Browsing by Author "Cassidy, Kimberly Wright"

Now showing 1 - 15 of 15
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    A Child's Theory of Mind
    (1995) Gamble, Eleanor; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright; Boltz, Marilyn
    The purpose of the present experiment was to study children's theory of mind or their ability to attribute mental states to themselves and to others. Two tasks were used to test the theory of mind: the false belief task, the standard test for a theory of mind and the false pretend task, a newer version of the false belief task which employs pretense. The effects of perceptual pull and desire on task performance were also studied. The subjects of the experiment were twenty-seven preschoolers ages three, four and five. The major findings of this study showed that children's performance on these theory of mind tasks improves significantly between the third and fourth years. These results support a view claiming that children become more conceptually developed in this time period. In contrast to previous findings, the false belief task was also shown to be easier than the false pretend task. Future research needs to be conducted to determine under what conditions a child can and cannot use their theory of mind.
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    Behavioral and Conceptual Measures of Intentional Understanding in Typical Children and Children with Autism
    (2002) Weissman, Alison; Perloe, Sidney; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright
    Two main lines of research support the contention that individuals with autism lack the ability to attribute mental states to themselves and others. Some researchers compare the behaviors of typical children and children with autism (CW A) or each population's use of eye stimuli. Others investigate CWA's performance on the "litmus test" of mind understanding, the false belief task. Both directions of research, stemming from the typical child's development of mind understanding, show deficits among CW A. This study investigated the appropriateness of these measures for individuals with autism. The research measured CWA's and typical children's conceptual understanding of the mind, at the level of intent, as well as their behavioral displays of "mind understanding." A 2 (Group/ Autistic, Typical) x 2 (Measure/Concept, Behavior) ANOVA indicated an interaction. Planned effects indicated that CW A were as competent as typical children in utilizing an understanding of intent to guide their spontaneous judgments, but were less able to show behavioral displays of mind understanding than typical children. The results are contrasted to the theory of mind hypothesis of autism and compared to the behavioral research to support this hypothesis. It is suggested that the methodological approaches for typical subjects are less appropriate measures of mind understanding for children with the social and behavioral deficits characteristic of individuals with autism.
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    Bias in Evaluation: The Effects of Stereotypes and Environment
    (1995) Des Forges, Jessie B.; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright
    A study was designed to replicate and expand on Goldberg's 1968 study on evaluation bias. Evaluation bias is discrimination based on gender when assessing an individual's competence. 24 females and 24 males from Swarthmore College, and 42 females from Bryn Mawr College were asked to evaluate 3 published articles in the fields of Physics, Feminist & Gender Studies and History (perceived as masculine, feminine and neutral domains). Each article was written by a different author: a male, female, or an author whose name was initialized. The combinations of author and field of article were different for different groups of subjects. It was predicted that, as there was no individuating information about the author, the subjects would rely on stereotypes when evaluating the individual's work. The main hypothesis was that subjects would rate essays differentially according to gender of author; that is, raters would rely on negative stereotypes of women and thus women's work would be devalued. Another hypothesis, which was unique to this particular study, was that environment would influence the content of stereotypes; specifically, that students from a coeducational school would evaluate women differently than would students from an all female school. Results indicated that the articles were not differentially perceived and evaluated according to the name of the author; findings gave no evidence of evaluation bias. However, there were effects of school indicating the role of environment. Furthermore, almost all the significant effects were within the feminine domain.
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    Child's Theory of Mind: Belief and Desire Distinction
    (1996) Murayama, Waki; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright; Boltz, Marilyn
    The present study investigated the child's theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states to other people. This study was based on Fodor's proposal that children use two strategies in solving false belief problems, one focusing on a desire component, and the other on a belief component of mental states. Sixteen three year-olds and 16 four year-olds were presented with four short stories that varied in the desirability of the story topics and the roles of the main characters. They were asked to describe the main character's emotional reaction to the unexpected outcome, and to also recall the false belief of the character. Results supported Fodor's proposal that young children are as capable of false belief comprehension as are older children. However, the manipulations of topic desirability and the main character's roles were not shown to affect children's performance. These findings are discussed in terms of past research and theory concerning the child's theory of mind.
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    Child's Theory of Mind: The False Belief and False Pretend Task
    (1994) Kohler, Christa; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright
    The purpose of the current research was to examine to what extent a theory of mind exists in young children. Previous studies have revealed that while four-year-olds demonstrate the presence of a theory of mind, three-year-olds lack this ability. A standard false belief task assesses whether children can attribute a false belief to another person and thus demonstrate a theory of mind. The present experiment used this method of research as well as a false pretend task, which while it is a similar test, is presented in a pretense context. The absence or presence of perceptual pull and desire were manipulated as well. The subjects consisted of twenty-seven preschool children whose ages ranged from three to five. A main effect of age was found with a large leap in accuracy seen between the ages of three and four supporting the conceptual change view that theory of mind develops between this time frame. A main effect of task type was also found indicating that the false belief tasks are easier for children than the false pretend tasks. While components of these findings differ with the research of past studies, further experiments should be performed to assess the extent to which three-year-olds can attribute false beliefs and in what context this ability is revealed.
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    Desire understanding and prosocial behavior: the relationship between early development of theory of mind and the social processes of preschool-age children
    (2003) Odessey, Rebecca; Carlson, Katharine L.; Martinez, Nicole; Boltz, Marilyn; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright
    This study explores the relationship between desire understanding and prosocial behavior. A sample of 49 children, ranging from 3 to 5 years of age, was given a battery of desire understanding tasks. Prosocial behavior, as comprised of prosocial orientation, social initiative, and selflessness, was measured by teacher and parent reports. Overall desire understanding was related to teacher ratings of prosocial behavior. This significant correlation remained when controlling for selfishness. Effects of age and "risk status" were also found. Implications of teacher bias within the classroom, factors influencing the development of prosocial behavior, and a possible interaction between these two components are discussed.
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    Desire Understanding as Related to Prosocial Behavior in Preschoolers
    (2003) Carlson, Katharine L.; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright; Boltz, Marilyn
    This study was designed to investigate the relationship between preschoolers' understanding of others' desires and prosocial behavior. Participants included children between the ages of three and five. Desire understanding was measured using tasks ranging in difficulty and included simple desire, conflicting/inferring desire, and wicked desire tasks. Prosocial behavior was rated and recorded in questionnaire form by teachers and parents. Teacher ratings of prosocial behavior were found to be significantly positively correlated with desire understanding in preschoolers, with older children performing significantly better than younger children in both areas as well. Differences in performance based on environmental differences, or "risk status," are discussed. These findings build on previous theory of mind research and have implications for early educational programs.
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    Preschoolers' desire understanding and its relation to prosocial behavior
    (2003) Martinez, Nicole; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright
    Theory of mind in humans allows for communication, interaction and socialization. Through the development of a theory of mind children understand first that others have desires, and after this an understanding of belief develops, resulting in a complete theory of mind. The present study investigates the desire portion of theory of mind and its relationship to the amount and quality of prosocial behaviors preschool children engage in, as measured by teachers and parents. Prosocial behavior and desire understanding were significantly correlated, when prosocial actions were rated by teachers, while parent ratings of prosocial behavior were not related to levels of desire understanding. The effects of age, gender and classroom designation on prosocial behavior and desire understanding are examined and implications for future research are discussed.
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    Request style : at home and in school
    (2004) Reicher, Shira R.; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright
    Children's understanding and fulfilling of requests is essential to succeeding in the home and school environment. The current study examines differences between teachers' and mothers' request styles to determine if children are exposed to different request styles in each respective environment. Forty naturalistic lessons and free-play sessions of teachers and mothers conversing with children were coded for requests along several dimensions, including request type. Analysis revealed contrasting teacher and mother request styles. Results suggest that requests occur frequently in teachers' and mothers' speech, with teachers using slightly more total requests. Further analysis reveals that teachers and mothers differ slightly in their request type frequency distributions, with teachers using more need/want statements and hints. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for children's transition to school, Theory of Mind and request comprehension.
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    The Ability of Young Children to Use Conflicting Information about Desires, Beliefs and Reality to Solve Theory of Mind Problems
    (1999) Brown, Eleanor D.; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright; Compton, Rebecca J. (Rebecca Jean)
    The relationship between desire and belief understanding in the context of children's theory of mind is not yet entirely substantiated. The prominent view, proposed by Wellman (1989), claims that before children understand that beliefs are central to reasoning about desires they will either disregard belief information or use it only when it suggests a route to desire satisfaction. Recent research by Cassidy (1998), however, suggests that children's ability to demonstrate the full extent of their desire and belief understanding is limited by certain biases. The current study used a sample of 23 three, four, and five year olds to test the hypothesis that even young children are able to reason appropriately about desires and beliefs in the absence of reality and egocentric biases. As predicted, children demonstrated success on two separate tasks of desire and belief understanding that was independent of their ability to reason about false beliefs. Evidence from the current study that (in the absence of particular biases) children understand that belief information is central to reasoning about desires contradicts a prominent view of desire understanding (Wellman, 1990), and suggests that children may in fact have a representational understanding of desire. This possibility is further supported by our finding that children were able to understand a representational construct of desire. Implications of our findings for research concerning desire and belief understanding are discussed.
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    The Ability of Young Children to Use Conflicting Information About Desires, Beliefs, and Reality to Solve Theory of Mind Problems
    (2000) Disney-Hoey, Deirdre; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright; Compton, Rebecca J. (Rebecca Jean)
    The relationship between desire and belief understanding in the context of children's theory of mind is not yet entirely substantiated. The prominent view, proposed by Wellman (1989), claims that before children understand that beliefs are central to reasoning about desires they will either disregard belief information or use it only when it suggests a route to desire satisfaction. Recent research by Cassidy (1998), however, suggests that children's ability to demonstrate the full extent of their desire and belief understanding is limited by certain biases. The current study used a sample of 23 three, four, and five year olds to test the hypothesis that even young children are able to reason appropriately about desires and beliefs in the absence of reality and egocentric biases. As predicted, children demonstrated success on two separate tasks of desire and belief understanding that was independent of their ability to reason about false beliefs. Evidence from the current study that (in the absence of particular biases) children understand that belief information is central to reasoning about desires contradicts a prominent view of desire understanding (Wellman, 1990), and suggests that children may in fact have a representational understanding of desire. This possibility is further supported by our finding that children were able to understand a representational construct of desire. Implications of our findings for research concerning desire and belief understanding are discussed.
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    The Influential Nature of Stereotypes in the Formation of Judgments: The Evaluation Bias
    (1995) Steisel, Paula H.; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright; Perloe, Sidney
    The evaluation bias occurs when the same piece of work is judged differently depending on the sex of the author or producer of the work. The purpose of this experiment was to see whether men and women rate articles differently depending upon the gender of the author of the article. This experiment was conducted to examine the effects of the gender of the author, the school environment, and the gender of the rater on evaluations of three different articles in a male dominated, female dominated, and neutral field. Subjects read three articles with a male author, female author, and author with an initial in the three fields. Subjects from a coeducational and all female college rated the articles on five different dimensions: writing style, competency of the author in the subject area, persuasiveness, depth of the article, and quality of the article. There was no evidence of the evaluation bias in our study. Overall effects between male and female raters resulted in a main effect of gender of the rater for the female article so that women evaluated the female domain more favorably than men. It was hypothesized that women at all female schools would be more aware of discriminatory behavior and evaluate articles authored by males and females equally. Results showed that women from an all female school rated the female author of a feminine article less favorably than the women from a coeducational school. Another hypothesis was based upon the centrality of gender where individuals who find gender to be central are more likely to see themselves as part of the in-group, the category of female and therefore rate other females as individuals rather than base the ratings on stereotypes of the category, female. Due to the few subjects who placed their gender on the Who am I? test, this hypothesis could not be tested in this experiment.
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    The Role of Inference and Conflicting Desires in Preschoolers' Action Predictions
    (1999) Kelton, Emily J.; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright; Davis, Douglas A., 1943-
    The ability to infer other people's desires indicates an understanding of their mental states and, therefore, the presence of a theory of mind. Research has indicated that young children have the ability to make predictions based on explicitly stated desires (Cassidy, 1998; Wellman & Woolley, 1990) and to use information about an agent's past experience to infer desire (Moore, Jarrold, Russell, Lumb, Sapp, and MacCallum, 1995). Three-, 4-, and 5-year-olds' ability to infer an agent's desired actions was explored in the current study. Participants were asked to predict an agents' desires based on descriptions of the agents' preferred behaviors and past experiences. Children were also tested on their ability to infer an agent's desires when the agents' past experiences were likely to lead to desires that conflicted with the children's own preference. Children succeeded at predicting agents' desires when no conflict existed between their own preferences and those of the agents, but could not do so when such a conflict was present, indicating that while children are able to infer desire based on both explicit and implicit information when it is consistent with their own desire, they have difficulty disengaging from their current mental states.
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    The Role of Inference and Conflicting Desires in Preschoolers' Action Predictions
    (1999) Stanhaus, Heather; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright; Davis, Douglas A., 1943-
    Moore et al. (1995) suggested that young children's difficulty on theory of mind tasks was due to their inability to inhibit their own strong, conflicting mental states (e.g., desires and beliefs) to infer the mental states of others and make accurate behavioral predictions. In contrast, Wellman (1990) and colleagues maintained that young children's mentalizing abilities included the capacity to deal with mental states that differed from or conflicted with their own. Thus, this study investigated preschoolers' ability to predict story characters' behaviors from information about the characters' desires (that was either explicit or implicit) and when the characters' desires were matched or mismatched with the children's own desires. Results revealed that preschoolers performed poorly on conflicting desire conditions regardless of whether they were explicitly told a story character's desire or were required to infer the character's desire from the story events. These results further supported the claims by Moore et al. (1995) that young children were incapable of resolving mental state conflicts when making action predictions.
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    The Role of Inference in Preschoolers' Understanding of Desire
    (1998) Richman, Lisa; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright; Davis, Douglas A., 1943-
    Recent research on the development of children's theory of mind, presents conflicting evidence in the domain of inference capabilities. This paper critically reviews studies on inference and general belief and desire reasoning capabilities. The present study will use a sample of 30 three- and four-year-olds to investigate children's capacity to understand and infer another person's desires based on what participants learn about this character from a short story. The results of the study will allow the experimenters to either provide support for Wellman (1990) or Moore et al. (1995), who provide conflicting results in the assessment of young children's inferencing capabilities. Our results may also provide support for a combination of these findings. We predict that our results will generally be consistent with those of Wellman (1990) and of cognitive change theory of mind.