The cognitive developmental investigation of the attribution of privileged access to mental states Szabolcs Kiss Institute of Sociology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Institute of Psychology, University of Pécs

The main research programs of Jürgen Habermas 1.Universal pragmatics 2.The theory of communicative rationality 3.The theory of modern societies 4.The program of communicative ethics 5.The theory of politics

Characteristics of the ideal speech situation developed by Habermas I. Synonyms of privileged access: Infallible inner eye attribution of introspection assumption of first- person-authority the possibility of conscious access The targets of privileged access: mental states intentional states reasons intentions, motives propositional attitudes desires, beliefs

Characteristics of the ideal speech situation II. We do not assume unconscious, inaccessible mental states. This is a kind of accountability, reportability, responsibility. Sometimes this is a contrafactual assumption, because the person cannot access his or her mental states.

A brief history of the infallible inner eye Descartes: As it is well known he emphasized the role of introspection in the acquisition of mental state concepts. Wundt: Introspection as a scientific method. Behaviorism: The rejection of introspection. Psychoanalysis: It questioned the assumption of first- person-authority. Cognitive science: We need cognitive science, because of the limitations of introspection. Philosophy of mind: The debate about the role of first- person-authority in our mental life. (e.g. Moran 2001)

A few representatives of the denial of first-person-authority The authors below questioned the decisive role of first-person-authority in our mental life: Freud Nisbett and Willson 1977 Gopnik 1993 Wimmer and Hartl 1991 Wittgenstein Montgomery 1997 Carruthers (in press)

Acquisition of the ideal speech situation I. An important part of the folk psychology of adults that we attribute privileged access to mental states. Naturalisation of Habermas in the spirit of Quine (1969) and Kornblith (1994). When and how does the child acquire the ideal speech situation? What is the relationship between this idealisation and the child’s theory of mind? The relationship between the ascription of privileged access to mental states and the child’s intentional interpretation of actions: 1. The two mental processes are conceptually inseparable (Gergely personal communication) 2. The two processes are separable. We favour this view.

Experiment Participants: 15 3-year-olds, 30 4-year-olds, 19 5-year- olds, 30 6-year-olds, 14 7-year-olds and 22 8-year-olds. Procedure and design: We used a modified version of Bartsch and Wellman’s (1989) experiment. The child sees the following story acted out with the help of hand puppets: „Here is Ann. Ann is looking for her kitten. The kitten is hiding under the chair. But Ann is looking for it under the piano. Why? What do you think?” This time we expect an answer with reference to mental states. For istance: „Because she believes that the kitten is there.” Etc.

Experiment (cont.) In the modified version of the experiment, after answering the question the child was given another task. Then another identical puppet appeared and the children’s task was to select Ann on the basis of the puppets’ first person verbal reports. „Look, here are two girls! After listening them tell me which of the two you had seen before, which is Ann?” Then the first person verbal reports of their beliefs were presented: „I think my kitten is under the piano.” Or: „I think my kitten is under the chair.” We argued that if the child is able to ascribe privileged access to the actor’s own mental states then he or she can choose Ann from the two identical puppets on the basis of their first person verbal reports.

Results From the 15 3-year-olds 10 children choosed Ann correctly. From the 30 4-year-olds 14 were right. From the 19 5-year-olds 8 children choosed properly and from the 30 six-year-olds 19 children were correct. From the 14 7-year-olds 10 children choosed Ann correctly while from the 22 8-year-olds 14 were correct. The statistical analysis (Chi-Square tests) of the data showed us that the responses of the children were not significantly different from chance in any age group. We can conclude that the attribution of privileged access to mental states is not an early emerging capacity of children. Perhaps only 9- and 10-year-olds possess this ability. Of course this needs to be experimentally investigated.

Discussion and task analysis Our modified task requires inter alia the understanding of the so-called complement-taking predicates. See e.g. de Villiers and de Villiers (2003). The famous competence-performance distinction can be applied to our task. However, we have just collected data on the ascription of privileged access to mental states by using a different method which led to the same conclusion, namely that only 9-year-olds have this capacity (Jakab and Kiss in preparation). At present we know that there are very important developments in theory of mind in school age children (e.g. Birch and Bloom 2004, Carpendale and Lewis 2006, Hulme et al. 2003, Liddle and Nettle in press). In our recent experiment (Jakab and Kiss in preparation) chidren were able to report authority in the first person case much earlier than ascribing privileged access to mental states in the third person case. In my view, children at first have first person authority in relation to their own mind, and then they are able to project privileged access to mental states to another person. In other words, our experiments favour a kind of simulation/theory mix with an emphasis on mental simulation (see Goldman 2006). The research on the relationship between the ideal speech situation and the child’s theory of mind have taught us to distinguish between accessing mental states and to verbally report them. We must emphasize the role of conversations in the acquisition of the ideal speech situation (cf. Harris 1996), particularly the child’s ability to participate in imaginative conversations.

The abandonment of the principle The abandonment of the attribution of privileged access to mental states in folk psychology : We know from the research on the social representation of psychoanalysis that the unconscious plays an important role in adult folk behaviour explanation. It is an important task of theory of mind research to examine the acquisition of this in school age children. To my knowledge, at present we have one study concerning the understanding of the unconsciousness in children (Flavell et al. 1999). To collect more data on this issue is an important task of future research.

Acknowledgements OTKA T Anett Tóth Diana Horváth Orsolya Szabó Réka Batiz

References Bartsch, K and Wellman, H. M. (1989) Young children’s attribution of action to beliefs and desires. Child Development, 60, Birch, S. A. J. and Bloom, P. (2004) Understanding children’s and adults’ limitations in mental state reasoning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, Carpendale, J. and Lewis, C. (2006) How children develop social understanding. Oxford: Blackwell. De Villiers, J. G. and de Villiers, P.A. (2003) Language for thought: Coming to understand false beliefs. In: D. Gentner and S. Goldin- Meadow (Eds.) Language in mind. Advances in the study of language and thought. Cambridge, M.A: MIT Press Flawell, J. H., Green, F. L., Flawell, E. R. and Lin, N. T. (1999) Development of children’s knowledge about unconsciousness. Child Development 70, Goldman, A. I. (2006) Simulating minds. Oxford University Press. Gopnik, A. (1993) How we know our minds: The illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, Harris, P. L. (1996) Desires, beliefs and language. In: Carruthers, P. and Smith, P.K. (Eds.) Theories of theories of Mind. Cambridge University Press Hulme, S., Mitchell, P. and Wood, D. (2003) Six-year-olds’ difficulties handling intensional contexts. Cognition, 87, Kornblith, H. (1994) Naturalizing epistemology. Cambridge, M.A: MIT Press. Liddle, B. and Nettle, D. (in press) Higher-order theory of mind and social competence in school age children. Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology. Montgomery, D. (1997) Wittgenstein’s private language argument and children’s understanding of the mind. Developmental Review, 17, Moran R. (2001) Authority and estrangement. An essay on self-knowledge.Princeton University Press. Nisbett, R. E. and Wilson, T.D. (1977) Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, Quine, W.V.O. (1969) Ontological relativity and other essays. New York: Columbia University Press. Wimmer H. and Hartl, M. (1991) Against the Cartesian view on mind: Young children’s difficulty with own false beliefs. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9,