YOUNG CHILDRENS UNDERSTANDING OF THOUGHT BUBBLES AND OF THOUGHTS

In a series of 4 studies, we explored preschoolers' understanding of t hought bubbles. Very few 3-year-olds or 4-year-olds we tested knew wha t a thought-bubble depiction was without instruction. But, if simply t old that the thought bubble ''shows what someone is thinking,'' the va st majority of 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds easily understood the devic es as depicting thoughts generally and individual thought contents spe cifically. In total, these children used thought-bubble depictions to ascertain the contents of characters' thoughts in a variety of situati ons; appropriately distinguished such depictions from mere associated actions or objects; described thought bubbles in the language of menta l states; judged that persons' thoughts in these depictions were-subje ctive in the sense of person-specific (and hence 2 people can have dif ferent thoughts about tile same state of affairs); and judged that tho ught-bubble thoughts (a) were representational in the sense of depicti ng or showing some other state of affairs, (b) were mental and thus sh owed intangible, private, internal thoughts unlike real pictures or ph otographs, and (ci can be false, that is, can depict a person's misrep resentation of some state of affairs. We discuss the implications of t hese findings for young children's understanding of thoughts and thoug ht bubbles, for their learning and comprehension of pictorial conventi ons, and for the use of thought bubbles to assess children's early und erstanding of mind.