Taking decisions seriously: Young children's understanding of conventionaltruth

Research suggests that young children may see a direct and one-way connecti on between facts about the world and epistemic mental states (e.g., belief) . Conventions represent instances of active constructions of the mind that change facts about the world. As such, a mature understanding of convention would seem to present a strong challenge to children's simplified notions of epistemic relations. Three experiments assessed young children's abiliti es to track behavioral, representational, and truth aspects of conventions. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 30) recognized that conve ntional stipulations would change people's behaviors. However, participants generally failed to understand how stipulations might affect representatio ns. In Experiment 2, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old children (N = 53) were asked to reason about the truth values of statements about pretenses and convention s. The two younger groups of children often confused the two types of state s, whereas older children consistently judged that conventions, but not pre tenses, changed reality. In Experiment 3, the same 3- and Ei-year-olds (N = 42) participated in tasks assessing their understanding of representationa l diversity (e.g., false belief). In general, children's performance on fal se-belief and "false-convention" tasks did not differ, which suggests that conventions were understood as involving truth claims (as akin to beliefs a bout physical reality). Children's difficulties with the idea of convention al truth seems consistent with current accounts of developing theories of m ind.