THE BASIS FOR UNDERSTANDING BELIEF

The aim of this paper was to investigate what it means to understand b elief and to suggest how children may develop such an understanding. T he position advanced challenges prominent explanations of the young ch ild's conception of folk psychology that view development in terms of the creation of successive models of mind. The prominent explanations, developed in order to explain the performance of 3- and 4-year-olds i n simple game-like tasks, have problems accounting for the communicati ve competence of young children. Furthermore, they are based upon a si mplistic interpretation of folk psychology that is not only inadequate as a description of adult belief-desire psychology, but would also be extremely complex for the young child to acquire. The alternative int erpretation of folk psychology discusses the concept of belief, not in terms of internal, causal, states of the mind, but in terms of a qual ity of behaviour. Specifically, the position is advanced that children come to conceive of belief as the commitment of agents to act in cert ain ways. This commitment to action is most clearly apparent to young children during communicative exchanges, and it is proposed that in th is context they hone their understanding of belief. The discussion str esses the continuity of development during the early years in contrast to the discontinuity proposed by the prominent 'stage' models.