Poster #28 - Do children correctly reason about the artist’s knowledge and belief when labelling a drawing?

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Drawing is a representational act, dependent on the artist’s mental representations. Even children as young as 2½ will recognise and use an artist’s intent to label a drawing. This allows us to use drawing to explore children’s developing understanding of artist mental states. In the present study with 85 3- to 5-year-olds, we explore children’s sensitivity to the artist’s knowledge and beliefs when interpreting an ambiguous drawing.

At a minimum, an artist must know about the object they are drawing. Some researchers find that 4-year-olds do not consider the artist’s knowledge (e.g., children say an artist drew a snake although she’s never seen one), but these studies primarily use abstract stories in which the artist is unfamiliar with common objects or animals. Are children sensitive to artist knowledge in less abstract cases? Participants followed a story, acted out with props, in which Jessica walked through town. Two cars passed, one red and one blue. Children either heard that she saw them both (Knowledgeable condition) or that she saw (for example) only the blue one (Ignorant condition). Jessica produced a black-and-white drawing of a car, and children were asked which car she drew, and which car she saw. Children were significantly more likely to report that Jessica drew the blue car when she was ignorant than when she was knowledgeable, showing sensitivity to the artist’s knowledge.

More complex mental state reasoning includes considering beliefs. There is some evidence that children will consider false beliefs when naming their own drawings and when deciding whether an ignorant artist would draw a picture of what represents a true or false belief, but in these studies children were given unambiguous drawings. Here we presented children with the more difficult task of naming an ambiguous drawing based on a false belief generated by an unexpected contents situation. Depending on condition, Jessica either had a true or false belief about the contents of a Smarties box, which in some conditions contained pennies. In every case, Jessica proceeded to draw “what’s inside the box” and drew circles. Children were asked to label the drawing, and to report Jessica’s belief about the contents of the box. Children were significantly more likely to report that Jessica drew pennies when she had a true belief (pennies) than when she had a false belief (Smarties). Interestingly, when Jessica had a false belief, children were more successful at naming the drawing according to her false belief than they were at explicitly reporting that belief.

These findings indicate that 3- and 4-year-olds consider the mental states of the artist when naming a picture, suggesting that pre-schoolers appreciate the mental underpinnings of the representational act of drawing. We also find that children are better able to label a drawing according to the artist’s false belief compared to an explicit question about that false belief. This may arise out of a difference between implicit and explicit measures of false belief understanding, or may reflect linguistic or social demands inherent in the traditional task.

Authors

• Nera Bozin, University of Kent
  Presenting Author

• Erika Nurmsoo, University of Kent
  Non-Presenting Author