---
abstract: "Three and 4-year-old children were tested on matched versions of Zaitchik's (1990) photo task and Wimmer and Perner's (1983) false belief task. Although replicating Zaitchik's finding that false belief and photo task are of equal difficulty, this applied only to mean performance across subjects and no substantial correlation between the two tasks was found. This suggests that the two tasks tap different intellectual abilities. It was further discovered that children's performance can be improved by drawing their attention to the back of the photo but not by drawing attention to the person holding the false belief. Results are interpreted as showing that children's difficulty with the photo task is due to referential confusion about which scene the question refers to (the picture or reality) while the hurdle in the false belief task is to understand that the believer misrepresents reality."
altloc: []
chapter: ~
commentary: ~
commref: ~
confdates: ~
conference: ~
confloc: ~
contact_email: ~
creators_id: []
creators_name:
- family: Perner
given: Josef
honourific: ''
lineage: ''
- family: Leekam
given: Susan R.
honourific: ''
lineage: ''
- family: Myers
given: Deborah
honourific: ''
lineage: ''
- family: Davis
given: Shalini
honourific: ''
lineage: ''
- family: Odgers
given: Nicola
honourific: ''
lineage: ''
date: 1998
date_type: published
datestamp: 1998-06-24
department: ~
dir: disk0/00/00/07/08
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edit_lock_user: ~
editors_id: []
editors_name: []
eprint_status: archive
eprintid: 708
fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/text_html.png;/708/1/perner_misref.html
full_text_status: public
importid: ~
institution: ~
isbn: ~
ispublished: unpub
issn: ~
item_issues_comment: []
item_issues_count: 0
item_issues_description: []
item_issues_id: []
item_issues_reported_by: []
item_issues_resolved_by: []
item_issues_status: []
item_issues_timestamp: []
item_issues_type: []
keywords: ~
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:13
latitude: ~
longitude: ~
metadata_visibility: show
note: ~
number: ~
pagerange: ~
pubdom: FALSE
publication: ~
publisher: ~
refereed: FALSE
referencetext: ~
relation_type: []
relation_uri: []
reportno: ~
rev_number: 8
series: ~
source: ~
status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:33:19
subjects:
- cog-psy
- dev-psy
- phil-mind
- soc-psy
succeeds: ~
suggestions: ~
sword_depositor: ~
sword_slug: ~
thesistype: ~
title: "Misrepresentation and Referential Confusion: Children's Difficulty with False Beliefs and Outdated Photographs"
type: preprint
userid: 126
volume: ~