Children's early construals of subjectivity: Understanding the interpretive mind.
Item
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Title
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Children's early construals of subjectivity: Understanding the interpretive mind.
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Identifier
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AAI9997117
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identifier
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9997117
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Creator
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Plesa, Daniela.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Katherine Nelson
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Date
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2001
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Developmental | Psychology, Cognitive | Psychology, Social
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Abstract
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Understanding the interpretive aspect of mental activity constitutes a later development in children's 'theory of mind', emerging in middle childhood. This research examines children's reasoning about the possibility and sources of interpretive diversity when confronted with other people's discrepant interpretations regarding: (1) attributions of intention to protagonists involved in an everyday event; (2) perception of reversible visual images. The study also relates children's interpretive understanding skills to aspects of their language and narrative competence, to identify potential contributing factors to the development of psychological understanding in middle childhood, beyond the description of age-related differences.;One hundred and twelve children between six and ten years of age viewed individually a videotape in which puppets enacted a modified 'change of location' scenario. Children first recounted the event, then listened to the two puppets' verbal accounts including discrepant attributions of intention for the act of moving a cookie (hiding vs. saving for later sharing). Responses to whether it made sense for the two characters in the skit to entertain different interpretations and why, were categorized into: (1) none/irrelevant; (2) subjectivist/relativist; (3) informational source; (4) intentional or personality-related explanations. Explanations were also rated for complexity. Children obtained scores based on the number and complexity of explanations proposed. The 6--7-year-olds suggested significantly fewer intentional/personality-related explanations than the 8--9- or 9--10-year-olds.;The examination of similar reasoning processes in the context of a perception-based task, requiring judgements about the legitimacy of two interpretations of the 'ManMouse' reversible figure, and of a 3RD interpretation of the image unrelated to the specific drawing, indicated significant differences between each of three age-groups in the proportions of justification-types proposed (categorized as: none, subjectivist/relativist and stimulus grounded/complete). More subjectivist/relativist explanations were suggested by the 8--9-year-olds than by the other age groups.;Controlling for age, interpretive task performance remained positively and significantly correlated with language scores and several narrative-competence measures. Regression analyses indicated expressive language scores, use of intentional narrative in recounting the event, and age, as best predictors for interpretive understanding performance for both tasks. The roles of language and narrative competence in the development of an interpretive understanding of mental life are discussed in terms of their implications for the development of epistemic stances throughout childhood.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
