Three- but not 2-year-olds misinform others spontaneously in an interaction-based task

Abstract

One-year-olds spontaneously inform others, but less is known about the emergence of spontaneous misinforming. The current study investigated whether young children who spontaneously inform ignorant others also deliberately misinform others in matched uninstructed interactions. Conceptually, misinforming provides a convincing case for interaction-based, implicit false belief understanding. In a simplified, anticipatory and interactive paradigm, a protagonist puppet played with the child and an object and then hid the object in one of two boxes. When the protagonist was temporarily absent, either her friend or a competitor puppet searched for the hidden object. Children spontaneously joined the play and helped or hindered by informing or misinforming the puppets. Experiment 1 revealed that 2-year-olds spontaneously informed the friend. However, they did not selectively misinform the competitor. In order to exclude methodological biases and replicate previous findings, Experiment 2 tested 3-year-olds, confirming skills for spontaneous misinforming with the same paradigm. Findings reveal that informing, but not misinforming, is part of younger children's early spontaneous communication, which suggests a conceptual distinction in the use of communication and casts doubts on an interactive use of false belief understanding in early interactions.