Representing the Mental World in Children's Social Behavior: Playing Hide‐and‐Seek and Keeping a Secret

By Joan Peskin, V. Ardino. 2003

95 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study examined the relationship between children's developing theory of mind and their ability to engage in two social behaviors which have, as their cognitive underpinning, the representation that what one knows may not be accessible to others. Children of 3, 4, and 5 years, in a quasi-naturalistic setting, played hide-and-seek and also were required to keep a secret about a surprise. The ability to play hide-and-seek was significantly related to children's ability to refrain from disclosing the secret, and there was a significant relationship between these behaviors and children's social cognition, as measured by theory of mind tasks. The relationship between these social behaviors and tasks measuring executive function was not significant once age was taken into account. With regard to the development of these social behaviors, few 3-year-olds, but most 4-year-olds, and almost all 5-year-olds could successfully play hide-and-seek and keep a secret. This study demonstrates the importance of the conceptual understanding of mental states in the young child's social world.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Education, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2eddbc7cc8e85ee0db9a62cafa2008bca518b1a5

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. J. Carpendale
2. Gerald Giesbrecht
3. Ulrich Müller,
4. Dana Liebermann
5. C. Lewis
6. Charles Fernyhough
7. Hanne De Jaegher

In Education

1. Gerald Giesbrecht
2. Ulrich Müller,
3. J. Carpendale
4. Dana Liebermann

In Social Psychology

1. J. Carpendale
2. Gerald Giesbrecht
3. Ulrich Müller,
4. Dana Liebermann
5. C. Lewis
6. Hanne De Jaegher

Citations in the corpus

• Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children's social understanding within social interaction (2004, background): “For example, in a recent study, Peskin and Ardino (2003) found that children’s performance on a false belief task in which an object is moved to a new location without the knowledge of the protagonist (“unexpected transfer task”) is positively associated with success in a hide-and-seek game,…”
• Cognitive and Emotional Aspects of Self-Regulation in Preschoolers. (2007, background): “Though a few studies have used naturalistic observations to examine the contribution of EF to children’s social competence (e.g., Peskin & Ardino, 2003) and problem behaviors (e.g., Fahie & Symons, 2003), limited research has assessed EF in terms of children’s everyday behaviors.”
• Neural correlates involved in perspective-taking in early childhood (2024, background): “Similarly, when engaged in a hide-and-seek game, 3-year-old children had difficulty recognizing whether someone else could see them, whereas by age four most children ’ s behavior indicated that they considered what another person could or could not see (Peskin and Ardino, 2003).”