emph> =.0001), and children in the feedback researcher explains condition were marginally more successful (<emph>p</emph> =.057) on the change of location task than on the unexpected contents task.</p> <p>Graph: FIGURE 1 Participant response in each condition across sessions on change of location task.</p> <p>Graph: FIGURE 2 Participant response in each condition across sessions on unexpected contents task.</p> <p>TABLE 2 Percentage Correct in Condition by Session for False Belief Tasks (N = 33)</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><td /><td>Condition</td></tr><tr><td /><td /><td /><td>Feedback</td><td>Feedback</td><td /></tr><tr><td /><td /><td /><td>researcher</td><td>child</td><td>All</td></tr><tr><td>Session</td><td>Explanation</td><td>Feedback</td><td>explains</td><td>explains</td><td>conditions</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Change of location task</td></tr><tr><td>  1</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">25.00</td><td char=".">22.22</td><td char=".">33.33</td><td char=".">30.30</td></tr><tr><td>  2</td><td char=".">57.17</td><td char=".">37.50</td><td char=".">37.50</td><td char=".">33.33</td><td char=".">40.63</td></tr><tr><td>  3</td><td char=".">50.00</td><td char=".">25.00</td><td char=".">25.00</td><td char=".">44.44</td><td char=".">35.48</td></tr><tr><td>  4</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">50.00</td><td char=".">44.44</td><td char=".">66.67</td><td char=".">51.52</td></tr><tr><td>  5</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">57.14</td><td char=".">50.00</td><td char=".">66.67</td><td char=".">54.84</td></tr><tr><td>  6</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">57.14</td><td char=".">50.00</td><td char=".">66.67</td><td char=".">54.84</td></tr><tr><td>  7</td><td char=".">40.00</td><td char=".">57.14</td><td char=".">55.56</td><td char=".">71.43</td><td char=".">57.14</td></tr><tr><td>  8</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">57.14</td><td char=".">55.56</td><td char=".">44.44</td><td char=".">50.00</td></tr><tr><td>  9</td><td char=".">50.00</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">22.22</td><td char=".">34.48</td></tr><tr><td> 10</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">37.50</td><td char=".">55.56</td><td char=".">44.44</td><td char=".">45.45</td></tr><tr><td>All sessions</td><td char=".">45.45</td><td char=".">44.00</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">48.86</td><td char=".">45.37</td></tr><tr><td>Unexpected contents task</td></tr><tr><td>  1</td><td char=".">14.29</td><td char=".">0.00</td><td char=".">11.11</td><td char=".">22.22</td><td char=".">12.12</td></tr><tr><td>  2</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">12.50</td><td char=".">25.00</td><td char=".">11.11</td><td char=".">21.88</td></tr><tr><td>  3</td><td char=".">50.00</td><td char=".">12.50</td><td char=".">37.50</td><td char=".">33.33</td><td char=".">32.26</td></tr><tr><td>  4</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">25.00</td><td char=".">22.22</td><td char=".">11.11</td><td char=".">24.24</td></tr><tr><td>  5</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">42.86</td><td char=".">25.00</td><td char=".">55.56</td><td char=".">38.71</td></tr><tr><td>  6</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">25.00</td><td char=".">55.56</td><td char=".">35.48</td></tr><tr><td>  7</td><td char=".">25.00</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">44.44</td><td char=".">71.43</td><td char=".">44.44</td></tr><tr><td>  8</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">55.56</td><td char=".">66.67</td><td char=".">46.88</td></tr><tr><td>  9</td><td char=".">33.33</td><td char=".">0.00</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">77.78</td><td char=".">37.93</td></tr><tr><td> 10</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">37.50</td><td char=".">44.44</td><td char=".">77.78</td><td char=".">48.48</td></tr><tr><td>All sessions</td><td char=".">32.31</td><td char=".">21.33</td><td char=".">32.14</td><td char=".">47.73</td><td char=".">33.97</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>The analysis also provided information about changes across sessions. The Sidak adjusted trends for the session main effect provided evidence of a linear trend (<emph>p</emph> =.017) and a quadratic trend (<emph>p</emph> =.0001) across sessions. The quadratic trend appears to be driven by the change of location task (see below). Of interest, an examination of the trends in the condition by session interaction indicated evidence of a strong linear trend only in the feedback child explains condition (<emph>p</emph> =.003), with children in this condition tending to be more successful on the false belief tasks with additional training sessions. This linear trend is much more pronounced for the unexpected contents task (see subsequent analysis).</p> <p>To investigate the three-way condition by session by task interaction, the individual false belief tasks (unexpected contents task and change of location tasks) were analyzed separately with two GEE models. The GEE model for the unexpected contents task indicated significant main effects for condition, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref58">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 113.262, <emph>p</emph> <.001; and session, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref59">9</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 560.863, <emph>p</emph> <.001; and a condition by session interaction, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref60">25</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 154.666, <emph>p</emph> <.001. Sidak adjusted pairwise comparisons of the estimated marginal means showed that children in the feedback child explains condition (<emph>p</emph> =.0001) and children in the feedback researcher explains condition had marginally more accurate responses (<emph>p</emph> =.063) on the unexpected contents task than did children in the feedback condition. No other pairwise differences were found among the conditions.</p> <p>An examination of the trends across the sessions found evidence of a significant linear trend (<emph>p</emph> =.026), indicating that children, irrespective of condition, tended to be more successful at the unexpected contents task with additional training sessions. Interestingly, an examination of the trends in the condition by session interaction provided evidence of a strong linear trend only in the feedback child explains condition (<emph>p</emph> <.001), suggesting that children in this condition tended to be much more successful on the unexpected contents task as they received more training sessions (see Table 2). These results suggest a unique effect of this approach to training.</p> <p>The GEE model for the change of location task found a significant main effect of session, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref61">9</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 28.520, <emph>p</emph> =.001; but a nonsignificant effect of condition, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref62">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 0.082, <emph>p</emph> =.994. The condition by session interaction also was significant, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref63">26</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 105.390, <emph>p</emph> <.001. An examination of the trends across the sessions indicated a quadratic trend in the data (<emph>p</emph> =.021), yet the pattern of Sidak adjusted trends in the condition by session interaction found evidence of a strong quadratic trend only in the feedback child explains condition (<emph>p</emph> <.001). Children in this condition tended to be more successful on the change of location task during the middle training sessions than either the pretraining session or the posttraining session (see Table 2).</p> <p>There was also a concern that differences in child age and TACL-3 scores might account for these findings. To evaluate the potential confounding of these variables, age and TACL scores were added into the GEE as covariates. Age, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref64">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 4.030, <emph>p</emph> =.045; and TACL-3 score, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref65">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 9.750, <emph>p</emph> =.002; were significantly related to false belief performance in this model. This indicates that children who were older and had higher TACL-3 scores tended to answer the false beliefs tasks correctly. However, child age and TACL-3 scores did not account for the significant main effects or interactions discussed above, <emph>p</emph>s >.100.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-17">Trained and Untrained Tasks</hd> <p>To consider the global effects of training on untrained tasks, a GEE model was constructed looking at only the pretraining and posttraining sessions where we could examine the trained versus untrained tasks. This model found significant main effects of session, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref66">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 16.059, <emph>p</emph> <.001; and training tasks, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref67">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 6.264, <emph>p</emph> =.012; and a condition by training tasks interaction, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref68">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 9.443, <emph>p</emph> =.024 (see Table 3). The main effect for session suggested that children were more successful on the tasks at posttraining compared to pretraining. The main effect of training tasks indicated children were more successful on the trained tasks compared to the untrained tasks. The interaction between condition and training represents a pattern where children in the explanation group were more successful on the tasks for which they did not receive training, while the children in the feedback child explains were more successful on the tasks for which they received training.</p> <p>TABLE 3 Percentage Correct on Trained and Untrained False Belief Tasks for Groups at Pretraining and Posttraining Sessions and all Sessions (N = 33)</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><td /><td>Pretraining</td><td>Posttraining</td><td>All sessions</td></tr><tr><td /><td>Trained</td><td>Untrained</td><td>All</td><td>Trained</td><td>Untrained</td><td>All</td><td>Trained</td><td>Untrained</td><td>All</td></tr><tr><td>Condition</td><td>tasks</td><td>tasks</td><td>tasks</td><td>tasks</td><td>tasks</td><td>tasks</td><td>tasks</td><td>tasks</td><td>tasks</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Explanation</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">28.57</td><td char=".">28.87</td><td char=".">35.71</td><td char=".">61.90</td><td char=".">51.43</td><td char=".">32.14</td><td char=".">45.24</td><td char=".">40.00</td></tr><tr><td>Feedback</td><td char=".">12.50</td><td char=".">16.67</td><td char=".">15.00</td><td char=".">37.50</td><td char=".">33.33</td><td char=".">35.00</td><td char=".">25.00</td><td char=".">25.00</td><td char=".">25.00</td></tr><tr><td>Feedback researcher explains</td><td char=".">16.67</td><td char=".">29.63</td><td char=".">24.44</td><td char=".">50.00</td><td char=".">44.44</td><td char=".">46.67</td><td char=".">33.33</td><td char=".">37.04</td><td char=".">35.56</td></tr><tr><td>Feedback child explains</td><td char=".">27.78</td><td char=".">14.81</td><td char=".">20.00</td><td char=".">61.11</td><td char=".">51.85</td><td char=".">55.59</td><td char=".">44.44</td><td char=".">33.33</td><td char=".">37.78</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0087450070-18">Explanations</hd> <p>All children were prompted to explain the character's behavior for each change of location and unexpected contents-other task during training, prior to condition manipulations. These responses were coded for type. Children generated a variety of types of explanations across training sessions and tasks. The number of different types of explanations produced varied among conditions, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref69">3</reflink>, 29) = 6.18, <emph>p</emph> =.002. Tukey's post hoc analysis indicated that children in the feedback child explains condition produced a greater variety of types of explanations than those in either the explanation (<emph>p</emph> =.006) or the feedback (<emph>p</emph> =.013) conditions (see Figure 3). The difference between the variety of explanations used by children in the feedback researcher explains condition and those in the explanation condition approached significance, <emph>p</emph> =.064.</p> <p>Graph: FIGURE 3 Mean number of types of explanations generated during training.</p> <p>Figure 4 shows the frequency of children's explanations for the false belief tasks. Most explanations were situational (40.7%), followed by don't know–no response (17.7%), character perception–character action (17.1%), and irrelevant (13.4%). Relatively few explanations were categorized as own perception–mental states (3.0%) or mistakes (0.16%). The explanation codes wanting–liking and thinking–knowing were of particular interest as belief-desire explanations. These explanation codes represented a small number of the total cases (wanting–liking, <emph>n</emph> = 28, or 4.5% [16 for contents, 12 for location]; thinking–knowing, <emph>n</emph> = 21, or 3.4% [10 for contents, 11 for location]). Given the small number, a satisfactory GEE model was not estimable for these explanations. However, it is interesting to note that 23 of the 28 (82.1%) Wanting/liking codes and 19 of the 21 (90.5%) Thinking–knowing codes occurred in the feedback child explains condition. Figures 5 and 6 represent types of explanations provided by each child across sessions.</p> <p>Graph: FIGURE 4 Frequency of children's explanations for the false belief tasks.</p> <p>Graph: FIGURE 5 Participant explanations in each condition across sessions on change of location task.</p> <p>Graph: FIGURE 6 Participant explanation in each condition across sessions on unexpected contents task.</p> <p>Don't know–no response, situational, and character perception–character action explanation codes had sufficient frequencies to build GEE models. The GEE model for don't know–no response explanations examined the factors condition, session, task, condition by session, and task by session. This model indicated significant main effects of condition, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref70">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 293.588, <emph>p</emph> <.001; and session, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref71">9</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 1488.783, <emph>p</emph> <.001; and a condition by session interaction, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref72">19</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 31970.359, <emph>p</emph> <.001. Nonsignificant effects were found for task, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref73">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 1.112, <emph>p</emph> =.292; and the condition by task interaction, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref74">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) =.557, <emph>p</emph> =.906. Sidak adjusted pairwise comparisons of the estimated marginal means suggested that children in the explanation condition generated reliably fewer Don't know/no response explanations compared to those in the feedback condition (<emph>p</emph> =.046) and marginally fewer than children in the feedback child explains (<emph>p</emph> =.072). The Sidak adjusted trends for the session main effect suggested strong linear (<emph>p</emph> <.001) and quadratic (p <.001) trends. The linear trend indicated that as the children had more training sessions they provided fewer don't know–no response explanations and the quadratic trend indicated that the decrease in providing don't know–no response explanations occurred more rapidly across the first few sessions compared to the final few sessions. The condition by session interaction represented a complex pattern. For explanation, feedback researcher explains, and feedback child explains, most of the don't know–no response explanations occurred during the first two sessions, but the lack of don't know–no response explanations across the remaining sessions made it difficult to identify trends in the sessions across the individual conditions.</p> <p>The GEE model for the situational explanation code with condition, session, task, condition by session, and task by session entered into the model indicated significant main effects for condition, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref75">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 76.231, <emph>p</emph> <.001; and session, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref76">9</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 1602.950, <emph>p</emph> <.001; and a condition by session interaction, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref77">25</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 153253.8, <emph>p</emph> <.001. There also was a marginal effect of task, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref78">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 3.528, <emph>p</emph> =.060; and a nonsignificant condition by task interaction, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref79">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 1.685, <emph>p</emph> =.640. Sidak adjusted pairwise comparisons of the estimated marginal means suggested that children in the explanation and feedback researcher explains conditions produced more Situational explanation codes than did children in the feedback and feedback child explains conditions (<emph>p</emph>s <.001). The Sidak adjusted trends for the session main effect suggested evidence of a linear trend (<emph>p</emph> =.061) and a complex fifth-order trend (<emph>p</emph> <.001). An examination of the trends in the condition by session interaction provided evidence of a quadratic trend in the feedback researcher explains (<emph>p</emph> =.051) and in the feedback child explains (<emph>p</emph> =.030) conditions, suggesting children in these conditions were more likely to provide Situational explanations during the middle sessions, with fewer in the early and later sessions. The marginal main effect of tasks indicated that children gave more Situational explanations on the change of location task than on the unexpected contents task.</p> <p>The GEE model for character perception–character action explanation code with condition, session, task, condition by session, and task by session entered into the model indicated significant main effects of condition, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref80">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 11.550, <emph>p</emph> =.009; and session, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref81">9</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 282.565, <emph>p</emph> <.001; and a condition by session interaction, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref82">26</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 133365.5, <emph>p</emph> <.001. Nonsignificant effects were found for task, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref83">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) =.344, <emph>p</emph> =.558; and the condition by task interaction, Wald χ<sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref84">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 33) = 1.027, <emph>p</emph> =.795. Sidak adjusted pairwise comparisons of the estimated marginal means suggested that children in the feedback child explains condition generated reliably fewer character perception explanations compared to children in the feedback researcher explains condition (<emph>p</emph> =.026) and marginally fewer compared to those in the explanation condition (<emph>p</emph> =.063). The Sidak adjusted trends for the session main effect suggests evidence of a complex sixth-order trend (<emph>p</emph> =.060) and the condition by session interaction found evidence of a complex fourth-order trend (<emph>p</emph> =.057) in the feedback condition. Thus, the frequency of character perception explanations was highly variable across sessions, particularly for children in the feedback condition.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-19">Feedback child explains explanations</hd> <p>Children in the feedback child explains condition also provided explanations after receiving feedback. These explanations were coded for descriptive purposes. Children produced all types of explanation styles, except for mistakes. The majority of the responses, 28%, referred to an aspect of the situation (e.g., "The teddy bear is in the dresser."). The second most common category (23%) was don't know–no response. Seven of nine children said, "I don't know," or did not respond at least once. Interestingly, three children provided 81% of these responses; one child produced 38% of these responses. Fifteen percent of the responses referred to the character's perception, 14% to wanting–liking ("He likes M&M's."), and 13% to thinking–knowing ("He doesn't know there is a pig inside."). Only 5% of the responses were irrelevant to the story and 2% of the responses referred to the child's own mental state (e.g., "I know what is in there").</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-20">Discussion</hd> <p>The primary purpose of the present study was to examine the roles of feedback and source of explanation in developmental changes in false belief understanding using a microgenetic design. In particular, we compared false belief performance when children received implicit feedback after they explained their response to when they provided explanations without feedback to determine whether feedback was critical for conceptual change. We hypothesized that the most change would occur when training involved both feedback and explanation, particularly when the child provided the explanation. We also examined whether the effects of training generalized to untrained false belief tasks as well as whether training affected explanation styles. Each of these questions is addressed in turn.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-21">False Belief Performance</hd> <p>The present data supported the hypothesis in that children in conditions including feedback and explanation provided more accurate responses on the false belief tasks across sessions than did those who either received feedback or provided an explanation without feedback. The data suggest that receiving or generating an explanation for a character's false belief was important for conceptual change to occur over time.</p> <p>In particular, children who received feedback and provided their own explanation improved with additional training sessions. Consistent with the self-explanation effect, children's performance increased systematically across sessions when they generated their own explanations for the characters' beliefs and behaviors. Unexpectedly, a quadratic trend emerged with the change of location task, indicating that false belief performance improved from the beginning to middle sessions, but then declined in the last sessions. It is not clear why performance on this task dropped off at the end. Perhaps children paid less attention to the tasks with repeated presentations. Overall, these data extend work showing that child-generated explanations foster cognitive change by demonstrating this effect with false belief understanding.</p> <p>Generating an explanation for an outcome may be beneficial for a few reasons. First, asking children to explain another's behavior increases the likelihood that they will actually generate an explanation (Siegler & Lin, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref85">33</reflink>]). Rather than moving on without thinking about what happened, children are prompted to make sense of the event and consider why it occurred. This, in turn, can lead to the other processes, including that self-explanations lead children to spend more time on task (Matthews & Rittle-Johnson, [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref86">23</reflink>]), process information more deeply (Siegler, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref87">31</reflink>]; Siegler & Lin, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref88">33</reflink>]), and, thus, encode it more effectively (Calin-Jageman & Horn Ratner, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref89">6</reflink>]). Applying this idea to the present study, children who generated their own explanations for false beliefs improved systematically over time more so than the other groups because they were more likely to actively process and encode the task-relevant information, which led to improvements in performance.</p> <p>Finally, self-explanations can have a motivational effect (Siegler & Lin, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref90">33</reflink>]). Resolving conflicts between their own thoughts and those of another can help children make sense of the world around them. This then serves as motivation to search for explanations, which further enhances learning (Pillow et al., [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref91">26</reflink>]; Siegler & Lin, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref92">33</reflink>]). These ideas fit with early research demonstrating correlations between both mother-child talk about causality (Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla, & Youngblade, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref93">8</reflink>]) and social conflict (Dunn et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref94">8</reflink>]) and children's later emotion and false belief understanding. It is possible that through such discussions mothers provide explanations for conflicting viewpoints of children and their family members, which requires them to process and make sense of the different perspectives. It is plausible that such interactions provide the basis for children's self-explanations in other, later situations, which enhances their learning.</p> <p>The effects of feedback and self-explanations on false belief performance are consistent with predictions of Vygotsky's theory, as applied to theory of mind development. Vygtosky's theory suggests that such theory change would occur in interactions with more knowledgeable others who provide consistent or contradictory information (Astington, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref95">3</reflink>]; Fernyhough, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref96">10</reflink>]). Applied to the present data, when provided with feedback from another and asked to explain their reasoning, children actively processed the task relevant information and developed a response, or theory. They then modified their theory over time as they continued to confront pertinent information across sessions. These results suggest that the most effective way to foster false belief understanding during social interaction would involve asking children to explain why someone else would have a false belief to help them reason through what has occurred.</p> <p>The present study and that of Amsterlaw and Wellman ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref97">1</reflink>]) provide microgenetic data that demonstrate the effectiveness of feedback and self-explanations for false belief understanding, as reflected on the unexpected contents and change of location tasks. Moreover, the present study indicates that self-explanations are more beneficial in some ways than are experimenter-generated explanations. Though children in both conditions performed better than children in the other two groups, children who themselves explained the feedback improved more so over time. Finally, the present data also indicated that meaningful change could occur over as few as four weeks, as opposed to six weeks, as in Amsterlaw and Wellman. Certainly, though, it is likely that greater and clearer patterns of change would have occurred with additional training sessions.</p> <p>Children across conditions improved on the untrained false belief tasks as well, though they were more successful on the tasks on which they were trained. The only exception was that the children in the explanation group performed better at posttraining on the untrained tasks than they did on the trained tasks. It is not clear to us why this was the case. The overall improvement of the groups on the untrained tasks could suggest that repeated exposure to false belief tasks, or the adult attention involved, was sufficient to lead to conceptual change beyond task-specific effects. In other words, the present training conditions resulted in conceptual change that generalized to untrained false belief tasks.</p> <p>Other possibilities exist as well. Perhaps after repeated exposure to the trained tasks, the novelty of the untrained tasks captured children's attention in such a way that enhanced performance. It is also possible, that changes in performance on the untrained tasks, as well as the performance on the trained tasks, resulted at least partly from maturation. Indeed, the role of maturation is potentially supported by the finding that age was positively related to false belief performance on the trained tasks. Given these results, improvement on untrained tasks could be the result of maturation, the effects of exposure to false belief tasks, adult attention, or some other unknown process.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-22">Explanations</hd> <p>Examination of the explanation style data by condition also provided evidence that training was most effective when children received feedback and provided explanations for false beliefs. Overall, children provided very few mental state explanations on the false belief tasks, yet 85.7% (82.1% of wanting–liking, 90.5% of thinking–knowing) of such explanations were provided by children in the feedback child explains condition. Moreover, children in this condition provided fewer character perception and situational explanations than children in some of the other conditions. Children in this condition as well as in the explanation and feedback researcher explains conditions provided fewer "don't know" responses over time. As children had more frequent exposure to the false belief tasks, they were more likely to articulate an explanation, though not necessarily a mental state explanation. The frequencies of each type of explanation and the highly variable patterns in the data prevent strong conclusions, yet they are suggestive of the impact of feedback and explanation, particularly child generated explanation, on children's abilities to account for false beliefs. Deeper processing associated with self-explanation (Siegler, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref98">31</reflink>]) may foster developmental changes in false belief performance as well as verbalizations about false belief.</p> <p>A particularly interesting finding pertained to the variability in the types of explanations children provided across training sessions. Children in the feedback child explains condition generated a greater variety of explanations across sessions than did children in the explanation and the feedback conditions. They also produced more than those in the feedback researcher explains condition, though this difference was not statistically meaningful. These results are consistent with previous microgenetic work that has suggested an association between variability and learning (see Siegler & Lin, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref99">33</reflink>]). Siegler and Lin proposed that such variability reflects children's exploration of several aspects of the problem and, hence, their opportunities to learn. This, in turn, leads to improvements in performance. Thus, in contrast to children who were only asked to explain the character's behavior (explanation), or those who were provided feedback concerning the correct answer (feedback), or those who consistently heard an explanation that consistently focused on the link between the character's thoughts and perceptions (feedback researcher explains), children who received feedback concerning the correct answer and generated their own explanation potentially considered and learned about multiple components of the situation, as reflected in their improved false belief performance. Though many of their explanations did not focus on the most pertinent information (i.e., the character's thoughts), these children did perform better and improve more than other children on false belief tasks over time. Perhaps the prompt to explain why the character did what he or she did facilitated children's implicit understanding of the concepts, despite the fact they were not yet able to explain explicitly the basis for the character's error (lack of perceptual access and hence, knowledge).</p> <p>It is possible that, as with many constructs, children develop the ability to discuss mental states and agency after developing an understanding of them. That is, they lack meta-awareness even though performance indicates an advanced understanding. Although the present study did capture a change in task performance, the corresponding change in response style did not occur (i.e., that children would use more thinking–knowing explanations at posttraining than at pretraining). Perhaps with additional training or time, changes in response style would have been seen as well. Indeed, Flynn ([<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref100">12</reflink>]) was able to identify a clear pattern of change in explanations when she conducted training sessions over a six-month period. Such lengths of time may be needed to capture fully the critical changes that occur in explanation style.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-23">Limitations and Future Directions</hd> <p>There were two primary limitations of the present study. The first is related to the nature of microgenetic designs: small sample size. Each condition included 7–9 participants. Though this number is similar to other microgenetic work (Amsterlaw & Wellman, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref101">1</reflink>]; Calin-Jageman & Hort Ratner, 2005; Siegler & Crowley, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref102">32</reflink>]) and was sufficient to detect meaningful patterns in the data, it is certainly likely that stronger, and perhaps additional, effects would have emerged with a larger sample.</p> <p>Another limitation pertains to inclusion criteria. Children were included in the study if they failed three or more of the five false belief tasks and provided incorrect explanations for three or more of the tasks. These criteria are consistent with those used by Amsterlaw and Wellman ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref103">1</reflink>]), yet, these criteria also meant that a child who correctly answered the test questions for the unexpected contents and change of location tasks could have continued in the study. Indeed, some children did pass these tasks during the first training session. These children were equally represented across conditions (see Figures 1 and 2) so they did not account for condition effects, yet not including these children might have led to a more sensitive assessment of the impact of training. Future researchers should ensure that children do not do well on the targeted tasks prior to training.</p> <p>Future work also could consider whether explicit prompts enhance training. In the present study, children were not provided guidance when they could not or did not generate an explanation. Pillow et al. ([<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref104">26</reflink>]) trained children on a restricted view task. During training, children saw a series of three pictures with only part of each picture exposed. The first two pictures were the same and the third differed. Prior to seeing each picture, children were asked what they thought it was. After viewing the third picture, they were prompted either to explain their own incorrect perception or that of another. If children did not respond, they were prompted with, "What picture did you see before?" Thus, they were guided to think about relevant information. It would be interesting to see if providing a similar prompt (e.g., "What has Peter seen?"), when a child did not respond would enhance training. Such a prompt may further encourage children to consider an explanation and facilitate learning.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-24">Conclusion</hd> <p>The present study is one of very few to use a microgenetic design to examine theory of mind development. More specifically, we examined the roles of feedback and explanation on children's false belief understanding. The results demonstrated that a combination of feedback and explanation is most effective. In particular, children who received feedback and engaged in self-explanation demonstrated systematic improvement in false belief performance across training sessions. These data suggest one means through which social interaction can enhance false belief understanding; children process the feedback they receive from others and engage in making sense of such feedback. Developing these explanations leads to cognitive change. Though some of the changes were modest, the present data provide support for a mechanism of developmental change in false belief understanding.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-25">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</hd> <p>The authors are grateful to Stephane Drayton, Heather Thompson, April Fritch, Ann Feuerborn, Matthew Aschliman, and Katie Elkington for assistance with data collection and/or coding. They appreciate the assistance and cooperation of the children, parents, teachers, and childcare administrators. The authors also would like to thank Mark Roberts for his guidance and Sherman Lee for his thoughtful suggestions regarding this manuscript.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-26">AUTHOR NOTES</hd> <p> <bold>Nicole R. Guajardo</bold> is a professor of psychology at Christopher Newport University. Her research focuses on individual differences in early social-cognitive development with an emphasis on theory of mind and counterfactual reasoning. <bold>Rachel Petersen</bold> earned her MS in general experimental psychology from Idaho State University. She is currently working in social services in Oregon. <bold>Timothy R. Marshall</bold> is an associate professor of psychology at Christopher Newport University. His research interests are in social and emotional development in childhood and the application of statistical models to child development research.</p> <hd id="AN0087450070-27">APPENDIX</hd> <p>Ask the setup question: "Here's an M&M's can. What do you think is inside the M&M's can?"</p> <p>Possible prompts: "What's usually in an M&M's can?; "Does it look like there would be M&M's inside?"; "What kind of box is this? What should be in here?"; "Should there be M&M's or books in here?"</p> <p>Next, open the M&M's can and show the contents of the M&M's can: "Let's see ... it's really a pig inside!" Close the can.</p> <p>Postview question: "Okay, what is in this M&M's can?"</p> <p>Correct the child if necessary by showing her/him what is inside.</p> <p>Introduce doll: "Stephen has never ever seen inside this M&M's can. Now here comes Stephen."</p> <p> <emph>Target</emph> question: "So, what does Stephen think is in the can? M&M's or a pig?"</p> <p> <emph>Memory</emph> question: "Did Stephen see inside this can?"</p> <p>"Why would Stephen think there are M&M's/Pig in this package?"</p> <p>Explanation: The tasks ends with the above question.</p> <p>Feedback: Take doll to reference sheet. Say, "Let's see what Stephen thinks is inside the can." (Place Stephen next to M&M's.)</p> <p>Researcher Explains: "Stephen thinks that there are M&M's in this can because he has not seen in this can. He does not know there is a pig inside because he hasn't seen inside this can."</p> <p>Child Explains: "Why would Stephen think there are M&M's in this can?"</p> <ref id="AN0087450070-28"> <title> REFERENCES </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref31" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Amsterlaw, J. and Wellman, H.M.2006. Theories of mind in transition: A microgenetic study of the development of false belief understanding. Journal of Cognition and Development, 7: 139–172.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref14" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Appleton, M. and Reddy, V.1996. Teaching three-year-olds to pass false belief tests: A conversational approach. 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Marshall</p> <p>Reported by Author; Author; Author</p> </aug> <nolink nlid="nl1" bibid="bib37" firstref="ref1"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl2" bibid="bib19" firstref="ref4"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl3" bibid="bib25" firstref="ref5"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl4" bibid="bib24" firstref="ref7"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl5" bibid="bib28" firstref="ref9"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl6" bibid="bib10" firstref="ref11"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl7" bibid="bib34" firstref="ref12"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl8" bibid="bib35" firstref="ref13"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl9" bibid="bib14" firstref="ref15"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl10" bibid="bib22" firstref="ref16"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl11" bibid="bib18" firstref="ref20"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl12" bibid="bib33" firstref="ref21"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl13" bibid="bib16" firstref="ref22"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl14" bibid="bib29" firstref="ref23"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl15" bibid="bib30" firstref="ref24"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl16" bibid="bib27" firstref="ref27"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl17" bibid="bib17" firstref="ref28"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl18" bibid="bib36" firstref="ref29"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl19" bibid="bib26" firstref="ref30"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl20" bibid="bib12" firstref="ref33"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl21" bibid="bib13" firstref="ref36"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl22" bibid="bib20" firstref="ref39"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl23" bibid="bib11" firstref="ref40"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl24" bibid="bib38" firstref="ref41"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl25" bibid="bib15" firstref="ref49"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl26" bibid="bib23" firstref="ref86"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl27" bibid="bib31" firstref="ref87"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl28" bibid="bib32" firstref="ref102"></nolink>
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  Data: The Roles of Explanation and Feedback in False Belief Understanding: A Microgenetic Analysis
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  Data: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
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  Data: 10.1080/00221325.2012.682101
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  Data: 0022-1325
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  Data: The authors examined effects of feedback and explanation on false belief performance. Thirty-three children (42-54 months; 15 girls, 18 boys) were randomly assigned to four treatment conditions: explanation, feedback, feedback researcher explains, and feedback child explains. Children completed false belief tasks during pretraining, 8 training sessions, and posttraining across 6 weeks. Language comprehension was assessed at pretraining. The authors hypothesized that children would improve most when training involved feedback and explanation. Generalized estimating equations modeling was used to analyze the data. Children who received feedback and generated explanations for characters' false beliefs improved across training sessions more so than children in other conditions. Children's explanations for false beliefs also were explored. Implications of the findings are discussed. (Contains 3 tables and 6 figures.)
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  Data: EJ1001427
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RecordInfo BibRecord:
  BibEntity:
    Identifiers:
      – Type: doi
        Value: 10.1080/00221325.2012.682101
    Languages:
      – Text: English
    PhysicalDescription:
      Pagination:
        PageCount: 28
        StartPage: 225
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: Role
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Feedback (Response)
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Training
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Cognitive Development
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Beliefs
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Young Children
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Task Analysis
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Language Processing
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Generalization
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Coding
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Listening Comprehension
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Statistical Analysis
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Measures (Individuals)
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language
        Type: general
    Titles:
      – TitleFull: The Roles of Explanation and Feedback in False Belief Understanding: A Microgenetic Analysis
        Type: main
  BibRelationships:
    HasContributorRelationships:
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Guajardo, Nicole R.
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Petersen, Rachel
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Marshall, Timothy R.
    IsPartOfRelationships:
      – BibEntity:
          Dates:
            – D: 01
              M: 01
              Type: published
              Y: 2013
          Identifiers:
            – Type: issn-print
              Value: 0022-1325
          Numbering:
            – Type: volume
              Value: 174
            – Type: issue
              Value: 3
          Titles:
            – TitleFull: Journal of Genetic Psychology
              Type: main
ResultId 1